what’s best on paper or what’s best for your soul?
in planning for our early retirement, we often think about the question of whether the best decision on paper is also the best decision for our souls, or whether the two might be different.
net worth progress
it’s pretty amazing how much motivation a goal can provide, and the chart is proof that having a goal — even if it was abstract back in 2011 — has worked mightily well for us.
saving money, conserving resources
something that’s super important to us is not just to save money for our retirement goals, but to conserve resources as well. fortunately, saving money and conserving resources can easily go together, and we’ve put together this list of the best ways we are achieving both.
liebster award and more oversharing
fervent finance tapped us with a liebster award (thanks!) and asked us to answer some questions. here goes…
choosing our financial independence day
our marriage is the most important thing to both of us, and we have always believed that no job is worth jeopardizing that. so we made a decision: even if we hadn’t hit our goal numbers, we will retire in december 2017.
will money become a source of tension?
in retirement, our income will go way down. we’ve budgeted and planned and made a slew of spreadsheets, and in theory we are okay with that. but will money become something that stresses us out, or — worse — that gets between us?
why the urgency?
we’re going to try to break through the anonymity barrier today, to share why this whole early retirement vision feels so crazy urgent to us. why we’ve already made some big sacrifices to make it a reality, and are prepared to make more.
rejecting helplessness, embracing self-reliance
we’ve noticed something: the higher up people get in their careers, they more they seem to embrace making themselves helpless. seeing that has helped cement our view that we need to act differently in our own lives.
how we’ve saved our stash
some of the ways we’ve saved what is by any measure a lot of money. not enough to retire yet, even at the modest level we’re shooting for, but still objectively a lot.
impermanence and freedom
everything in our house that needs fixing or replacing means fewer dollars into our retirement savings and is, in other words, a direct assault on our escape plan, our freedom. but now, we’re trying to think of this as a lesson in impermanence.
why we don’t talk numbers
one of our favorite personal finance sites keeps a running tally of bloggers’ net worths. while we love seeing how others are doing, we don’t share our numbers, and we have a few good reasons why we don’t.
ten ways to make work travel feel like real travel
why doesn’t work travel feel “real”? and, more importantly, how can we make it feel more like travel travel? stand back. we’re about to spew some advice.
travel now or travel later?
maybe it’s how old we are, and how long we’ve worked without a break in demanding professions, but work-filled travel doesn’t sound like fun. fortunately, we believe that by working hard for a few more years, we’ll be in a position to make this dream happen in real life.
exhaustion and status
we feel strongly that we should all stop talking about how busy we are. that words have the power to shape how we think. but even if we stop saying how exhausted we feel, we’re still exhausted. there’s no denying this.
the perfect day
we’ll wake up on our own, with no alarm, when we feel rested. we’ll take our time sipping morning coffee, engaging with each other instead of staring at screens. we’ll happily get outside.
a two-part retirement
we’re going to live like cheapskates for the first 18 years of our retirement, and then if the markets cooperate, we’ll live a little larger in our later years, once we can tap our 401(k)s. for us, this plan is perfect. live cheaply when you’re young and resilient.
evolution of a dream
we have a very specific dream in mind: an end date for work, a place where we plan to live, and a plan for travel. but we didn’t just wake up with this dream, with the details filled in. it’s been an evolution.
banking for the future
we advocate taking a fanatical approach to banking airline miles. most airlines require five coast-to-coast roundtrips to earn a free domestic ticket. if you take those trips on different airlines, they add up to essentially nothing. it’s only by concentrating your travel on one airline that you get the benefit.
adventures we dream of
sometimes it feels like we are missing out on life in our town and the surrounding outdoors. we daydream about the adventures we imagine for ourselves in just a few years, when we can retire early.
quitting the side hustle
we realized that in order to earn that money, we had to restrict travel for work, which restricted how much we could commit to projects, which restricted our upward mobility and earning potential.
