Zero Days Out...Were We On Track for Financial Independence?

I turned forty one a couple weeks ago, which was kind a bummer. I've never been a big fan of my birthday and this has only gotten worse with age. I'd like to stop commemorating it altogether, but I have these people who love me and reminding me is a way to show that love, which is great. It's also a bittersweet reminder that, yes, I have less time now than I did last year.

It doesn't feel like I have so little time, to be honest. I don't feel forty one. And I don't feel old. I feel like I did all through my twenties and thirties: I just feel good, and I feel like the same guy. Yes, I have kids now and, sure, my body isn't as taut. But I'm me.

For Me, it's the RE

The correct thing to do in FIRE is to focus on the financially independent part: the freedom you gain from having financial security. If you no longer needed to work for money, what would you do with your one and precious life? Would you travel the world full time? Write that book you've been thinking about for decades? Start a business or non profit?

I feel some shame for not having great answers to many of those questions. Or, maybe I should say that the things I'd choose to do are not all that different from what I'd already been doing while working: playing board games, writing and reading, hanging out with my friends, watching the kids, cooking, tending to the house and the cars, taking some tasty naps. But these are mundane and totally ordinary pleasures. None of them require retirement. The only somewhat impressive thing we'd like to do once financially independent is travel more abroad, and we were kind of doing that already. 

No Job. New Plan?

It's been a couple months since my sudden retirement, readers, and the days have been calm. Rewarding, even. This is the type of balance I need, at least while the pandemic drags on, Mrs. Done by Forty continues to work, while nearly nine months pregnant, and Toddler AF seeks our attention every moment. It's a lot, but it's a balance we can live with. For me, taking the corporate job out of the routine has added by subtracting. I'm happier. Calmer. More at peace.

What am I doing with my days? The short answer is spending a lot of time with Toddler AF, which means coloring (and buying packs of coloring books when I can find them on sale), reading children's books (and flying through the library's recommended reading lists), teaching him how to type out words on the laptop, squishing playdough into shapes, finding science experiments to do online, and getting all the time in the backyard we can before Arizona's sadistic summer drives us back inside or into the pool.

When he finally, thankfully naps around one, I catch up on reading, ride my bike (though that is not working the past few weeks as it's already too hot by the afternoon), work on the cars a bit (oh yeah, we bought, um, two used cars since I wrote that post about making one car work), taking my new-to-me Saab station wagon out in search of highway onramps, and catching up with friends on the telephone. Or nap. Sometimes I just nap.

And I'm Out

I wasn't sleeping, and for the usual reason. I was so stressed from work most nights, thinking about deadlines I wasn't able to meet and the series of conversations I'd need to have explaining when we could deliver, that I couldn't turn my brain off enough to relax & doze off. Sometimes I'd be up just to one or two in the morning, sometimes I'd be up through the night. 

After that, being productive at work the next day was more or less impossible. I'd end up even further behind by the end of the day, even more stressed out about how everything was going to be done in time. Lather, rinse, repeat.

COVID certainly wasn't helping. Mrs. Done by Forty and I were juggling full time work and Toddler AF, trying to make sure the kid was engaged and learning (or at least not running face first into furniture) all while sticking to our rule of no screen time. Throughout the day, we'd take turns stepping away from the laptop to relieve the other, swapping our employee and parent hats, and using nights and weekends to catch up on work. And we have a new baby on the way in April, which just added to the anxiety.

The Leap Away from Work

We're finally back from Asia, which was lovely. I'll have a summary next week, but today I have a quick post on leaping away from work.

I’m finishing Tess Vigeland’s Leap, which is maybe the best book I read in 2016. It documents her decision to leave the big, fancy job hosting Marketplace Weekend, without a specific plan for what would come next. No job lined up. Not starting a charity or a business or writing a novel: just an understanding that what she was doing wasn’t working all that well anymore, and that something needed to change. A real leap, without knowing where she would land.

Early Retirement, and Where Our Property Taxes Go

Last week we got our property tax bill. And just like every year, I was strangely excited to open it. I know this means I'm an odd duck, but there's a part of me that likes seeing how my tax dollars support the local government. It makes me feel connected to my city.

Plus, there's the fact that our property taxes benefit from a cap: they can only increase 5% each year no matter what happens to property values. But there's no limit on how much they can fall. So when we purchased our home in 2010, our property tax bill was a preposterously low $872. They continued to fall each year until 2013, hitting a low of $762, as the assessments seemed to lag behind the property value trends. Then, as property values in Arizona fully recovered, our tax bills only increased 5% each year. So, somehow, our taxes are lower now than they were at the depth of the real estate crisis of 2009 and 2010, even though our home is worth double what it was back then. Ain't local government grand?

Early Retirement Isn't for You

*from CubaGallery at Flickr Creative Commons

A lot of good bloggers are getting featured in mainstream news outlets these days. Which is good, I think. Even if the comments aren't positive, the narrative of someone like the Mad Fientist or the 1500 Days clan on a major outlet needs to be shared. Right?

I figure with how little the average worker even thinks about retirement, let alone actually saves for it, these outlier stories have value. They show another way to approach retirement, to approach work, money, life...all of it. 

The thing that drives me a little crazy is the ignorant vitriol in the comments section. Why bother to spew negativity if you're not going to spend even a little time reading up on these people you're criticizing?

The Privileged

I'm a fan of Marketplace, the NPR program on finance and economics. But I especially love Marketplace Weekend, their Saturday show that takes a look at personal finance. I loved it back when Tess Vigeland hosted, and it seems even better now with Lizzie O'Leary.

This week's show had a segment on one of the uniquely modern career dilemmas: work-life balance. I'm sure we're all too familiar with this problem today's worker deals with daily, trying to find the happy medium between career, and everything else we label as life.

Writing it Down

Writing is hard right now, especially in the mornings when I remember stuff all over again. But I am trying to keep up with good habits. I figure you're always reinforcing some sort of habit, no matter what you're doing...or avoiding doing. It's all building a routine.

So I might as well reinforce something healthy, like brushing my teeth and showering, shopping for food and cooking our own meals, or taking walks with the family, instead of drinking too many beers, wasting time on the internet, watching too much television, or playing hours of Fifa on the PlayStation.