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My confession about losing $60,000 in a good housing market last month was one of the more painful things I've wrote. We’ve now settled into a nice rental house and it left me examining this question: Would we ever be homeowners again? Why did I consistently loose money while others I watch make six figures on their home? Was it just because we moved a bunch for my career? We’ve lost money on three of our four houses. They were…
This past week marked four months since I walked out of the office for the last time. Since that day, we've accomplished a celebratory trip, picked our first destination to live in early retirement, sold a house, moved, and are settling into a new routine without work. This has given me time to enjoy a slower pace of life reflect on my time working. So what does this look like four months into early retirement? Burnout is a thing: I…
Does achieving financial independence make you a better employee? I’ve seen this debate come up a couple of times and it got me thinking. Some people have said working without fear made them better at work. Removing any financial concerns or stress allows room for more focus in other parts of life, including work. I've also heard people say that reaching financial independence but still working caused their tolerance level for crap to go way down since they no longer…
Now that we have left our jobs and declared early retirement, it is time to put our drawdown strategy into action. So what does this actually look like? Specifically where is the money we live on coming each month? How long until we have to start maneuvering our IRAs? Here is the outline of how what we plan to live on prior to reaching 59.5 Disclaimer: These numbers are a combination of actual numbers and estimates. Ultimately the accuracy will…
We recently sold our house and moved as part of our early retirement plan. The place we moved from was considered one of the hotter housing markets in the country (Dallas-Fort Worth) and we sold our home for nearly $50,000 more than we purchased it for after owning it for only 43 months. That sounds like a victory, but when we finalized the numbers we *lost* nearly $60,000 compared to renting over that same time period. The property was a…
This week marks four months since I gave my early retirement notice to my job/career after sixteen years with the same company. Substantially all of our time since then has been focused on geographic arbitrage - moving out of the high cost bigger city into an area with lower costs and a better fit for our lifestyle. So where did we end up? I'm not ready to post our GPS coordinates, but we ended up near the coast in the…
Well this was an exciting quarter - I officially left my job after turning in my retirement notice, turned the ripe old age of 37, and have been working tirelessly on selling a house and pulling off geographic arbitrage. Moving isn't easy, but thank goodness I'm not dealing with moving and holding down a full time job. Most importantly I'm fortunate to have a supportive spouse who's helped us both keep our sanity managing the move. I sat down and…
This past Friday marked two months into my early retirement. I can’t believe its only been two months, the amount of time that has appeared into live now that a 40-50hr a week job isn’t consuming most of my waking hours is incredible. Thus far we’ve done one full leisure trip and are on our second housing hunting trip trying to finalize our next destination. So what are my thoughts two months out in early retirement? Related Content: I Retired…
I've had the opportunity to talk to more and more people about financial independence since declaring my early retirement in March of 2019. Its been fun to be able to talk about these topics openly as more people approach me for advice. This post comes from preparing and talking with two former coworkers in their 20's with rising corporate careers. What advice did I have? Look at Financial Independence in Three Parts: Part 1: The Accumulation Phase (aka The First…
Getting an MBA has been all the rage for years in the business field. The hard press marketing from the high end to online universities is out there: Its always a good time to get your MBA they say. Did you just graduate with an undergraduate in a business field? Get an MBA. Have a non-business degree? The MBA is your ticket. Frustrated with your job after three years, why not get an MBA? Are you a mid-career executive searching…