Some recent home organizing brought me to a bit of an archaeological find: a snapshot of my finances almost exactly 10 years ago, before Mark and I got married. I’ll bet they’re not what you expect, but what’s more, they show why it’s so important not to get discouraged if your financial progress feels slow in the beginning, or even for years!
Blogging is a hugely time-consuming endeavor, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But we wouldn’t trade this blog or the time it takes to write it because of how much it has done for us. Today, a closer look at how blogging has sped our progress to financial independence and early retirement.
This is both an exciting time and an anxious time for us — exciting because we’re so close to achieving our biggest life goal, and anxious because of all the uncertainty the election put on early retirees. Add to that our ongoing work stress, and it all has us wondering what would happen if we retired today. Today, we explore that thought experiment.
Today is a “clip show” post of sorts, putting together for the first time all of our money beliefs and actions that have gotten us where we are today. We spend a lot of time looking forward, and projecting future health care needs, where our income could come from and of course all the feelings. Today we’re sharing the master list, the grand compendium of everything that’s helped us get this far in our journey to early retirement.
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.
