Today: a nudge. Not just to tune in to your gratitude, and to express it (out loud!) to those who have impacted your life for the better. But to go beyond gratitude to real generosity and action. Our world depends on it!
Subsidies are in the air right now, with them likely disappearing for health care under the next administration. But “subsidy” is just one word for a concept that most of us embrace openly and unquestioningly: the idea of incentives for things that provide a social good. Think tax credits and deductions, and public services across the spectrum. Today, how subsidies have made my success in life possible, and how they are making our early retirement possible, even without the ACA.
Though a lot is still unknown about what policies we’ll see under a Trump presidency, this much is clear: a lot is going to change. From health care, to taxes to economics, here’s what we know so far about the election’s impact on early retirees.
This is a non-political post at a politically charged time. When the news conflicts with our world view, it’s all too easy to avoid clicking on those stories, or to unfollow or ignore the people sharing their perspective. And while that may seem harmless, it’s a slippery slope from “unfollow” to unknowingly creating our own echo chambers. Here’s why that’s so consequential in retirement.
Today we’re sharing stories we haven’t talked about before: the early retirees we’ve known in our lives, and how their experiences retiring shaped their retirements. Spoiler: Though all of them retired early, none of them retired completely on their own terms — and stats show that that’s the norm. The majority of people are forced to retire before they want to. Here’s what we’ve learned from seeing their experiences.
Something that’s on our minds lately — especially when I’m traveling for work — is all of the perks that we’re going to lose when we quit our jobs in 2017. For us, an upgraded level of travel is chief among those, but the perks we enjoy from work are different for each of us. What perks do you get now that you’ll miss when you retire?
Today, a post about the under-recognized benefits of spending less in early retirement, because spending less means earning less, and earning less means a whole bunch of benefits. (Psst: the biggest one is insulation from Obamacare price hikes.) Let’s take a deep dive into the many benefits that come with earning a low income in your early retirement years.
Almost a year ago, we realized that we’d reached financial independence. And reaching it hasn’t been anything like what we might have expected. Our FI life is still life, with all the usual ups and downs. Some things are better, but most things are the same. This year has taught us: Financial independence is a good goal, but a bad goalpost.
Our early retirement plan has gone through a lot of iterations, but one thing has remained constant: our insistence that we never want to have to work again. But we’re starting to realize that we’ve been thinking about this the wrong way. Come join us as we trace our journey to our recent epiphany that we will earn money in the future, even after we retire.
We love bringing you guys lessons from people who’ve actually crossed the Rubicon and retired early. Today we’re sharing lessons from Jim Wang of WalletHacks.com. Jim retired at age 30 after selling his massively successful blog, Bargaineering. But what he learned after retiring early wasn’t what he expected.
We get the question a lot: “How do you stay patient en route to early retirement?” But we’ve realized that’s the wrong question we should all be asking. The biggest predictor of happiness in the journey to early retirement isn’t how patient or impatient we are, it’s whether we stay engaged or let ourselves disengage at work. That’s why we now say: Don’t check out early.
We are not the poster children for frugality or for minimalism, but we are constantly surrounded by people who have bought all these things. And we want to shout: you don’t need any of it! It only makes you look like you are good at something, versus actually being good at it. Here’s how we learned to separate the things that only add cachet from the things that add actual value to our lives.
We don’t pretend to know whether what we do with our money will work just as well for other couples, but today we’re talking about something we do know for sure: We are going to be able to retire earlier because we have fully combined finances. We’ll also trace our history of money management as a couple, and look at the money-related feelings that give us extra momentum toward FIRE.
We could only daydream about our future life and how different it will be from our current one for so long before we had to accept: Life won’t just be different. We will be different, too. For the first time, we’ll get to know the well rested versions of ourselves, and the less stressed versions. And it has us wondering: How well do we really know our post-retirement selves? And how well do we know post-retirement us, as a married couple? Let’s discuss!
The good financial news keeps rolling in over here at the Our Next Life house. We hinted at it recently, but today we’re sharing loads more detail about our ahead-of-schedule progress toward early retirement, with charts galore. It’s starting to feel downright magical around here!
One of my favorite parts of FinCon was getting the chance to talk to bloggers who are ahead of us on their FIRE journeys, including several who are already retired. I asked them all if their last year of work was harder, and answers were mixed. It all seemed to come down to how much they cared about work in the home stretch, and it has gotten us wondering whether we can care less to make our last year less stressful.
I’ve just returned from FinCon16, my first time at the financial bloggers conference, and I’m completely brimming with excitement about it all. My vision for this blog is a lot more clear, but most of all, I was continually floored by the warmth, openness and generosity of the entire community there. It all got me thinking about communities we create, and how we can all connect — and I don’t just mean bloggers!
Creating a vision for early retirement isn’t just important so you have cool stories to share — it’s crucially important to make sure you have a smooth transition into retirement, avoiding the declines in physical and mental health that many people experience, even in early retirement! Bonus: An update on our progress, and lots of graphics on creating a next life vision based on presence of awesomeness, not absence of work.
Today we’re talking about hustling — both of the generating business variety (ever-present in our careers) and the oft-discussed side hustle. We’ve done a lot of both, and will share what we’ve learned along the way — including giving you permission if you want it to stop side hustling altogether.
We’re realizing that we’re starting to do things for the last time — especially things related to work and work travel — which is bringing out unexpected urges in us. Can you relate?
