This is our journey to financial independence. You’ll find regular progress updates and a sneak peak at our finances (such as, monthly expense reports).
This post is for all my fellow financial voyeurs out there … or anyone looking for another real-life example of how people successfully manage their money. There is clearly a public stigma when it comes to talking about money. I think the more we talk about this openly as a community, the more we can…
We officially reached the next level of financial independence at the end of this month: Lean FIRE! It’s time to pop the bubbly and do a little celebrating before the market comes crashing down. It’ll have to be cheap bubbly, of course… this is Lean FIRE, not Fat FIRE. While it’s not our end goal,…
This month was filled with a lot of home projects, most notably yardwork (damn weeds), planning our backyard renovation, and several woodworking projects. Since the start of our home renovation, Mr. RFL has really gotten into woodworking. Many hours are spent researching tools, techniques, and projects. I feel safe in assuming that this will be…
After taking a fresh look at our future retirement budget, we’re lowering our Financial Independence (“FI” or “FIRE”) Number to $1,000,000! When we initially determined our FIRE Number last year, we estimated that our annual spending in retirement would be around $50,000 per year. This gave us a FIRE Number of $1,250,000 using a 4%…
How do you find purpose after leaving a successful career for early retirement? This is a question I struggled with a lot during my first year of retirement. If you’re planning to retire early, it’s one that you’ll have to answer for yourself as well. It’s also a question that I don’t see talked about…
So, you’re cruising down the path to financial independence and saving as much money as you can for early retirement. Congrats! Like most people, you may have a large portion of these savings in retirement accounts, such as an IRA or 401k. These plans have great tax benefits, but they also have age restrictions and penalties…
Say you’ve got an extra $30,000 lying around that you want to invest. What do you do? Would you invest it all at once (lump sum investing) or spread that investment out over a period of time (dollar cost averaging)? This is the decision we found ourselves facing about six-months ago. After making a major…
Spring is here! The weather has been incredible in AZ (and air quality as well, which is rare), so we’ve been spending a lot of time outdoors. This month marked the end of my first year of early retirement and being happily unemployed. Mr. RFL and I were also able to get our first dose…
Has it really already been a year since I quit my corporate accounting job?! The first year of early retirement was definitely not what I expected. How could I expect that a global pandemic would coincide with my retirement and immediately quash my new-found freedom?! Nonetheless, I feel blessed to spend this time at home…
Is it already March?! February certainly flew by. I can’t say that we accomplished too much since January, other than spending way too much on groceries. “A year’s worth of groceries” may be a stretch… but we’ve got enough to eat for several months. Mr. RFL’s approval to work remotely finally ended, so he had…