Mr SSC, Author at Slowly Sipping Coffee

Half Marathon – Yeah, I did it!

It's also a belt buckle! Yeah Texas! — It’s also a belt buckle! Yeah Texas!

This weekend I ran the Outlaw Half Marathon in Luckenbach, Texas, and I finished! Yeah!! While I didn’t hit my stretch goal of finishing in under 2 hrs, I still had a lot of fun and really enjoyed it, and I think I may have found a new hobby. Even as recently as last December I hadn’t broken the 5 mile mark with my running, but since I’ve written about that already, you can catch up here if you missed it. This post will focus more about the race day, feelings going into it, and random thoughts during and after the race.

Just so I’m not wasting anyone’s time, there’s no financial stuff in this post, but if you want to read more about the half marathon journey, continue onward!

Making a profit by downsizing – Round 2

If you recall, a few months ago we got a flyer in the mail that made us seriously consider downsizing our SUV, but after running the numbers we came to the conclusion it was more expensive to downsize… Earlier this month we got another flyer in the mail, but this time for our home. The flyer stated that if we wanted, we could let this team of realtors

1. Sell our home for free (no closing costs)

2. No buying fees on a new house, and

3. Get $20k in upgrades in said new house.

Dude, now that sounds like a bargain!! Actually, it sounds too good to be true, especially since this development is just up the road from us, and we think it’s the prettiest, best designed “new neighborhood” going in around here.

A good mindset helps, but it isn’t everything

Are you guys familiar with the show “How I Met Your Mother”? One of my favorite characters from that show is Barney, the overconfident player type, and one my favorite lines of his from that whole series, “You don’t train for a marathon, you just run it!” His training approach also reflects that mentality. It’s also SO far from the truth, because marathons totally take a LOT of training. I’m currently training for a half-marathon sparked by a comment thread with Our Next Life on one of their posts or ours, I forget really, but it gave me the idea and I set the goal. So, for 6 weeks now I’ve been training to run a half-marathon in 2 more weeks. While Barney’s approach that “it’s all mental” factors in somewhat, you definitely need to also put in the hard work.*

This past Thanksgiving the most distance I’d ever run at one time was 4.7 miles. I just couldn’t break the 5 mile mark. I was so envious of other people I’d see running effortlessly and for longer than 25 minutes and I thought, “if only I could hit 5 miles…” For non-runners, I can’t explain this feeling especially since I’ve only recently admitted I like running, lol. I started where anyone starts when stuck on a problem and I googled, “how can I run 5 miles?”. I was struck by the plethora of forums out there for runners, running issues, proper form, pacing (wtf is pacing?), and so, I got more serious about it.

Until then, I’d treated running as a quick form of exercise but never with any thought about technique or “proper” form. I quickly realized my form sucked… Drunken Monkey was my apparent running style, so I started focusing on that, followed by working on slowing my pace. I ran like a sprinter horse because my “comfortable pace” was an 8 minute mile or about 7.5 mph.

Now that's a Drunken Monkey! — Now that’s a Drunken Monkey!

However, I’d be out of energy after a half hr or so and I couldn’t get myself to slow down. So I worked at slowing down, and slowing down a lot. I dropped 2 minutes off my pace and holy cow, I was able to run 5 miles no problem! Seriously, after focusing on my pace and form I was able to hit 4.75 miles on one run, then 4.9 miles in another run, which killed me because I was so close to my randomly set goal of 5 miles…. The next night I ran that same route and then a little extra to be sure and finally broke my 5 mile barrier! I realized I did it by educating myself “how to do it” and also putting in the work with my form and pacing.

Great, now that I’ve educated myself and gotten better form, I still worried about running the actual half-marathon distance of 13.2 miles. I’ve done a couple of 9 mile runs, and talking with other runners that have run half marathons, I kept getting reassured that I’d be fine for the last 4 miles, but I hadn’t accepted that mindset yet. However, last Monday night I went out to run 5.5 miles and I ended up running 13.4 miles! How? I didn’t let myself believe it wasn’t possible. I was feeling good and I thought “if I’m feeling good, I should see how far I can go”. So I did and I kept going and when I got to 10.5 miles I knew I could finish the entire distance. I had a good pace and rhythm and so I just kept going, smiling even because I knew I was going to do it.** I didn’t just tell myself, “yeah I probably could’ve gone another 3 miles”, I actually did it. I ran an unofficial half-marathon distance without even walking! Yeah!!

That’s when I realized that training for a half-marathon is similar to FI in that I just needed to adjust my mindset that it is possible. I didn’t think FI was possible until I changed my mindset and broke that mental barrier that was holding me back. I also didn’t think 6 months ago that running 5 miles was possible, let alone 13.4 miles, and yet I ran that distance without stopping last Monday night. For both, you need to have a positive mindset that they are achievable, and you also have to put in the hard work to achieve either outcome successfully.

