WTF

When Work Makes You Want to Quit EVEN Sooner.

What a week it has been around the office. I’ve been back for a week from our most recent vacation up to the MT/ID area, and I was feeling pretty refreshed.

Lake McDonald - Glacier Nat'l Park
Lake McDonald – Glacier Nat’l Park

I had gone the whole vacation not even thinking about work, and after I got back I was even feeling super recharged from a Personal Finance (PF) standpoint. The field I’ve been working the last 3 years is almost ready for drilling and we’re just finalizing the field development plan. The other project I’ve been working on has gotten extended as we’ve come up with more ideas to test than upper management was expecting, so that has been fun too. There was even another minor reorg/power shift while I was gone and I lost 2 of my 7 bosses, so now I’m back to having only 5 baby, yeah! All, in all it was looking up. And then the rails came off of the train… I essentially got ambushed in a meeting that wasn’t even my group, and taken to task for things I didn’t work on and wasn’t responsible for. It didn’t matter though because I was the one that was there accounting for any and all work done on that project. Let me back up and set the stage for one of the weirdest, bizarre, and unprofessional experiences I’ve ever dealt with in my career, and how knowing where we were in relation to Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) helped me keep perspective and make the best out of a wack-a-doo situation.

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More thoughts on Home Costs…

After the deluge that hit Houston yesterday, I’ve been thinking about how much home ownership is loaded with risk. First off, we’re fine, and our house is fine, although there are thousands of people that are not in that situation today. A quick recap on what happened here yesterday, according to news reports, there were over 1,200 high water rescues, and the equivalent to ~240 BILLION gallons of water fell in a matter of hours. Effectively, almost 17” of rain between 3 am and noon. Whoa… We had a lot of rain around Memorial Day last year, but it wasn’t a quick episode like this one. Even though we didn’t plan to end up in our neighborhood, more and more we appreciate where we are and how little we have to worry about flooding.

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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.

Are soft skills worth highlighting?

Soft skills offer you glimpse into a persons personality.
Soft skills offer you glimpse into a persons personality.

With all of this talk about layoffs and possibly looking for a new job soon Mrs. SSC has been working on her resume. Don’t worry, she’s been working on it before now, but it keeps bringing up this debate over whether or not to highlight soft skills. If you do list them, to what degree should they be featured and what is the best way to incorporate them? We have opposing schools of thought on this concept. I think they show a side of you that your technical skills may not reflect, while Mrs. SSC tends to go the more traditional route and downplay or not list soft skills at all. Let me elaborate on some of my more humorous soft skills and then I will show how they can be interpreted on a resume.

Soft Skills:

  1. Advanced Banjo, Guitar, and Dulcimer player
  2. Excels at Small Talk: Voted “Most Likely to be in Someone Else’s Office Chatting” by my previous company
  3. Excellent Gardener: Produced 1 perfect tomato from a single plant – expects to double success this fall
  4. World of Tanks: Blitz!:  Deputy Tank Commander of VOLT clan. Achieved a 64% Win Rate
  5. Excels at Weeding: Uses hands to pull roots instead of indiscriminately using chemicals
  6. Franchise owner in Madden XXV: 8 consecutive Superbowl Titles, Developed 2 MVP quarterbacks from Rookie status
  7. Candy Crush Soda: Achieved Level 368 – current level progress may be higher than listed

 

Interpretation of Soft Skills by Hiring Manager

  1. Creative, and disciplined to become advanced on an instrument – instrument choice shows outside of the box thinker
  2. Good office personality, probably well-liked by colleagues. Would transition well into any group. Plays nice with others.
  3. Prefers quality over quantity! Willing to put in the hard work for little reward. Probably would accept more work for same pay and not complain…
  4. Knows how to strategize, lead a team, and manage risk. Can quickly assess a situation and determine the best scenario to achieve success!
  5. Not afraid of hard work, selective in his thought process and work methods.
  6. Good manager, and can develop people – possibly mentor material and/or leadership position
  7. Persistent, driven to win. Won’t accept defeat, but continues to strive for victory

 

