Category: the process

Decide For Yourself What Spending You Value, and Then Spend Without Guilt // OurNextLife.com, Tanja Hester, author of Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way

Decide For Yourself What Spending You Value, and Then Spend Without Guilt

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If you’re on the journey to a work optional life, or you’re already retired, you have probably spent some time pondering what you truly value most, and what doesn’t add value to your life. But do you spend accordingly, and — importantly — without guilt? If not, this post is for you, talking all about giving yourself permission to spend on what you value most, whatever it is, and regardless of whether others in the FIRE movement think it’s a worthy expense.

The 4% Rule Is Not Your Friend for Early Retirement Savings // ournextlife.com, Tanja Hester, author of Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way, financial independence, FIRE movement

The 4% Rule Is Not Your Friend

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Today I’m tackling a popular and contentious principle in the FIRE community: the 4% rule. I’ve written about a major flaw of the “rule” before, namely that it relies on a false myth of level spending year over year in retirement, but today I’m taking on whether we can actually expect the 4% rule to give us enough of a margin of safety in the future.

Ambition Doesn’t (Have to) End at Retirement // Our Next Life // early retirement, financial independence, FIRE, financial independence retire early, happiness, adventure, purpose

Ambition Doesn’t (Have to) End at Retirement

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It’s easy to assume that the whole point of early retirement is to be able finally to stop striving. To stop working toward that next promotion, and to stop letting money be a big motivator in your decision-making. And while those two instances in particular are true, early retirement doesn’t have to mean the end – nor should it – of your ambition.

Getting through the middle saving years slog en route to early retirement and financial independence // OurNextLife.com

Getting Through the Middle Saving Years Slog

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Nearly everyone who achieves financial independence feels some level of impatience at some point, and that’s normal. But it’s especially easy these days to cross the line from normal impatience to borderline obsession, which only magnifies and worsens that impatience. Here’s some of what we did — and what we WISH we’d done — to get through the middle saving years slog.

The Income Streams Our Early Retirement Is (Now) Built On

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When we first formulated a real early retirement plan, it was based on the rigid belief that we’d never, ever work again. Or at least never *have* to work again. And while that’s still true — we haven’t expedited our plan by forcing ourselves to earn income in the future — we now expect to get a much more diversified set of income streams in early retirement. In part because life happens and we’ve made some different choices along the way. And in part because that recession hasn’t hit yet, health care is still up in the air, and it makes sense to keep hedging against sequence risk and health insurance uncertainty.

Does your exit plan have an exit plan? Why you need to be able to change your mind in early retirement -- about where and how you live, about work, and about anything else. Make sure you build in the resources to keep your options open.

Does Your Exit Plan Have an Exit Plan? // What If You Change Your Mind?

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Today we’re talking options, and keeping them open. Early retirement isn’t an ending, after all — it’s a beginning. And if we go into that beginning with a limited set of options, and no ability to change our course, we could be setting ourselves up for a less-than-ideal future. Here’s why it’s so important to have an exit plan from your exit plan, which really just means you’re giving yourself the financial and logistical resources to change your mind.

Make Time for What’s Most Important — Before AND After Retirement

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I definitely fell into magical thinking for years of our retirement planning, thinking I’d have time to do everything I’d ever dreamed of after we quit: travel the world, write novels, learn a gazillion languages, solve world hunger — you get the idea. But after talking to many early retirees, I’ve had to accept: Time will always be limited. And if I care about accomplishing goals or living a life of meaning, it’s crucial to go into retirement with an eye toward making time for what’s important, and ruthlessly cutting out what’s not.

Why married early retirees should have a pre-FIRE agreement, prenup for early retirement, prenup for financial independence

More Than a Prenup, You Need a Pre-FIRE Agreement

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We love that more and more people are talking about prenups these days (more financial transparency between partners is great!), but for those of us considering early retirement, we think a pre-FIRE agreement is even more important. After all, early retirement comes with its own set of major risks, some of which we’re insulated from to some extent as a couple, but others which become bigger risks for those who are married. Here’s how we’re navigating this.

Write Your Financial Independence Mission Statement

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Today we’re talking mission statements, something that most companies have, but which few individuals or families do — which is a shame, because they can be super helpful in keeping you on-track to reach your biggest life goals. Think of your mission statement like a compass or GPS that helps you find your way if you ever start to wander off the path.

The Simple Math of Lifestyle Stagnation, the Biggest Secret of Our Success

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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.