It took me a long time to get my mindset changed on our FFLC plan and for the longest time it didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere. Like with my running, we’re now in the “final 3 miles” of our FI plan, and the hard work is paying off.

Mrs. SSC recently changed her mindset that she was too old to learn the cello, and is now practicing and learning how to play. Nick at The Money Mine changed his mindset on half-marathons and ran one a few weeks ago – Congrats again! At The Frugal Farmer Laurie’s daughter Maddie changed her mindset and was able to fight her way out of a crowd of kicking, punching adults – whoa!

Do you have anything you changed your mindset on?

*After he completed his marathon, Barney’s legs quit working on the subway and he is stuck for hours riding loops around the city. Without the training his legs couldn’t handle the immediate shock of running a marathon.

** I still don’t desire to do a whole marathon because that just seems horrid and sadistic. I can’t picture myself smiling during a full marathon, so for now, I’ll just do half. 🙂

Guest Post – FI for Noobs!

Happy Friday everybody! This is just a short post letting you know that we are featured in a guest post for Kara over at From Frugal to Free: Frugal adventures on the road to financial freedom. She’s another great example of paying off a lot of debt (~$25k) while only making ~$30k per year. You don’t need a 6 figure income to pay down debt, or start planning for your own FI (Financial Independence).

When I was younger, I mistakenly believed if I made more money, things would get easier/better, etc… I didn’t realize then what she already has, which is, if you manage your money correctly, it doesn’t really matter how much you make, you can still pay off debt and work towards FIRE (Financial Independence/Early Retirement). She has a lot of great advice, tips, and personal experiences shared on her blog so bounce over there and check it out. Thanks again Kara for having us on your blog!

Everybody have a great weekend, and we’ll see you back next week!

New job, New state, New Lifestyle! Maybe not…

As you may know, Mrs. SSC has been looking for teaching jobs, so every week she gets emailed new postings and if she sees something that looks interesting for me, she will also forward it along. I had an interesting job opportunity forwarded to me from Mrs. SSC that we both would seem to fit, and the company wanted both a geophysicist and a geologist. Double bonus! We figured it could fit our needs if we both got an offer, so we applied.

Last week, I got an email from that company saying that they would be interested in talking with me about the position. I returned the email and gave them some open dates and they responded with, “Would you be free tomorrow morning around 9am?” I was excited because who doesn’t like getting picked, but the down side was that Mrs. SSC hadn’t been contacted, bummer…

During the call, I found out about the position, job responsibilities, office setup, and more and it sounded great. Better yet, I qualified to start on the upper end of the pay spectrum, around $95k/yr! My schedule would stay the same with 9/80 style, and there were some other Lifestyle Change perks as well, but it was looking pretty good.

Then, reality struck, hard and heavy. We had already vetted some cost of living (COL) increases in this area, assuming we would both get offered positions. Even then, we knew that with 2 salaries it would be tight, because I haven’t mentioned this part yet, but this job was in California… GAH!!! We thought it would be worth it though, because we could start our Lifestyle Change a bit early, but just take a different path than we planned. I mean who wouldn’t want to live in California for a few years? This would be in Camarillo, which is near Ventura and Oxnard, and has topography, and well a milder version of seasons, but at least different from Houston. Also, there are a lot of parks and hiking around there, as well as the beach, and other fun stuff to do with the kids. You can even see snow on the surrounding mountains in the winter! Oooohhhh….. 🙂 Based on those types of things that we want in our Lifestyle Change, we thought it would be fine to go there for a few years, even if it would delay things a bit. We’d have better work schedules, and be living in a better geographically pleasant area.

I started doing some rough calculations based on what we spend now per month on essentials to see where how good or bad it might be. Since we’ve got a solid year plus of tracking that info, it was easy to ballpark the COL in California. When I started adding these up we were left with about $265/mo left over. This was assuming no daycare costs with Mrs. SSC staying at home, and other minor adjustments like no maids, no cable, no gym, etc… When I got to the end of the month, I had very little left over… It was depressing, as you can see in the chart below.

Even with big unrealistic cuts, it's tight. — Even with big unrealistic cuts, it’s tight.

Between taxes (27%), 5% contribution to 401k, and housing which was about $2600-$3600/month for a 3 BR house, we were left with enough to survive and that’s about it. This would mean that we wouldn’t be able to add anything to our “extra” retirement savings, no college savings for the kids anymore, no allowance money, no replenishment of the emergency fund if/when something happened, and no extra money for anything. It’s good we’d be in beautiful CA, because we couldn’t afford to leave to travel anywhere else. With realistic tweaking of the budget averages from last year we would only have an extra $3100/year. Per year… That was not adding in the real adjusted COL to our averages, rather assuming we could cut ~10% and the rest would take care of itself in the wash.

