Tag: financial independence

The Great Flip-Flop // How We’ve Reversed Roles on Our Retirement Timing

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Lately I’ve been making it sound like we both want to retire as soon as humanly possible, but that’s not true. I’m the one who wants out ASAP, while Mr. ONL is playing the role of the financially prudent one and trying to keep us working for one more year, as we’d always planned. But that’s not where we started — he used to be the one who wanted to quit ASAP, while I wanted to be sure we were prepared times ten. Today: the story of our retirement timing role reversal.

Not Fostering Comparison // Are We the Joneses?

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Today we’re reflecting on comparison — when it can be good, when it crosses the line, and if it’s even possible to know when you’ve crossed that line. We work hard to share our story in a positive way that encourages others, but lately we’ve been wondering if some of what we share inadvertently creates an arbitrary standard that begs comparison.

OurNextLife.com // Our Big Epiphany: We Will Earn Money In the Future // Earning Money in Retirement, Planning to Supplement Savings with Income in Retirement

Our Big Epiphany: We Will Earn Money in Retirement

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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.

Don't Check Out Early // Weathering the Home Stretch to Early Retirement -- Set goals, shape your legacy, give yourself something to strive for before you quit your career

Don’t Check Out Early // Staying Engaged in the Home Stretch to Early Retirement

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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.

OurNextLife.com // How Combined Finances Helped Us Get to FIRE Faster // We're big believers in combined finances *for us* (though maybe not for everyone!) // Married finances, money management for couples, couples' finances

How Combined Finances Helped Us Get to FIRE Faster

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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.

OurNextLife.com // To Care or Not to Care // Work As Retirement Nears -- Care less at work, work less hard near retirement, Zero chill at work, DGAF at work

To Care or Not To Care // The Work Mindset As Retirement Nears

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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.

OurNextLife.com // Creating Your Community // #FinCon16 Recap -- blogger community, personal finance bloggers, women bloggers, women who write

Creating Your Community // #FinCon16 Recap

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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!

OurNextLife.com // Creating a Flexible Vision for Your Next Life / Life Vision in Early Retirement / Post-Retirement Life Planning

Create a Flexible Vision for Your Next Life // Presence Over Absence

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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.

OurNextLife.com // What Are Your Deal-Breakers? When Does Early Retirement Become No Fun or Not Worth It? Early retirement deal-breakers

What Are Your Early Retirement Deal-Breakers?

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We like to plan for pretty much every possible eventuality, and given that we’ve already put about as many contingency plans in place as we can, we’re still thinking about the question, What if things don’t go as planned? But now we’re on to the more metaphysical answers, not the financial ones, like: What are our early retirement deal-breakers?