Today is officially day 100 in our countdown of workdays left before we pull the ripcord and end our careers. Which is exciting! But excitement isn’t our overwhelming emotion right now — what we’re feeling instead is a pretty big surprise. How things finally got real, and the unexpected feelings that came with that.
Things have been moving quickly in the health care debate, which many of us on the verge of early retirement have been eyeing closely. Just this week, the latest Senate proposals to reform the Affordable Care Act and the later proposal to repeal it altogether were withdrawn. So where does that leave us all? What do we know? And more importantly, what do we still not know about health care and costs for early retirement? Let’s take a close look.
We’re coming up on six years of living in our soon-to-be-divulged mountain town, and we feel lucky every day that we get to call this place home. But it’s not perfect, of course. The place we call home is a place lots of other people call their vacation destination, and that makes for some interesting dynamics. We’d tried to look at it in terms of what lessons we can learn from those visitors that we can apply to our own life and early retirement, and it turns out there’s plenty to take away from it all.
It’s time for our second quarter early retirement progress report — our second to last! — complete with charts galore. This quarter we hit another milestone that’s both wonderful and a relief, and we’re setting our sights on building up a sizable cushion by year’s end for future health care unknowns. Plus: we’ve launched a reader survey and we’d LOVE your input.
The most recent debates on health care reform have brought out a sentiment that has reared its ugly head before: the idea that health is totally within our control, and therefore anyone who’s not entirely healthy is somehow at fault. Why that’s both false and bonkers, and why it matters.
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.
I spend a lot of time talking about the nobler aspects of early retirement like how it will give us time to do more volunteering. But can we all be honest? We can do noble things in retirement, but the reason doesn’t have to be noble at all. For us, it’s all about what is most fun, and the answer is: not working. We want to retire early so that we can go back to being kids, but the paradox is that we’ve had to grow up big time to avoid growing up.
Our early retirement might be right around the corner, but we still have a lot to do before the year is up to make sure that we’re truly ready to make the big leap. Then after we pull the plug, we have a different set of things to do. Here are our big lists of things to do before we retire early, and right after, as well as things we’ve already checked off the list this year. Are we missing anything? Let us know!
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.
Lately we’ve been mulling over a question: Is it a win or a fail to die with money leftover? Of course we can’t know how long we have, but if we could, would we prefer to spend our assets down before we die, or to be able to leave a big legacy behind? There’s a lot behind this question, and today we dig into all of it!
It is a natural thing to want to save money, and those of us pursuing huge financial goals innately find the idea of saving even more powerful. The problem comes when marketers deliberately blur the line between saving and spending, convincing us we’re doing one when really we’re doing the other. Today, recognizing when saving money is actually spending money, and how to keep the focus on the saving itself.
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.
We’re huge believers in pacing ourselves on the way to early retirement — both finding ways to manage the impatience, and creating boundaries and self care habits that keep us healthy along the way. But as we get close to that finish line, it’s getting harder and harder not to break out into a full sprint.
Today we’re exploring a single question — Are some people predisposed to embrace the FI mindset? — through some personal stories, including a spending confession so out there I almost couldn’t hit publish. But most of all, we want to hear from you guys on this one — what do you think all FIers have in common, and can anyone become an FIer? Come weigh in!
Some possible fighting words today, as we delve into the question of whether it makes sense to think of both taxable funds and tax-advantaged retirement funds as one big pool of money. Why does it matter? Because there are a bunch of potentially huge downsides to withdrawing traditional retirement funds early through Roth conversions or rule 72t distributions (or different approaches that exist in other countries). Fortunately, there’s another great option if you’re willing to do a little more math.
For years, I labored under the cozy illusion that there were “safe” choices in life and “risky” choices. And of course I was drawn to the ones that felt safer. Until I saw with my own eyes, in my own finances and my own life, that sometimes the safest choice of all is actually the most risky. And that realization changed everything.
We’re all getting conflicting signals right now: From financial analysts predicting lousy returns for the foreseeable future, and from early retirees reporting how they’re beating their projections every quarter. We could take away two very different lessons from this dissonance: that we need to make sure our plan is extra solid and based on low projected returns, or that we’re probably overthinking it all and working longer than we need to. We have an opinion on this (always do!), and share why we’re taking the more conservative approach, because: recency bias.
In the last several months of contemplating leaving work, while doing a better job of saying no and setting boundaries (woot!), I’ve come to realize something: I truly love what I do. Bad news for a soon-to-be early retiree, right? Not at all! You can definitely love your job and still want to retire early — no insanity required! Here’s why.
I’m sharing a personal story today about why the oft-used term “financial freedom” has always meant something totally different to me. (Spoiler: You’re almost certainly already financially free.) Let’s talk about freedom!
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.