I looked at our highest spend categories to see what other cuts could be made. Our car insurance is about $182/mo for both cars, but we have another year of $323 car payment on Mrs. SSC’s vehicle. So even if we paid it off before we left, which would be entirely doable, that still only frees up another $3900/yr to buffer the budget. Also, I asked Mrs. SSC, “What’s the house and misc. shopping, do we spend that much just shopping?” She said, “Well, that would be your clothes, my clothes, the kids clothes, light bulbs, toilet paper, stuff like that… You want toilet paper right?” Hahahaha Not a whole lot of wiggle room there either, especially since our allowances wouldn’t exist and they used to cover our clothes. We don’t want to derail our FFLC plans this close to the goal, so I ultimately had to turn the position down because it would put us in a negative/neutral financial position.

Thinking about this from a standpoint that we’re in now though brought me back around to the positive side of things. First, it’s good to know that in a few years, this position might be open again, and I would be an effective shoe-in to get that spot. Second, since we’d be at our FFLC number, we wouldn’t have to worry about whether we have extra savings to add to it, because according to our plan, we’d be living off of it solely without any extra income. A position like this would effectively allow us to live in CA with the only real expense being me working for a year or so. Since we wouldn’t be touching our savings, they’d just grow too. Now that’s a win! Third, this is exactly what Mrs. SSC has been talking about in the sense that if a geologist job or other random teaching type of position opens up, it’s fine if it only offers $30-$40k/yr if it’s somewhere that we would like to live for a few years. We could live somewhere fun and interesting, explore around there for a few years or more, and then move on to the next cool place.

This whole exercise did make me realize that our budget for FFLC is looking pretty nice though. Even with it re-adjusted since we’ll be renting for a couple of years, and then possibly buying in a more long term area, we should be doing well and living fairly comfortably without a lot of worries about needing extra income. Also, I realized that if any unexpected expenditures that come up, we have our allowances to use as a buffer, which is comforting too. In the end, it did end up with me feeling a lot better about our numbers, plans, and expectations of our Lifestyle Change. I’m even more excited now, knowing in another year or so, we’ll be in full control to do what we want, and not have to be constrained by the thoughts of “Can we afford to live there on that salary?” That is a pretty cool feeling. Until then, we’ll just keep sticking to the plan and counting down days. On the plus side, we’re under 850 days to go until then…

breakdown from Smartasset.com and their tax calculator

Am I too comfortable with life Now?

Conversations in our house lately have focused on when we can we really pull the plug and embark on our Lifestyle Change. Not maybe, but really, really, like “Well, what about next year?” type of thinking. It’s gotten pretty real, and pretty crazy if you’re not thinking outside the box and don’t want to get out of your comfort zone. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so for new readers let me quickly catch you up in the next 4 sentences. I know, I probably won’t make it in 4 sentences, but I’ll keep it brief, I swear.

This started with our industry downturn (Oil and Gas), which got us really challenging everything and getting ready for the fact we may both be out of work sooner than later. This led to realizing that if we both get laid off, finding a new job that’s equivalent around Houston is not practical, so we brainstormed what else could we do outside of Houston. This led to a fair number of “out west mountain” sorts of jobs, and Mrs. SSC revisiting all of her spreadsheets and coming up with multiple realizations of our potential scenarios, which in turn led to realizing we could rent for a few years and de-risk our mountain living dream, and this is where our story begins… (Woohoo, that’s 4 sentences, including this one!)

It’s been a really busy work week for me, and Mrs. SSC has been busy as well, but not nearly as busy. She has a bit more time on her hands to pontificate about Life, the Universe, and Everything else. This has led to much searching online at sites like city-data.com to learn about potential landing cities we may be interested in; searching Zillow for rentals in said towns; recalculating the many spreadsheet scenarios; planning vacations to said towns – wait, those are more like pricing out reconnaissance trips; and many more things related to moving out of Houston. Also, the job searches… Oh, the job searches… I get forwarded any job that is remotely close to anything I may be interested in. For instance, Vernal, UT has a geologist position open, to which I replied, “Honey, that also doesn’t have 4 seasons, they have topography, but think Moab style moonscape environment. I don’t think you’d like it.” Apologies to any readers in Vernal, it’s pretty, just not my kind of pretty. And yes, I have been there; more than once even. Grasping at straws is how I describe the current behavior from Mrs. SSC.

This means my day is then peppered with short 2-3 sentence emails throughout the day bemoaning growing old (we’re only 38 for goodness sakes), life being hopeless, work being unfulfilling, and usually wrapping up with something about only 1 more year of work left, or the more dramatic “We’re never going to get to retire – sigh…”. Yes people, this is my current experience. However, this doesn’t begin to cover the conversations these types of research lead to.

