A year ago, I issued the Use It Up Challenge, and lots of you took it on. (Tell me how it went!) But there was part of the challenge that we took on specifically — the nothing new year — that we didn’t fully live up to. So we’re leveling up this year.
Contrary to popular lore, there are lots of early retirees and aspirants who are like us — NOT naturally frugal, and not naturally the most disciplined about money. But does that mean we can’t achieve financial independence and thrive in early retirement? Hell no it doesn’t! Today, a love letter to the atypical ones among us.
We are officially covered by an Affordable Care Act (ACA) / Obamacare health insurance plan. Though getting covered was not as easy as we’d expected, and there were some big lessons we learned that all early retirees should know. Plus we talk about the challenge of projecting our income and revisit the benefits of keeping income low for health care purposes.
As total newbs to this whole early retirement thing, though admittedly newbs who’ve thought about this stuff a ton, we find ourselves now wrestling with a very practical question: Should we spend what we budgeted for this year, or aim to spend less, maybe a lot less? There are good reasons for either approach, so let’s talk about what those are.
Our early retirement savings journey has come to an end, and now it’s time for our very last financial update! This time, I share a lot more story behind the numbers than we could in the past, and provide all new detail on just how much we’ve saved.
Sooo you know the goal we’ve been working toward and blogging about for years, of retiring at 38 and 41? Well, we did it! We retired early! And as we slowly adjust to our next life, here’s all the stuff we’re planning.
It’s actually here! The very last Monday of our working careers. We’re still feeling a lot, but it feels like something has changed in the last week. And while we have a lot of gratitude we want to express in this last week, we’ve surprised ourselves big time by actually feeling completely ready to make this leap.
We’re 10 work days from early retirement, and are now starting to consider new opportunities that look to the untrained eye a whole lot like work. The whole point of our early retirement was to be able to say yes more, and some of the things we really want to be able to say yes to, money aside. But there’s peril in that — taking on too much, and making it not really early retirement after all. Here’s how we’re thinking about setting new boundaries.
We’re less than three weeks from our early retirement, and still have a few things to do, mostly on the health care front. Plus we’re noticing that the scarcity thinking in these final weeks is strong — even stronger than we’d guessed it would be. See how we’re coping and help us make sure we’re not forgetting anything!
The question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” has never been far from my consciousness at any point in my life. I asked it of myself constantly as a kid, and I never really stopped even as an adult in a career. Which might partially explain how I got on an early retirement path. But answering that question — and separating “be” from “do” — is really what financial independence is all about.
We officially have so few work days left that we can count them on our fingers and toes. Which means we’re 100 percent fired up, right? Um, yeah, about that. Turns out even though I knew the feelings at this stage would be complicated, they’re even more conflicting that I expected. And that’s not to mention how I feel physically. How this point in time feels so different from what I expected.
When we first moved to Tahoe, we ran the heat at what seemed like a reasonable cool temperature, 62 or 63 or so, but then got a three-digit natural gas bill that started with a 4. So began our quest to reduce our heating bill and to find how low we could go, but this isn’t about keeping your house cold. It’s about finding your version of “selectively harcore” and all the non-financial lessons that come from being strict with yourself in one way of your choice.
We’re about to go through a life and financial transition as big as graduating from college or getting married — and that’s switching from earning plenty while working to earning very little in early retirement. Which means that we need a new set of systems to ensure our financial success, especially given our status as anti-budgeters. But it also means that we’re bringing back a tool we gave up years ago: the personal allowance.
Just as we have a mission in early retirement to figure out what we want to do when we grow up, and to adventure more, we also have a mission to be more charitable, both by volunteering and by giving money directly to important causes. Which may seem harder when we have less cash flow coming in. But there are some good ways to build charitable giving into your retirement financial plan, including with a donor advised fund. What’s your charitable mission?
The most common question we got after revealing where we live was “But… California?! It’s such a high-tax state!” So let’s take a look at why we think California can be a great place to retire, as can many high tax states. Because there’s so much more to total cost and overall lifestyle than just income taxes, especially given that income taxes are far less relevant to early retirees.
It’s time, you guys! For nearly three years, and 300 posts, I’ve written as “Ms. ONL,” and referred to my partner in crime as “Mr. ONL.” We’ve obscured where we live, what we do for work, and a bunch of other identifying details. But that all ends now! Come meet the real humans behind Our Next Life.
So many of us, upon learning about early retirement, dive in headfirst, and discover this community full of people working toward the same goal. And along the way, we adjust our baseline based on the people we meet here, and we might even forget that we are the outliers, not the normal ones. Recently, we were reminded just how not normal this goal is, and that’s made us all the more grateful.
In just two short months, we’ll be retired and living on a constrained income for the first time in ages. But we’re not worried, because we have a whole bunch of ways to live beyond that budget, especially once we have time to invest in research and deal-finding. (Plus, we can live a pretty sweet life for not a lot of money, so it doesn’t take much budget stretching to feel like we’re living a life of luxury.) Check out our plan for living beyond our budget — and then let us know what we missed!
It’s official. We’ve given notice at work, and now we’re starting to tell our teams and clients. We expected this to be an emotionally complicated time (no disappointment there), but we didn’t realize that the weight of keeping this all to ourselves had been quite so heavy. Click and I’ll tell you all about it.
Today we’re continuing the mini-series on Social Security and Medicare by looking at whether or not you should build Social Security into your retirement plan. We’re not counting on it, in part because we don’t need to, but also for some big reasons that are worth considering for everyone who wants a secure financial future. Give it a read and then let us know what you think!