Interpretation of Soft Skills by Mrs. SSC

  1. Choice of instruments sounds like a hippy, maybe not corporate material
  2. Doesn’t stay on task – disrupts others – could be counter-productive to the whole floor if left to roam the halls on his own
  3. Can’t grow anything – must not use internet for help or reach out to others when needed. Who grows only 1 tomato?!
  4. Spends too much time playing games – 64% win rate?! That doesn’t happen overnight…
  5. Weeding by hand?! Who does that – this guy is stuck in the past – chemicals are around for a reason, sounds like a typical work harder not work smarter situation…
  6. Again with the games?! Does this guy have a social life – probably just everyone he chats up at work…
  7. ??? Shows ability to get obsessed with things that don’t matter. Probably heads down lots of rabbit holes in his current work projects. Probably easy for him to get distracted and stay off task…

 

Clearly Mrs. SSC is a bit more harsh than the hiring manager’s interpretation of my awesome soft skill set, because I did get hired by a different company. They tend to like the out of the box soft skills I’ve spent a lifetime developing, but I can’t seem to get Mrs. SSC on board with that. She keeps rolling her eyes and telling me I’m ridiculous and those kind of soft skills would get her passed over for an interview, much less a position. I have to disagree. I mean, I added some soft skills like mine to her resume, and she didn’t protest at all. Although, I didn’t tell her, so maybe she hasn’t noticed yet?

What are some soft skills you would put on leave off of a resume? Have you ever seen anything as ridiculous as my soft skill set on an actual resume?

Stock Market Haiku

The storm is here!!
Is the storm here?!

Over the last few days, we’ve all seen the stock market crash. Following that, there have been a plethora of articles that have come out regarding what to do, what to buy, how to adjust, etc… This is not one of those articles. Inspired by all those articles, the talking heads on tv, and boredom at the office, Mrs. SSC and I have been having an impromptu haiku contest related to the stock market performance. 🙂

Here are some of our back and forth haiku below:

Be a young willow
Bend in the downturn breezes
Stay strong, be patient

No selling when low
Stay the course for tomorrow
Until then, just be

Goodbye ER plans
Stocks, why did you fail me so
I sit at my desk

The sky is falling
Hope is lost! Dreams crashed! Sell! Sell!
We are doomed! Doomed! DOOOOOMED!

We now return you to your original programming, please enjoy the rest of your day.

If you would like to add a haiku of your own in the comments, please do! I’d love to hear some other peoples haiku, just remember 5-7-5 for structure. 🙂

 

June home repairs are killing me!

So far, June has been the month of things breaking around the house. I alluded to one repair that cropped up in our May 2015 update, and I was expecting to have to get new tires soon as well, but man, it seems like every time I turn around, something else has broken. What all has gone on? Well, let me tell you.

It started a few weeks ago when we noticed one of our pipes coming out of the house was dripping water. Mrs. SSC googled it, and found out that, “Yipe! That is our AC overflow drain and it shouldn’t ever be dripping water!” We immediately googled DIY AC drain cleaning. Looked pretty simple, just find the original drain, hook up a vacuum and it “should” suck out all the built up algae and what not. Bada-Bing, Bada-boom! Clean drain! I get in the attic, as this is where our main units are located, and trace the pipe across the attic to where it drops into the wall and into the guest bathroom where it is tied into the P trap under the sink. I start monkeying with the joints, and hooray, they have glued every single joint… At this point, I don’t want to start cutting PVC, and get myself into a plumbing rabbit hole nightmare, so we call around and find out it’s only about $69 for drain cleaning. I find this price point definitely worth it, so I set up an appointment.

My crude AC drain diagram
My crude AC drain diagram

The guy gets there and cuts apart the joints, and snakes the line, and nothing. He gets in the attic, cuts apart the line somewhere else, snakes it, vacuums, and nothing. He keeps at it for 4 hrs. and kept re-iterating that there was no guarantee on this drain cleanout. After about 5 hrs., he got a bunch of gunk out of the line and it was all sealed up. However, because this wasn’t a typical drain cleaning, it was in the $450 range, and not $70, but I had signed off on this before he started, and inwardly I was a little glad it took 5 hrs., because I felt a little more justified. I also watched everything and asked lots of questions, and realized that with 5+ hrs. of my own time, I could’ve saved $450. Lesson learned for next time.