For instance, the other night it started like this, out of the blue mind you:

Mrs. SSC: “Maybe we should trust our future selves to figure it out and just do it!”

Mr. SSC: “Do what exactly? Who are we going to trust to figure what out?” (I’m a little slow sometimes)

Mrs. SSC: “Say screw it and just be done with work after next year. We’ve calculated everything, and if one of us worked even just a little we could figure out the rest. We’re smart, I know we can do it. Let’s just do it!”

Mr. SSC: “So what you’re saying is that we should leave our jobs before we get close to our number you feel comfortable with, and we just go ahead and “live the dream” and figure the rest out as we go?”

Mrs. SSC: “Well yeah, but you know we’ve done the calculations and you know I’m going to be stir crazy not working anyway, so I’m going to have to do something, but why not? Why not trust ourselves and get out sooner than later? All the retirement articles say people don’t save for retirement because they don’t see themselves in the future. But, you know? We practically obsess about our future selves and planning for them, and getting them set up for a nice time, why not trust they’ll figure out how to make it work if we “jump” before we hit 100% of our number?”

Mr. SSC: “Ummm…. Kaaaayyyy…. You know, we can probably just wait until our companies lay us off and get a little bump on the way out the door? If that doesn’t happen then we just keep saving like we have been and keep getting closer to our number. That’s the plan right? So, why not stick to the plan and just stick it out another year or two and hit our number?”

Mrs. SSC: “I sent you a job in MN, it’s teaching, and you could even develop an Earth Science program.”

Mr. SSC: “True, but it’s flat there, and they’re currently predicting a high of 10 F today, and the winter looks like it’s about 7 months long and windy (thank-you city-data). Oddly enough, it has a really high crime rate too, so, nnnnooo on that job in MN.”

A little more back story – I know exactly why Mrs. SSC is thinking like this, because this is where I was before I quit that company and went to my new one. For new readers, we used to work at the same company before I left. I’m much happier at my new place, and I love my new company environment. BUT, I was as miserable as Mrs. SSC is now, before I left my old company, and unfortunately with the industry as it is, that’s not really an option for her. She’s pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place in an unfulfilling job, at a company that couldn’t care one bit about her (not that I think any big company does – it’s just business) but they killed her loyalty and now she’s just trading time for money. Not a great place to be, so I get it… I’ve been there.

So then why am I resistant to saying, “Hell yeah, let’s go start our new chapter! Lifestyle Change here we come!” I mean, just today on the drive home, someone made an illegal U-turn in front of me, I had to slam on the brakes and slid to a stop right beside their car, and they flip me the bird. WTF Houston, WTF?! Yeah, I could be done with this. But I’m resistant, so the question is why? Is it because I’m out of my comfort zone if we leave our jobs and try a different way of life? I mean we’re all but set up if we quit now. Yeah we’re not totally there with savings, so it might suck at times, but we’re resilient so I know we’d make it work. So what’s my deal?

I think it still goes back to my whole fear of this adventure turning into a situation like I grew up with where we’re broke all the time and struggling to make ends meet every 2 weeks. Meanwhile, I know that won’t be the case, because we’d do things so much differently than my parents, but still, it’s that nagging voice telling me it will be that way. I bet it’s just the unknown, and me knowing that, “Hey, I have a job I don’t just like, but I love and it challenges me, and makes me think in so many different ways, every day. It pays great, I like the social aspect too, and I’ve got a good title, and people come ask me about problems they have and how to fix them. I love that, getting challenged with a “cold eye look” at someone else’s problem and offer a different way to look at it.”

I think I’m scared I’ll miss my job. I really like what I do, and how much I get to help other people figure out problems, along with figuring out solutions to my own problems. Added bonus, I’m really good at what I do which makes it even more enjoyable.

Maybe I do need to trust our future selves more, and let them figure out how things will go. We won’t know how they’ll be because it’s all just speculation, and mathematics tied in with a lot of optimism in the stock market, the economy, our own health lasting, and so many more things we can’t control.

Like most retired people say, “I wish I’d done it sooner” maybe I should think more like that and get on with living life and not just “hamster wheeling it” down here in Houston. Stay tuned, because changes are afoot and the box is slowly breaking as we’re figuring out our exit from this current lifestyle.

I’m not Cheap, I just don’t “overbuy”

This past President’s Day I had the day off. Yep, I’m at one of the odd oil companies that still honors this day, which meant Mrs. SSC was at work, and the kids were at daycare, so I had a real free day to myself. I decided I would take the opportunity to go fishing, since I hadn’t been on the water yet this year. The weekend before, I checked my fishing tackle, read up on some new rigging techniques and made a list of things I needed from our local outdoor store. I got some different hooks, weights, and other items so I could try a new fishing technique. It’s actually old as dirt, but since I’m new to freshwater – non-fly fishing style fishing, it’s been “learn as you go”, and I have no one to teach me anything. That equals a lot of fishing, and just a little catching.

