There’s an issue that we’ve struggled to get our heads around, which we’ll call our optimal retirement income: a level at which we get a big Obamacare/ACA subsidy on our health insurance, we pay low taxes and we enjoy a comfortable standard of living. But calculating that number is not as straightforward as it seems. Enter the income vs. cashflow discrepancy!
We value our health pretty much above everything. If we had a such thing as a “health portfolio,” it’s safe to say we’d value that above its financial counterpart. Something we are thinking a lot about is how we’ll ensure that we always have access to good quality medical care at every stage of our lives. Here’s the rundown of options we’re currently considering as the landscape keeps shifting.
One of the funny things that happens when you’re open about FIRE plans is you get some questions that might seem ridiculous on their face, especially from people who haven’t yet had their minds blown by how achievable some form of early retirement is for plenty of folks, or who have never allowed themselves to dream about a life without the necessity of work. Rather than dismiss those questions out of hand, let’s actually dig into them.
The current debate in the ONL house is when to quit our jobs. Barring a major market correction, we feel pretty good that we’ll hit our magic numbers ahead of schedule next year, possibly as early as Q2 of 2017. But of course before we can quit, we have to give notice. And that brings with it a whole bunch of other questions. Here’s how we’re thinking about them.
While we’re making fast progress toward FIRE, it’s not because we are especially gifted in the discipline department. We still slip up and make occasional impulse purchases, even now, multiple years into our FIRE journey. But, we’ve found a way to fake discipline, through the motivating power of streaks.
It’s easy to think of early retirement as all about the escape. But then what? We don’t want any part of our life to be defined solely by absence, by its lack of something, in our case the lack of work. We want our lives to be defined by presence, to be lived in the affirmative, the ultimate opt-in to what fires us up and makes us launch out of bed in the morning. That’s why we’re busy crafting a life that keeps the stoke high.
Something we get asked about semi-regularly is our two-tiered retirement plan, and why we aren’t thinking of our taxable and tax-deferred funds as all one pool. Here’s a breakdown of why.
Thinking about how we want to be remembered, we always come back to this idea of leaving the world in better shape than we found it, even if it’s only in little ways. And as early retirees, we’ll be in a unique position to do that, because we’ll be able to spend most of our time on projects that are important to us, that help our community, instead of focusing solely on earning a living. Here’s why we think everyone should build some joyful generosity into their life plan.
We all tend to talk about saving money and reducing needs in ways that make us focus on the aspiration to be income-poor. But there are some important times when we should instead think like a rich person, since any aspiring FIer eventually becomes one!
We constantly come across new tips on how to get to “optimal frugality,” and while we think it’s great to continually try to optimize your spending, something that we now know to be true is that there’s never a point of ultimate optimization, a point when we have everything figured out perfectly. Rather, it’s an ongoing process of dropping habits and adding new ones. Here are some we’re happy we’ve dropped.
For a long time, we were big fans of dollar cost averaging, the notion that you hedge against market losses by not buying a whole bunch of shares at one time, but rather in smaller increments over time. There’s only one problem: Mathematically, it turns out dollar cost averaging is not that great a strategy after all.
We’d all love it to be otherwise, but getting to big financial goals is mostly a matter of letting time pass. Rather than sit around feeling impatient all the time, and let that suck the joy out of the journey, we’ve found some strategies that help us pass the time without getting quite so antsy.
It’s that time again — when we share our quarterly stats and progress on the road to early retirement. Also in this update, something that’s got us so flipping excited — like party confetti emoji excited, you guys. Come check it out!
Do you think there is a meaningful difference between the terms financial independence and early retirement? Let’s dive into this distinction without a difference, and what it means for the personal finance community.
When you’re saving like crazy for early retirement, any money not going into the savings pool can feel like a setback. But there’s more to life than just future goals, and those goals should never trump your values or your joy in the present.
A lot of what we talk about here is specific to people on the early retirement path, but today’s topic is something every single one of us should have as an important part of our financial plan: an emergency fund. We think of our emergency fund not as a one-and-done kinda thing, but as something that has evolved upward and downward over time. And now, as we’re approaching early retirement, we’re once again rethinking how much we need to have saved in our e-fund when we hit our magical date.
As we get closer and closer to early retirement, we get more excited. But it’s not all puppies and ice cream sundaes, either. There are some definite ups and downs that have come along with our journey, and sometimes we each handle them differently. Here’s how we navigate that as a couple.
Lately we’ve been wondering: How many of us who are saving for early retirement would happily spend more if we had more to spend? If spending more wouldn’t derail our plans?
Early retirement will give us the incredible privilege of getting to dream big — and actually bring some of those dreams into the realm of the possible, the doable, the done. It’s not just about not working, although that’s a lovely thought all on its own – it’s about getting to do the things that most people only dream of, that can’t be done with three weeks of vacation a year, that can’t be done as just a side hustle. Let’s dream in maximum bigness!
We’ve noticed something surprising. We’re super happy to talk in detail about finances and our retirement plans with strangers… but we don’t do the same thing with people we know in real life. Why is it so much easier to spread the word about FIRE with strangers?