Three days later, we notice the drip is back. Yep, remember the non-guarantee about cleaning? This time I call no one, and head to Lowe’s for some PVC connectors, piping, and then start cutting up the pipe. I essentially cut the pipe near the unit, and disconnected it at the last place the plumber cut it. This was about a 10’ section of pipe, and after some finagling, I got it outside. There I turned the jet nozzle of our hose into it and even that wasn’t getting the blockage out. I poked it with a sink snake I had sprayed some more, and about a cupful of algae, scale, and God knows what finally came out. Then I go upstairs and 15 minutes later, clean drain. Yeah me! I was sorry that I didn’t try that sooner, but I’ve always had poor luck when I work on plumbing, so I didn’t feel confident enough to try it on my own the first time. Not anymore!

The second major cost was a broken garage door spring. I went to open the garage door, and heard a loud snap and banging sound. I went to investigate and I saw that the one of the mounts had ripped out of the wall. This was the mount that holds up our garage door overhead bar that the belt travels on, and keeps it attached to the wall.

Seriously?! This just happened?
Seriously?! This just happened?

The people who had installed it had just barely hit the stud with their bolts, and it had ripped out of the top of the stud, and out of the drywall, and was laying on the top of the garage door. I sighed, cursed a little, but 15 minutes later I had it repaired and sunk into a solid stud. Yeah me!

Yep, this is where it ripped out of the top of the stud.

When I hit the door button, it would only travel about 4 inches and stop. I investigated closer and saw the spring was snapped in half. Aye yi yi! I disengaged the motor and tried to manually lift the door so I could at least get the car out, and no. I could get it up about 2 feet before the other spring forced it back down. A couple of calls around and I got some rough quotes and found a place that could get out there that afternoon. This was about 2 pm, because I was home taking care of a sick little one. That repair for both springs (why wait for this to happen again) was right at $440 too.

I think home repair folks just look at some papers, shuffle them, and say, “Meh, that’ll be about $450.” And then shrug their shoulders at you with their hand out waiting for payment. It’s only June 10th, so I can’t wait to see what the rest of the month brings.

 

How about you? Have you run into any unexpected home repairs recently?

Did you have the time to DIY them, or did you call someone?

Anyone else feel like it’s at least $100 for someone to show up to your house to say “This will cost more than $100.”

WTF: The Japanese have a frugality price point!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this in the news recently, but Mrs. SSC pointed this out to me and then I found plenty more articles about it.

The short story is this (disclaimer, I’m no financial analyst): Japan economy was faltering and they wanted to boost revenue to help strengthen it. They did this by enacting a tax hike from 5% to 8% back in April. Many predicted their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would grow by ~0.5% or so, and initially it seemed to be working. However, with the latest numbers that came in the countries spending contracted by 7% which led to a contraction of GDP by 1.6%!

The Japanese have a price point - I wonder how high the American's is?
The Japanese have a price point – I wonder how high the American’s is?

Yes, the Japanese have a price point. Their sales tax increased 3% and instead of stimulating the economy with the continued spending like previous quarters, the spending slowed up and shrank. As one person pointed out, You lose the benefit of the tax revenue if you can’t collect it and people aren’t spending money. Their price point is when their sales tax hit 8%. At 5% sales tax, they were spending just fine, but raise it a mere 3% and suddenly they’re rethinking purchases, delaying purchases and deciding they don’t need a lot of their GDP. Evidently, about 7% worth less.

This reminded me of a similar situation. Our local grocery store has pre-made hamburgers, not just shaped ground beef, but with mixes like blue cheese/black pepper, hatch chili’s and spices, or bacon and cheddar. You get the idea. They sell these for $6 for two patties. Yes, yes, all of you frugal minded folks reading this are thinking, “My God, why would you pay $6/lb for 2 hamburgers?! You can make them yourself for less!” Well, you’re right or at least I can make them for almost the same cost. I tried with the bleu cheese burgers and even my own pepper and spice burgers, and except for our homegrown pepper additions, when I priced out all the cost of ingredients, it was really close to their price. The point is, I am fine paying ~$0.50 more for the convenience of not dirtying up mixing bowls, and having to mix it myself, “You bet I’ll pay for that”.

BUT!!! Then they raised the price to $7…. Unbeknownst to them, they found my price point, and it was just a dollar more.