When I got to the lake, I talked with a guy, Cowboy, and he was telling me about a website that had all of these crazy expensive reels on sale for less than $50. Line, rods, reels, lures, anything you would ever need. He mentioned that he found it over the holidays when his house had been robbed and they got $1000 worth of tackle from his place. My first thought was, Holy crap, including my kayak, I don’t have $1000 worth of tackle! When he described his reels that he had stolen he talked about how he’d paid $400 for one, $200 for another, $300 for one that was on sale… Then I realized, I must be pretty cheap when it comes to buying gear. My whole rod/reel setup was less than $60, although I did get it on a great 40% off sale. It’s worked great and I’ve caught some really big fish on it. My other rod and reel, was one my mom used back in the day, and with a little reel lube and occasional line replacement, it is still catching fish at over 30 years old… My kayak, I got on sale for $150 off, along with all the accoutrements. Then I realized what the difference was in my shopping habits and Cowboy’s shopping habits.

I shop for value on my money spent balanced with the return I’ll get out of it. Hmm, that sounds like a lot of jibber jabber, so let me explain what I mean. I’m just an average Joe fisherman that probably couldn’t tell the difference in quality between a $400 reel and my current reel. Okay, I could, but I wouldn’t see it being worth the extra $340. I understand that the $400 reel will no doubt be “better” than my reel that I use. If Cowboy values that extra quality, then that’s awesome it’s his hobby, he should be able to enjoy it with whatever tackle he finds makes it more enjoyable for him. I would find a lot more enjoyable things to do than spend an extra $340 on a reel, so for me, it doesn’t pay out a positive return. I also understand that in general more expensive means better quality, but it doesn’t mean you have to overbuy. For less than $60 I’ve had a rod and reel that has worked great for over 3 years now. I didn’t overbuy but I didn’t buy cheap either.

I’ve found buying “cheap” leads to more spending than buying quality because cheaper things break quicker and need to be replaced more often. However, there are plenty of middle of the road companies that make great products for fair prices. I tend to stay in this path, unless I find a great sale. Even then, just because something is on sale, doesn’t mean you need it.

I’ve come to find that’s the key with spending and not just related to hobbies. It’s not about “how much did it cost”, even though it seems like it for some people. I’m not one of those people. I’d rather get a fair price for good quality than spend more to have a name brand. When we were kids, my Grandad would give us $100 for Christmas. The stipulation was that you had to use it on shoes first, then you can do whatever you want with the money. My brother would invariably get the new Nike Jordan’s and still need an extra $10-$20 bucks from mom or dad. I’d hit Shoe Carnival and get 2 pairs of shoes, and have $60 left over to spend on whatever I wanted. I didn’t overbuy, my shoes lasted the year, and I got to get more toys or what not with the leftover.

Have you ever found yourself overbuying on things? Is overbuying worth it for you? It was for my brother, and he got his return on enjoyment from the money spent by having Air Jordans, even though they wouldn’t always make it a full year…

Filling our Bucket – List

Maggie from Northern Expenditure put out a post about a “Filling your Bucket” List a little while back, and I’ve compiled some things that have “Filled my Bucket” so far. The thought is that instead of obsessing about ticking off things on a Bucket List, you’ve probably already done some pretty cool things in your life, so take a moment to reflect on all those things that have already “Filled your Bucket”. Below are some things I’ve done that have been really fun and Filled my Bucket. Enjoy the pics, I tried to put in more than usual!

Mr. SSC: Hike most of the Appalachian Trail – While trying to figure out what I wanted to do in college or if I even wanted to remain in college, I decided hiking would be the best way to figure that out. So, I researched, planned, and then hiked from Maine down to Lower VA which was about 1700 miles. The hike worked and I figured out that I wanted to study Environmental Science which ultimately led me to my career in Geology.

Grandad and a much, much younger Mr. SSC. He got me started hiking though.

Mr. SSC: I got to go hiking in a jungle in Belize. We hiked in for a few miles and then we got on tubes and floated back down a creek, and we went through a bunch of limestone caves. It was pretty awesome floating in darkness through a cave, and then you see the light and come back out in a jungle!

Mr. SSC: Sky dive! I was writing an article for a magazine in Denver – a sort of advertorial but it was a paying free-lance writing gig and I covered reviews for mountain biking trails, white water rafting, etc… Sky diving was one topic I was supposed to cover, and when interviewing one of the schools, he asked, “How can you write about it if you’ve never done it?” I told him I didn’t know, so he asked if I could be there at 7am the next day. I went and got my first jump in by stepping out onto the wing strut of a small Cessna! It was awesome!

