Hi! I’m Mrs. RichFrugalLife, the voice behind this blog. I recently retired from my corporate accounting job after 15 (stressful) years to help my family achieve the balance needed to live a better life. My husband and I are in our 30’s and have an energetic preschooler who keeps life interesting. We discovered the modern “FIRE” movement in late 2018 and have been pursuing financial independence and trying to live a “rich” frugal life ever since. I hope you’ll join us on this journey toward financial independence and living a healthier and happier life!
A little background
I grew up in a middle-class household in a small New England town and earned degrees in business and accounting from a top tier university. I’m still not sure how I ended up in the field or why I stayed for so long. Accounting is a stable career which can be financially lucrative and easy to get a job in. This was especially attractive when I was choosing a college major as we were in a recession at the time and I’m risk adverse.
After college, I got my CPA license and spent most of my 15-year career working as an accounting consultant for one of the largest professional service firms in the world. The work was challenging, and allowed me to live overseas and travel on the company’s dime (best 2 years of my life!). However, the long hours and high stress ultimately took a significant toll on my health, relationships and happiness. I was good at my job. The praise and high paycheck provided enough satisfaction to keep me there year after year. However, the longer I stayed, the more I began to dread getting out of bed each the morning. The lifestyle required for the next promotion was not appealing to me.
The wake up call
A near death experience during the birth of our daughter finally provided the wake-up call I needed. I came alarmingly close to dying due to complications (yes, that still happens in this country). To be frank, I always believed that having a child would change my perspective on what is important in life. However, I had not expected the revelation to come about due to a brush with my own mortality.
Following these events, Mr. RichFrugalLife and I had several conversations about what we really wanted out of life. It turns out, that neither of us care too much about large paychecks, powerful job titles or having fancy things. Unfortunately, that is what we had both spent most of our time and energy working towards as adults. What we really wanted was to live a healthier, happier and more fulfilled life. A more meaningful life with … less stress and more time to spend with family and friends, filled with travel and new experiences, and one which would allow us to contribute more to our community. We don’t want to have “it all.” We just want to have “enough”.
Discovering the Financial Independence/ Retire Early movement
As mentioned above, we stumbled on the FIRE movement in late 2018. This was around the same time we moved across the country for Mr. RichFrugalLife’s job. Discovering the movement and seeing how many have succeeded before us was life changing. Not only had I not realized that early retirement was possible; I hadn’t realized how far down the path we already were.
Our personal finance habits were already pretty compatible with the lifestyle and I was immediately enamored with the idea. I read dozens of personal finance books and every FIRE blog that I could find. Most of the movement’s philosophies aligned with our goals, and we officially decided to pursue financial independence.
Our journey to financial independence
Making the switch in mindset and committing to the journey hasn’t been as difficult as we thought it’d be. We already lived a somewhat frugal lifestyle. We also have financial backgrounds and have historically saved a large percent of our earnings. Additionally, I had been tracking our finances since 2016, so we already knew our net worth and spending habits. However, our budget at the time served more as a liberal “guideline” to stop us from going overboard in any one area.
What we did not have prior to discovering FIRE, was a specific end goal, which could guide us in deciding where and when to spend, cut back and invest. While we didn’t make any stupid financial decisions prior to discovering FIRE, we didn’t always make the best ones. In hindsight, we missed plenty of opportunities which might have propelled us to financial independence sooner with little effort.
We are finally at a point in our financial journey where we feel like we have options. Though we likely could have achieved FI in a couple years if I stayed at my corporate job, we decided that it was more important for us to focus on the journey and start living the life to which we aspire now than it was for me to lean in to a job I hated.
The Rich Frugal Life philosophy
There is no “one size fits all” approach to achieving financial independence. There are plenty of examples in the FIRE community of people who slash their spending down to the bare minimum and/or spend every waking hour working on side hustles in order to hit their number as quickly as possible. These paths don’t appeal to us. The path that we have chosen to take to financial independence is a meandering one. It probably could be described as “Slow FI” or “Coasting to FI.”
We are a little less liberal with our budget these days and working to reduce spending. However, we’re okay with this journey taking a little longer if it means that we don’t have to penny pinch and can continue to indulge in the areas that make us most happy, like travel and good food/wine.
With a few tweaks and more mindfulness, we expect that we will be able to live off one paycheck and still achieve savings rates around 50%. This will allow us to continue growing our wealth, while enabling us to focus on health and living a happier and more fulfilled life today.
By now, you’ve probably realized that the “Rich” in “RichFrugalLife” does not refer to money. It is about attaining enough financial freedom to live your best life. Be honest with yourself about what really matters and what will truly make you happy. The answer will be different for everyone. You don’t need a near death experience to know that life is too short to spend in a cubicle for 40-50 years. What if you don’t have enough time to enjoy it once retirement finally comes? An impressive job title and fat paycheck are great for the ego… but they can’t buy you more time or guarantee happiness. We’ll never know with any certainty how many good days we have left in this life. Why not start living the life you desire and enjoying the journey?!
What to expect from this blog
We are on a journey to financial independence, but the motivation for taking this journey is life optimization – the desire to redesign our lifestyle to be healthier, happier and more fulfilled. I decided to start this blog to document our journey, as well as to provide myself a sense of purpose and creative outlet as I embark on early retirement. I hope that through this we’ll be able to connect with other like-minded individuals in the community to share ideas, research and lessons learned.
This blog is primarily about personal finance and our journey to financial independence, so most of the articles will be on these topics. This will include progress updates from our journey, money management strategies, and ways to save money through frugality without deprivation (I have a bit of an obsession). You’ll even find a few tales of our DIY adventures as we renovate our fixer upper. Because the impetus of this journey is life optimization, I also plan to write about improving health, happiness and living a more fulfilled life.
What you’ll also find here… authenticity. I’m here to share, learn and hopefully inspire. You will see failures and successes as they occur (I don’t sugar coat things). I will also never promote a strategy or product that I don’t follow and/or use myself, and truly believe in.
Is “RichFrugalLife” your real last name?
No, but it would be cool if it was! You won’t find our full names or faces on this blog … at least for now. In following other bloggers of the modern FIRE movement, I’ve found it motivating to see other people’s financial numbers. Why does seeing someone else’s financial information have such an impact? I think for me it stems from having spent the better part of my career analyzing the finances of different businesses. Do all accountants love spreadsheets as much as I do? However, for the broader population, I think that sharing this information can be beneficial in providing context to stories and a comparison point to your own financial situation and goals.
While I enjoying reading the blogs of FIRE pioneers who make six figures a year on their blog and have already amassed millions, I find it hard to relate to many of them. I’m guessing that there probably are a lot of burnt out young professionals or families with kids like us out there who are just finding this lifestyle or starting the journey. (I can’t wait to meet you!)
I have no intention of rushing back into the corporate world. However, I just recently left and may ultimately decide that I’d like to consult or pursue part-time projects in the future. Additionally, Mr. RFL is still working a corporate job that he enjoys and has no plans of leaving. Finally, we have a young child – there are always safety concerns when discussing money in a public forum. My decision may change in the future. But for now, I find it easier to share our financial information and present my authentic views anonymously. I will still share plenty of pictures from our real life though!
Thank you for joining me! I’m so glad you’re here and would love to meet you. Please drop a comment below or email and introduce yourself and share where you are at on your financial journey. You can also follow me on Instagram.