At $6 for the 2 burgers, I was fine and could justify the extra spend but $1 more, and it’s too rich for my blood! Wow, $1 more is too rich for my blood. Well, let’s think about that, because is it all about the extra dollar spent? No. It’s more the principle that I can make the same thing for less in either case, but with the extra $1 added, it just feels like it’s too much. I can’t pay that and feel good about it, so now I make my own. Are they as tasty and convenient? Well, not as convenient, and I haven’t gotten the texture right yet with the bleu cheese burgers, but they’re just as tasty and delicious.

Similar to craft beer. I’m no beer snob, but I can appreciate good beer, and usually have some of my own brewed in the fridge. However, I can’t justify paying $18 for a 12 pack of craft beer. It’s a price I can’t pay and feel good about, so I don’t. A week ago, the same store had a New Belgium Sampler 12 pack on sale for $13, and it was really hard to not buy 2, since it was such a good deal. I mean, the Budweiser or Miller products I also purchase are that same price and those are pretty unexciting mass-produced beers. So when a tastier beer is available for the same price, Hell yeah I’m getting that instead.

My point is I found it interesting that as a country, all of a sudden the Japanese found that they didn’t need 7% of the stuff they were buying. Again, I’m no financial anything, so go easy on how I might have gotten it all wrong, but it reminds me of our grocery post, where it was easy to find ways to not spend as much on “extravagances”. Not from being forced to, but from looking at what you spend and finding ways to cut back. After having this goal of FIRE dangling in front of me, I find it’s easier to find more and more areas where I can save or not spend because it’s going towards a goal of one day not having to work for anyone but me.

Have you experienced this, where you are used to buying something at a certain price and when it increases you just can’t justify it anymore? What are some things you found your price point on?

WTF: I need HOW much to retire?

  • Do you need 70% of your income just to live off of? According to  most financial advisors,  “you should retire with 70% of your pre-retirement income to maintain your lifestyle when you retire.” Some advisors even recommend 80-85% of your current income! What kind of lifestyle are they referring to? For instance, Mrs. SSC and I currently live off of ~50% of our income, and use the other 50% for investing, saving, putting towards reaching Financial Independence Early Retirement (FIRE). However, one key factor that most of these financial advisors and even yourself may not take into account (because I know I never did) was what bills are you paying now that you won’t be paying in 5 years, 10, years, etc… For instance, we have daycare, full time for 2 kids that runs about $2,000/month, which is ~$24,000/yr. That’s a LOT of money! But, we’re not going to have that bill forever. We’re going to get to leave that bill behind and suddenly be $24,000/year “richer” in about 4 more years when the kids go to school. If we take that into account, we immediately need less than before to maintain our current lifestyle in retirement.

Another assumption is that we will stop putting money into the kids college funds. We’re saving fairly aggressively right now, but we feel that we will have enough saved for them to go to a state school, assuming there are no scholarships, grants, or other means to help out with college tuition. If they want to pursue graduate school, I would support it, but I feel that no one should pay for a graduate school degree. I got a full ride for graduate school, as did my wife, and I can assure you my grades were not stellar, but I was able to work hard and get accepted into the program I wanted. The point is most graduate programs that are worth pursuing offer research assistantships, Teaching assistant positions, and more as well as cover tuition. Getting back to finances though, this is another cost we’re paying out each month that will immediately save us on money that we won’t need each year in retirement. For us, another one is mortgage. We plan on saving enough to cover our house when we retire and move so that we won’t have a monthly mortgage. This is another HUGE cost savings (not as much as daycare), but still, this again cuts our monthly bills for retirement.

Mrs. SSC did a post explaining our current needs/monthly bill assumptions with her spreadsheet. I looked at this spreadsheet off and on for years before it sunk in that, we really can do this, and keep our current lifestyle. We will be doing it living off of ~20% of our current income, pre-retirement levels. Yep, about 20%. Your number will most certainly be different, maybe it’s 40%, maybe you can pull off 15%, but the point is you’ve looked into and found a number you would need for your lifestyle and your current income and you didn’t take the blanket statement that you’ll need 70-85% of your income. More to the point, you aren’t listening to all those yahoos that keep saying, WHAT?! You can’t retire before 60! How are you going to live?! You can’t access your 401k until you’re 60, what will you do for money?!” Yeah, let those guys keep working that long, and in the meantime, figure your number out and start working towards it and living life on your terms, not the naysayers.

The more I have looked at our numbers since my initial realization that we really can do this, the more I’ve come to realize a few things.