Mr. SSC: I’ve gotten to throw beads from the Royal Sonesta balcony on Bourbon Street during Mardis Gras. If you live in or near New Orleans, Mardis Gras is a weeks’ long event culminating into revelry on Bourbon St. when Mardis Gras finally gets here. Most of the balconies on Bourbon St. are booked years in advance, and are not necessarily open to the public. You need passes and they even have security at the doors checking invites. BUT, I was able to get passes one year and it was a pretty awesome vantage point! No parades come down Bourbon St., but the people watching was some of the best I’ve ever seen.

The view from above - early on Mardis Gras — The view from above – early on Mardis Gras

Mr. SSC: Visit the “Goonies” house in Astoria, OR! Yep, the first real vacation Mrs. SSC and I took together we decided we’d visit the Portland, OR area. She asked, “What do you want to do around there?” I said, “OH!! We’re only a few hrs from the house where they filmed Goonies!! We could go see that!” And so we did, and I never got much more input on vacation itineraries after that, lol. I’ve seen that movie over 300 times easily and so it was really cool getting to see “the house”, even though I didn’t get to do the Truffle Shuffle on the stump.

Once a Goonie, always a Goonie... — Once a Goonie, always a Goonie…

Mr. SSC: Ride on a Mardis Gras Float – While we lived in LA I got a chance to join a Krewe and ride on a float. I did this for 3 years, and it was pretty awesome, but word of warning, it’s also expensive! You have to pay to join the Krewe, which covers float maintenance and all the costs associated with putting one of these things on. Plus, you buy everything you throw, so in essence, you are literally throwing money away. The first year was the worst, but following years, I stocked up on a lot of it through yard sales, where local kids would repackage beads and animals and trinkets caught, for $1/bag or less.

Mr. SSC: Climb 23 Colorado 14’ers, which are peaks at or over 14,000′ high. To be honest most of these were glorified hikes. Well, long hikes with some tough sections but still, I loved it! There were a few where we took some radical routes (like below) and probably should have had ropes, but it all ended well thank goodness!

Our rout to the peak on the right — Our route to the peak on the far right

Mrs. SSC: I’ve been to all of the contiguous 48 states so far in my life. I want to eventually visit them all, and so far, I’ve gotten to all of them except for Hawaii and Alaska.

Mr. SSC: Being a father. This might be cheesy, but there was a time when I was younger I didn’t want kids or see me ever having kids. As tiring, trying, challenging, and frustrating as they can be at times, there isn’t anything I’d do differently or trade to not spend time with them.

Mr. SSC: Go to France! I’ve always had a fascination with France, even studying French for 5 years from middle school to high school. I didn’t get to go on that class trip, but I did get to go on my grad school field trip to Le Mont St. Michel. I got to see some rare silicilastic reefs (most are carbonate), the Eiffel Tower, and even visit Normandy Beach, along with the memorials and cemeteries associated with that invasion. That was the saddest, and most inspiring part of that whole trip.

Normandy Beach, U.S. Cemetery, Eiffel tower, Le Mont St. Michel day and night, Siliciclastic reef - size 11.5 flip flop for scale. — Clockwise from top left: Normandy Beach, U.S. Cemetery, Eiffel tower, Le Mont St. Michel day and night, Siliciclastic reef – size 11.5 flip flop for scale.

Those are some of the things I’ve gotten to do that have filled my bucket. Thanks again to Maggie for putting that out there, this was fun getting to relive a lot of these memories!

By Mr SSC
Posted on February 10, 2016February 29, 2020
28 Comments on Filling our Bucket – List

January 2016 Budget Update: It’s retooled!!

So we’re not sure what the best budget format to use is, and while we are sure that some of you out there like poring over the nitty gritty and seeing if our daycare exceeded our mortgage this month (it typically does), or what our groceries did this month (it’s usually our stumbling block), we know some of you couldn’t care less. We decided to retool it and give you more of an overall view and maybe just put out hard numbers quarterly. This is where you can say, “Please, don’t take away the numbers!!” or “Thank-you for taking away those stupid charts and monotonous budget drivel” or maybe you’re in the middle and just skim most of it anyway. Let us know and we’ll see what happens in February.

This month was ridiculously boring on a budget and spending front! Yeah, I count that as a win!!! Comparing January 2015 to January 2016, we overspent in Jan. 2016 by $55. Most of this was attributed to a new haircut for me, and a set of clippers for cutting our oldest’s hair at home. I went from a longer sort of hairstyle to a shorter more trim style, but I didn’t want to end up like Mrs. SSC and have to get it redone once or twice, so I went to a good stylist to start with. Now that it is cut well, I can resume my usual haircuts at the cheaper places. Cutting our oldest’s hair was actually easier than I expected, and it should get easier the more we do it. Plus, Mrs. SSC decided that now that her short hairstyle is dialed in, she can also go back to the cheaper places. She has figured out that it currently costs about $1/day for her new haircut, so she is shopping for a lot cheaper place to get it cut. Plus, she trusts me, so I can trim it in between cuts now that we have clippers. Mwahahaha…..

