Hello ERE Forums,
I am a long-time lurker here but decided it was time to at least make an intro post with my story so far. Im not sure I will ever be a frequent poster here though. My story is built on privilege, but I think I have made the most of it, rather than abuse it. I have never had to struggle to get by thanks to strong family support, emotionally and financially.
I worked at a fast food place in high school as early as I was legally able to. Nearing the end of high school, I found out that I had been given enough money from wealthy grandparents over the years and wisely invested by my parents, to attend any school I wanted debt free. My parents were always frugal and my father had the same blue-collar job since he graduated HS so I definitely wasn’t expecting any support. I took advantage of this by applying to only one in-state school’s engineering program and commuted.
I found FIRE back in 2016 during my first weeks of working out of college. Even a few weeks in, I was disappointed that 'this', working, was all there was supposed to be. It felt so odd that we spent our entire childhood being educated to work a job, with zero education about how to make the most of the rest of life. I was immediately disappointed that people spent their whole lives on 'this' as their primary benchmark of success and happiness. FIRE seemed like a great tool to escape the hollow professional workforce, to get my time back.
My IT job at a nonprofit had us sitting in the same room as our single server rack. I googled something about improving the air conditioning to combat the noise of the server fans. One of the first results was a MMM article. Several weeks were spent reading the entire blog, trying to convince myself this was really a thing, not just some advanced scam(This was my young ISTJ rule follower brain).
I spent 5 months at that job before lucking into a new position thanks to a family contact with much better pay, better benefits, and a shorter commute of about 50 minutes round trip. This new position was near where my mother worked so I was able to carpool with her several times per week.
My IT position had a lot of free time if there were no tickets to work on, so I would read several hours per day. I went through many of the FIRE blogs, minimalism, environmentalism, and self-help blogs. Minimalism blogs were great, but they didn’t seem to offer anything once you had understood the concept. They didn’t have any advice about what to do once you had less stuff and more free time. Environmental blogs hinted at a more systemic problem with capitalism and the American way. At some point, I stumbled onto ERE and Jacobs's blog roll. Along the way, I have created several iterations of a FIRE Excel sheet with various projected FIRE date calculators. The current iteration is based on a YMOYL framework.
In 2018, a relative could no longer live on their own, down the street from my parent’s house, and moved into assisted living. My family decided to rent it out to me at cost instead of selling the property. I live in a HCOL suburb, so this was a perfect way out of the house. My savings rate is about 45% at this point, and I already have about 9 years of expenses covered by investments.
I ran XC and track in HS, and for a semester in college but gave it up when I couldn't justify such an early rise to drive to school for 6 AM practices. I filled my free time with hosting at a restaurant and a few relationships. Not running also gave me time to volunteer with my town's local youth track team when a family friend invited me in 2014. I spent several years involved with that, progressing from age group assistant, to distance coach, and eventually to head coach by 2019. This position oversees about a dozen volunteer coaches and 120+ youth athletes. Late in 2019, I took a deep dive into coaching education and took several courses/certifications. My thinking was that in early retirement, a decade from now(based on projections), I would like to become a high school track and XC coach. So what could I do now to take me closer to that goal?
In early 2020, during lockdowns, my employer was also relocating to a new location, less than a 20-minute commute round trip. A dream come true. Because I was in IT and our company’s work was deemed essential, I largely avoided the dread of months working alone.
In September 2021, my savings rate is about 56%. Our IT department is told we are being outsourced, with a ~1-year lead time. A week after finding this out, I attended a meet of my former high school cross country team and spoke to my old coach. He accepts my offer to volunteer with the high school team three days per week, pending required certification as a substitute teacher. My IT job agrees to let me shift my hours since they lost their leverage when they decided to let us all go. If anyone in IT left before they were deemed replaceable by the new IT, the business would suffer greatly.
Many of the athletes I am coaching are the same kids I spent years coaching at the youth level, so things went smoothly. At the end of that first year of volunteering, the head coach decided to retire from teaching and coaching. With my volunteer experience, I was hired as head coach for cross country and both track seasons, a paid position. I was also able to find a different position at my existing employer doing business administration, with reduced hours to accommodate coaching, with the same pay I had before.
