Maybe this is true for most of us, but we tend to focus on what’s right in front of our faces. On the journey to early retirement, that means thinking about how we treat our money now, and not always thinking back about how we used to relate to it. But today we’re taking a little look back to see what has surprised us most about pursuing financial independence, both financially, and in terms of our mindset.
A question we ask ourselves all the time is: Do we just want to retire early because deep down we feel bad at working? Even though we’re nothing close to bad at our jobs — we’ve very good at them — we’ve never quite been able to muster the right attitude to do them with total commitment. Which makes us wonder: for those special few who are seriously incredible at their jobs, would early retirement even enter their minds? Come share your theories!
We’ve been lucky in many ways, but one of those ways is that we’ve been almost completely supported in our early retirement plans by our friends and family (at least the ones who know!). But we know that many aspiring early retirees aren’t so lucky, and today we hear from lots of them about how they handle that lack of support!
It’s nothing new to say that our collective digital life has made many of us focus too much on signs of external digital validation such as likes and comments. I’ve so far been okay at avoiding that trap, but after we leave our careers, the work I do will be more digital than ever. And given my gold star-seeking tendencies, how can I redefine my self worth post-career without falling into the digital stats trap?
Though we’ve been thinking about all the questions that go with the end of work for months now, we’re late in realizing that we need to be ready to respond if our companies lay on the hard sell to try to get us to stay. We’ve given it some thought, and here’s what it would take for us. What would it take for you?
We’ve talked a lot about health care lately, given the political climate, but not health itself. And health is super important to us. Why bother planning for a long retirement if we aren’t going to stay healthy enough to enjoy it? Here’s everything we’re doing and thinking about to increase our chances of reaching a ripe old age in good health.
This year has been flying by, and we can’t believe it’s already time for our first quarter update. And it’s not just numbers on our minds — getting this close to retirement has us feeling all kinds of contradictory feelings, and the recent market boom has us in a state of disbelief.
Monday’s post spurred so much great discussion around what constitutes “retirement,” so I thought we could take it a step further, and do some exercises around what actually constitutes retirement, and what that’s based on. There’s no right or wrong answer, so come weigh in!
An interesting thing happens with a lot of financial independence bloggers. As your audience grows, you suddenly have this incredibly opportunity not only to reach more readers, but to earn more from the blog. Which is wonderful! Except when it means you’re only telling part of the story. Here’s why this matters, and what we should all keep in mind as we read FI blogs.
Reaching financial independence is, more than anything, a waiting game. Especially for those who follow a passive investment strategy like indexing, there’s very little thinking to do once you set your plan in motion. But, the journey still takes years, often many years. Here’s why it’s so critical to pace yourself on that journey.
The fact that we are retiring at the end of this year is getting more and more real for us, and some of that feels scary. But it also feels crazy exciting for obvious reasons, and for less obvious ones like the forthcoming opportunity to re-engineer our lives to reinforce better habits and avoid triggering the bad ones associated with our current work lives.
Here’s a crazy thought: It feels great to be good at things. And if there are things you’re good at in your current work — even if it’s not obvious now that you get joy from them — you might miss out on future joy if you subtract those tasks from your life when you retire early. Today we’re honing in on the things we’re best at, that bring us the most joy, and figuring out how to magnify that joy in FIRE.
The best thing the Affordable Care Act did for early retirees was introduce some level of predictability about health care costs, and all indications are that that predictability is about to go away, no matter where things land with a new health care law. And that’s a big deal for early retirees. Here are some things you should be thinking about, especially if you’re planning to retire soon.
It’s so fun and exciting to plan for financial independence and early retirement that it’s easy to focus only on what happens when things go well. But it’s important to pressure test our plans to make sure they will still hold up even if (or when!) things don’t go as planned. Here’s our suggestion on one way to do that.
We attribute our financial success primarily to three things: not overspending on housing, earning above average incomes, and — as we’ll discuss in detail today — not inflating our lifestyle in many, many years. This “lifestyle stagnation” (think of it as level spending over time) can lead to pretty massive savings potential over time, and today we break it all down.
Something we’re starting to realize is: What we all call retirement planning isn’t really true retirement planning. Money is only a tiny piece of this, and not what most of us will be thinking about daily once we stop working. Real retirement planning is planning for all the rest of life that comes post-career, and for us, a big part of that is travel. So we’re shifting now into *real* retirement planning, and thinking through those big travel questions like how long to stay out, and where to go first.
Today I’m on the Mad Fientist podcast! To celebrate the occasion, we’ve got a monster post with the full rundown on every aspect of our financial plan and financial philosophy, so new readers can get a better sense of us, and long-time followers can see everything all in one place.
Though early retirement feels like a big goal in and of itself (and it is!), it’s not an endpoint. For most of us, it’s just the beginning, and it’s worth thinking in advance about what your next big audacious goal will be after FIRE. We offer some suggestions here!
For a community that’s so into freedom, the financial independence blogosphere can be an awfully strict place with tons of rules. It can be hard to believe that we have the right to do some things just because we feel like it. Today, we give you permission to do exactly that, and share some of our most bratty financial decisions.
Blogging is a hugely time-consuming endeavor, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But we wouldn’t trade this blog or the time it takes to write it because of how much it has done for us. Today, a closer look at how blogging has sped our progress to financial independence and early retirement.