The trend has crested and is now falling! Sigh.... — The trend has crested and is now falling! Sigh….

As you can see in our overall chart of “% to FI Goal” – our numbers are dropping, and no longer climbing. Booo….. That was expected after our year review showed that our only growth in 2015 was essentially from our contributions. Whoa! Oh well, markets are out of my control, so whatever… As far as our “how to deal with the market” approach, I’d be in the BUY, BUY, BUY camp, and get stuff on the cheap, which we are. However, for the immediate short term, we’re stocking up our cash reserves more than investing in the market. We have a decent nest egg, but since savings accounts have such a low return, we don’t like keeping a lot in there. With our industry being where it is (in the toilet, and today I saw gas was $1.49/gallon) and the stock markets tanking as well, we decided we’d rather know that our $5k will still be $5k in 6 months if need be, and not $4.5k or less. Don’t worry, we have more than $5k saved, it’s just an example number. If it wasn’t for hedging our bets that we would need to tap into some of those investments in the next 6-12 months, we would still be throwing more money into the stock market and not building up our cash reserve above our normal emergency fund amount. Especially, if we just throw in the towels and decide to become ski/snowboard bums for a few years.

Time for a new segment we’re rolling out called, “Crazy stories from Lay-off land!” Yes, as people are getting axed left and right, the water cooler talk is getting more and more crazy. For instance, I heard of a couple that had both gotten laid off, and burned through all their savings in about 3 months. Now they’re really scared, because the industry hasn’t picked up, neither one has gotten a job again as they were banking on (literally), and they’re out of savings. The main reason this happened, they didn’t cut spending back immediately and just kept spending and living like they were still getting paychecks…

On a similar thread, a friend of mine at work is about to commit to a $300k mortgage, even though he thinks buying is a bad idea, and renting is better, he is still proceeding with buying a house. This is compounded by his wife interning for a company where if she gets an offer, it will be in a town and state that is not Houston, TX and they would move there rather than stay here. Mind-boggling!

Another friend of mine got caught in the middle of leaving his company to join a new one. He’d gotten approved for the job and it just needed the CEO’s approval (smaller company). He hung up the phone with his “new company”, went to tell his current boss he was done, and by the time he got back to his office he found out the “new company”, had cut the department he had gotten a position in. They sold the asset and were exiting that whole area. So, he was told there weren’t any positions available for him now, because that boss now had to find spots for his current employees that didn’t have an asset to work anymore. Sorry about the timing. Oooops…

Finally, my mentee/protégé was at a party this weekend and she was the only one of her friends that wasn’t laid off yet. At the whole party… It was about 20 other geologists and engineers. She said it was a bit awkward, especially when they started asking, “Well, why haven’t you been laid off yet?” Yipes, I think I’d need a few cocktails to stay at that party!

On a lighter note, a group of us have decided that if we all get laid off, we will follow one of our colleagues back to her parent’s farms, start a co-op, and we will just farm. She has 300-400 acres and farm equipment that we can use that is just sitting idle. The only draw back – none of us know anything about farming, especially, “what do you farm in Michigan in the middle of winter?” Answer – “I don’t know, use a greenhouse?” (shrugs shoulders) Oh, and it’s in northern central Michigan, so, there’s that down side as well. Laurie at Fruclassity was just mentioning the unseasonably warm 40 degree weekend in neighboring Minnesota, so maybe not too high on the list of back-up plans. Brrr…. It would be an exciting one I bet!

That was our January, fairly mundane, thank goodness. Hope your January was pleasantly uneventful too! Let us know if you want more number details, even less number details, or if you’re still reading. For those still reading – congrats, you made it!

A new FI plan emerges…

We are going to try to not make this a long post – please forgive us if it is. But, we are just so excited with our new Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC) plan, we can’t keep it from the world anymore!

You may have noticed we’ve been somewhat silent the last month or so… just a budget update and what not. Well, we’ve been busy doing some thinking about some circumstances in our lives and gotten a little distracted:

As you all know the markets aren’t great… no biggie, it happens and we don’t need that money for a while, but that does change our hope from hitting our FI number from mid 2017 to likely sometime in 2018 or later.
With the declining price of oil, it is likely one or both of us may get laid off this year. If it’s Mrs. SSC that is actually a good thing, since she would love to spend more time with the kids. If it is me – well, I like my job, and I am not 100% sure I can do the stay-at-home thing.
When we tallied our 2015 totals we realized that we spend a lot of money maintaining our house – and we began to question the rent vs. buy. This was mainly due to realizing we spent the equivalent of ~$1.3k per month on top of our mortgage for maintenance, and this house is only ~10 years old. That’s a lot of coin and it got us thinking. A lot. And this, is where it gets interesting…

#1 and #2 made us realize that we may have to wait to FI longer than we want, or that we may be forced into a move and a job hunt at any time. We don’t necessarily want to wait possibly years for a market rebound and personally, we need a finish line that isn’t floating. So, we have decided to pick a new date. July 31, 2018, it’s a Friday. There it is, our new FFLC date. Well, unless we get laid off. But, we think that date will get us close enough to our FI number even if one of us gets laid off this year. So, July 31, 2018. We will both still be 40 – just barely for me. We will have spent all of our 30’s working big corporate jobs and the beginning of a new decade for us seems like a great time to make a huge change.