Today, I have a year of experience coaching at the high school and still have my job in business administration. My LCOL and two jobs mean my savings rate is about 65-70%, and I have about 18 years of expenses covered by investments. Also, after a year of dating, my DGF moved in with me, drastically reduced my driving to visit her an hour away, and helped with the already cheap rent. I have a short commute in one direction for the first job and an even shorter commute in the other for coaching. The coaching position covers 80%+ of my current COL but doesn’t offer health insurance because I am not otherwise employed by the school.
The question at this point is when to take the plunge and give up the first job. Coaching is my passion, and most of my free time is now spent becoming a better coach or reading about concepts from higher WL. My DGF wants to renovate a house one day and we will probably have kids, so it is hard to calculate how much additional expense I need to allow for before I can take that next step.
Im on track for the good life
Re: Im on track for the good life
wait until 25x, then give up the BA job imo
Re: Im on track for the good life
This was a great move. If you can handle doing both jobs without it causing a lot of stress, I think you should keep doing both (and benegit from that great move) until you've built up excess capital. Perhaps like 40 years of spending since your spending will most certainly increase when you have kids, and perhaps your housing costs will increase when your cheap family rent ends.
Perhaps the good time to quit the IT job is after you're married and when you start having kids. Then you might have health insurance from your wife's work, if she keeps working, can help a lot with the kids, have enough money saved, and still bring in some money with your coaching. Or perhaps also be a PE teacher or something and get insurance for your family if your wife stays at home and stops working. In the high shcools I attended, teaching PE seemed like an incredibly easy job. Perhaps it's a difficult job to get though
Re: Im on track for the good life
... Don't necessarily have kids, by the way. There's no need to do that, although a lot of people do it.
For most people who reach 20 x annual expenses, they will keep earning money and so soon they have 30 x annual expenses, then 40 x annual expenses... and they will have more money than they know what to do with. Carl from 1500days is an example and recently has talked about it a lot, also on his podcast).
I'm (also) seeing this happening for myself, as I'm getting close to being FI but I'm still working (parttime) because it makes me feel good. So money keeps coming in. Looking back, I could have scaled down years sooner and I could have had more fun and a more rewarding life sooner.
So my advice for you would be to consider quitting your main job before you are fully FI. Working the more fun and fulfilling job will allow your stash to continue to grow and you will reach full FI status shortly, anyway. (And then you will probably still continue to work because it's fun).
For the mathematics: if you would make just enough money to cover your current expenses, then your accumulated assets will continue to grow at say a rate of (at least) 5% per year. If you have 20 x your expenses now and you work enough to cover your current expenses, you will probably (markets willing) have 25 x your expenses five years from now, and four years later you would have almost 30 x your expenses.
If, alternatively, you scale down to an income where you can pay only part of your expenses from your current income, and need to take 2% of your accumulated portfolio every year to cover your current expenses... your portfolio will still grow from 20 x your expenses to 25 x your expenses in about ten years.
These kind of strategies have been called coast-FI strategies.
Two or maybe three things to definitely watch out for in your calculations and assumptions:
1. You need to be as sure as you can that you are striving for the correct number. If you intend to have kids, your number should include their expenses for at least the first 18 years of their life.
2. If you don't have your full FI stack just yet and you intend to coast to being fully financially independent by still having some income while you let your stash grow by not touching it... you are making yourself and your plan dependent on the fact that income still needs to come in for at least xx years. Say you can choose to go all out at your current job (that is stressful and takes a lot of your time) for two more years to reach FI status, or you can switch to a different job/career (that is much nicer but pays less) and reach FI status in seven years instead... you are putting yourself at some risk for those five extra years. The risk is limited (after all you still have >20x your expenses in savings, and most of the time you could still find some other form of income if the nice job falls through for some reason), but it's there.
3. maybe too obvious, but... if you take the strategy of coastFI too easy, you're back to working until you're old. You could state that you're going to coastFI when you have only like 3 years of expenses saved up. After all, then you only have to work for forty to fifty years more to let that money grow to 25x your expenses by the time you're around 70 or so. /s So I'd only start considering downshifting when you have a stash that has like 15-20 x your annual expenses.
For most people who reach 20 x annual expenses, they will keep earning money and so soon they have 30 x annual expenses, then 40 x annual expenses... and they will have more money than they know what to do with. Carl from 1500days is an example and recently has talked about it a lot, also on his podcast).
I'm (also) seeing this happening for myself, as I'm getting close to being FI but I'm still working (parttime) because it makes me feel good. So money keeps coming in. Looking back, I could have scaled down years sooner and I could have had more fun and a more rewarding life sooner.
So my advice for you would be to consider quitting your main job before you are fully FI. Working the more fun and fulfilling job will allow your stash to continue to grow and you will reach full FI status shortly, anyway. (And then you will probably still continue to work because it's fun).
For the mathematics: if you would make just enough money to cover your current expenses, then your accumulated assets will continue to grow at say a rate of (at least) 5% per year. If you have 20 x your expenses now and you work enough to cover your current expenses, you will probably (markets willing) have 25 x your expenses five years from now, and four years later you would have almost 30 x your expenses.
If, alternatively, you scale down to an income where you can pay only part of your expenses from your current income, and need to take 2% of your accumulated portfolio every year to cover your current expenses... your portfolio will still grow from 20 x your expenses to 25 x your expenses in about ten years.
These kind of strategies have been called coast-FI strategies.
Two or maybe three things to definitely watch out for in your calculations and assumptions:
1. You need to be as sure as you can that you are striving for the correct number. If you intend to have kids, your number should include their expenses for at least the first 18 years of their life.
2. If you don't have your full FI stack just yet and you intend to coast to being fully financially independent by still having some income while you let your stash grow by not touching it... you are making yourself and your plan dependent on the fact that income still needs to come in for at least xx years. Say you can choose to go all out at your current job (that is stressful and takes a lot of your time) for two more years to reach FI status, or you can switch to a different job/career (that is much nicer but pays less) and reach FI status in seven years instead... you are putting yourself at some risk for those five extra years. The risk is limited (after all you still have >20x your expenses in savings, and most of the time you could still find some other form of income if the nice job falls through for some reason), but it's there.
3. maybe too obvious, but... if you take the strategy of coastFI too easy, you're back to working until you're old. You could state that you're going to coastFI when you have only like 3 years of expenses saved up. After all, then you only have to work for forty to fifty years more to let that money grow to 25x your expenses by the time you're around 70 or so. /s So I'd only start considering downshifting when you have a stash that has like 15-20 x your annual expenses.
Re: Im on track for the good life
Thank you all. Your suggestions align with my expected choices. It seems like the milestones are 25x, then leave the BA position, or wait until I have a more realistic grasp of what my expenses will be after the cheap rent disappears and possible family growth. The original goal was 33x prior to landing the coaching gig, but it was great to be able to adjust to 25x
Regardless, it seems like the plan is to stay in my current pattern. There are plenty of projections of the cost of children to age 18, but is that equally scaleable like ERE for adults, without neglecting them? Quick math does bring that to about 40x. However, this is a question for a few years from now when we decide if that is what we want to do.
It has been fun getting DGF up to speed with FIRE concepts. Convincing her to create her own FIRE sheet was eye-opening. We found accounts she wasn't really sure existed, in what quantity, or what they did. A few easy to trim expenses saved so much time when there is a longer horizon. She has also come around a lot to downsizing and minimalism which was needed just to combine our stuff in a single space. She has even mentioned being excited about COL raises meaning a higher savings rate.
Regardless, it seems like the plan is to stay in my current pattern. There are plenty of projections of the cost of children to age 18, but is that equally scaleable like ERE for adults, without neglecting them? Quick math does bring that to about 40x. However, this is a question for a few years from now when we decide if that is what we want to do.
It has been fun getting DGF up to speed with FIRE concepts. Convincing her to create her own FIRE sheet was eye-opening. We found accounts she wasn't really sure existed, in what quantity, or what they did. A few easy to trim expenses saved so much time when there is a longer horizon. She has also come around a lot to downsizing and minimalism which was needed just to combine our stuff in a single space. She has even mentioned being excited about COL raises meaning a higher savings rate.