Because of #2 we are also changing our investing strategy for the near term. We have 75% of our FI goal invested, which is awesome. But, with the possibility of impending layoffs, and having two children we need to support, we are going to spend this year being more conservative and increasing our cash reserves in case our income is cut off, we will at least have some easier money to access without having to sell investments at a loss. This could lead to our backup plan referred to as our MFLC (Mostly Funded Lifestyle Change). The main goal being a Lifestyle Change, come hell or high water.

OK, because of #3 now let’s address “rent vs. buy”, because this is where our big “A-ha!” moment came. I’ll try to explain it briefly, but to get a better understanding, feel free to click through to these links. Go Curry Cracker and MMM have written good posts about this choice, and they’ve made great cases for renting and not buying. However, the ones that really resonated with me are these posts by Can I Retire Yet, along with a post about house maintenance by Money Smarts.

The numbers seem to work out... — The numbers seem to work out…

Using some of Money Smart’s numbers, along with some of our own, Mrs. SSC made a spreadsheet – which is essentially how we make every decision. What we realized is that owning a house isn’t that financially awesome, no matter if it is “the American Dream”. You can see from our chart that we estimate that the cost of maintaining a house is close to $6000 a year- probably more when you include the yard and random stuff like re-staining a deck or fixing a shower door or replacing a ceiling fan. Looking at a quick estimate of the difference of the cumulative cost of buying a house vs. renting is almost $200,000 for our time frame!!! Whoa! That is nothing to sneeze at, that’s a lot of dough!

Lot of upkeep here... — Lot of upkeep here…

Maybe someday when we want to settle somewhere it would be nice to own a house for the stability, and it wouldn’t be in limbo that we may want to move in ~5 -10 years and take a big loss. We also dream of a non-traditional rental house with acreage that Mr. SSC could build a woodshop on, or build a tiny house for guests/renters. Realizing that we don’t have to immediately buy a house when we FI kind of opened our eyes to the possibility that we can go live in a “dream location” for a few years while the kids are still in elementary school, before moving somewhere that’s maybe more practical (for us Virginia or North Carolina) to settle while the kids are in middle and high school.

Mrs. SSC has always wanted to live out West in the mountains with big snows and big sky, surrounded by pine trees without a Walmart in sight. I got to live in Denver for 9 years before the Gulf Coast move, and while it isn’t “in the mountains” I did work for a company that allowed me to spend most workdays in the mountains. It was awesome, because I caught myself a lot of times, looking around thinking, “Ah, this is one hell of an office view.” On weekends I would take advantage of hiking (I climbed 23 – 14’ers), snowboarding, fly-fishing, snowshoeing, backpacking, it goes on and on. However, Mrs. SSC hasn’t had that experience or lived in a place close to the Rockies to get those same types of experiences. Recently she has been even getting kind of down on the NC/VA idea just because she felt like she would be settling and tampering her mountain dreams.

With the realization of the relative lower cost of renting and with the kids still being young’ish, we decided – why not go live in a mountain town? Maybe near the base of some ski slopes where we can drop the kids off at school and do a few runs before lunch. Teach the kids to ski or snowboard all winter long, and camp and hike all summer long! By the time we get to our FFLC or even MFLC we will have put in 10 years on the Gulf Coast and we feel we deserve to be ski bums (and snowboard) for a few years!

Mr. SSC never learned to ski... :( — Mr. SSC never learned to ski… 🙁

Thinking that our new date is only 30 months away – we realized we need to start traveling ASAP so that we can find our dream town! Right now we have 3 contenders on our list – Couer d’Alene, ID; Whitefish, MT; and Durango, CO. I’ve gotten to spend some time in Durango, so it’s on my “Oh yeah, that’s a good front runner” list, but I’m intrigued with trying somewhere new too. We have more on our list, but these are the top ones we want to try to get to this year.

Do you all have any suggestions? Our fairly short wish list is – good elementary schools, close to skiing, hiking and fishing, and house rentals (3 bed w/garage) for around/under $2000/month. Give us your ideas so we can start to book some plane tickets!!!

By Mr SSC
Posted on January 21, 2016January 21, 2016
45 Comments on A new FI plan emerges…