1. When we hit 60 and can access our 401k’s we’re set! Meaning that the money that has been growing in those accounts will allow us more income/year than we have been living off of the last 7 years, and most likely the next 30 years. Besides being able to already live within those means, we will be back to having even more extra money to spend. We can use it to go see the kids, grandkids, if we want to travel more, or who knows what we may be in the mood for then.

2. We live pretty comfortably off of way less than we bring home. When we got out of the habit of just purchasing things because we “wanted” it and didn’t need it, it saved a lot of money that we were able to put towards retirement. Tracking our spending helped with that a LOT. If you’re not tracking your spending in some form, you should start. NOW. It’s amazing.

3. I’m no less happy now than I was when I was spending willy-nilly like I had all the money in the world. It’s like buyers remorse. Sure, you feel good about that Amazon purchase, and sure you really did want that thing, but then it gets to the house and a few months later you realize you don’t even use it… Ugh, the money I’ve wasted on late night comfort buying.

4. Having a goal of FIRE and working towards it makes me even more conscious about how I spend money, and areas where I can save money. I used my allowance to surprise Mrs. SSC with a short cruise to celebrate our anniversary recently. It was a good deal, we can drive there, and it was only a 4 day cruise, so it was more about getting to spend time with her and relax, while the grandparents watched the kids. While standing in line to embark on the cruise, we were both struck by the thought of “how much money people waste on useless things.” The amount of people with matching bedazzled shirts, boas, tiaras, etc… for their cruise groups, or better yet, matching monogrammed luggage (it was only a 4 day cruise…), and even the families with matching shirts and slogans like “Miller’s “Boat-tober 2014”. Anyway, we both commented on it to each other at about the same time, mainly due to the lavishness of a group or two near us in line.

How much of your pay do you actually use to live off of? If you’re not tracking it, you should start, and you will probably be surprised by a few things. First, is how much money you probably waste on little things without even knowing it. We realized we were spending about $300-$400/month at Target for nothing. Just random,  “oh we could use this, Oh that’s cute, put it in the cart” type of spending. That could be close to $5,000/year we could have been saving. Now we go to Target once a month, and have a list of what we need when we get there. The second is probably how little of your income you actually need to live off of. Granted everyone’s situation is different, and many people probably have car loans, credit card bills every month, cable, cell phone, and other bills and other things that they think that they really need. Or if you are like me and are just finding out about FIRE, then you read some of these people’s blogs and think, “No way in hell am I going to get some ghetto cell plan, get rid of cable, bike everywhere, ALL the time, and cut out all kinds of other comforts, just so I don’t have to work. I don’t hate my job that much, heck I even LIKE my job, why would I want to quit and eat Ramen and crackers? No thanks!”

That’s how it started with me. I realized early on, there were a few different camps that FIRE people seemed to fall into. One that turned me off from FIRE was the “I’ll do anything to not work” camp, and that could include moving into an RV, eschewing all comforts of life for the cheaper version of everything, and ultimately being very cheap, not frugal, cheap…  Not that there is anything wrong with that, if that lifestyle works for you. I didn’t like living on $25,000/yr when I was single and in college (actually, I’m pretty sure it was less than that), but certainly not now when I have 2 kids, a wife, and I realize I like the comforts that my career choice, and current lifestyle offer. Especially, growing up poor and knowing how it feels to not be able to do school activities due to no money being available, or even scrounging for money for lunch each day, or constantly worrying about money as a child because my parents were horrible at managing finances well and we were the poster child of living “paycheck to paycheck” with no real savings, emergency fund, any of that security. I don’t want my kids to experience that, and I choose to not go to extremes just to retire early.

So what did we compromise on to be able to achieve early retirement? Not a lot really. I mean, we didn’t spend all of our income to show the world that we could afford to drive fancy cars, and live in fancy houses, and wear $200 sunglasses, and expensive clothes. We’ve put that towards retirement instead. We don’t buy the newest phone or tech gadget just because there is a new one. I’ve had my same smart phone for over 2 years now, and it still does everything I need to even though it’s only a Galaxy S2 (EEEP! S2, but they’re up to S5 now!). We eat well, but make most of our food at home, and if we go out to eat it comes from one of our allowances. We realized we saved ourselves a lot of money just by switching eating out to coming from one of us personally. Also, clothes come from a personal allowance, so you can get as nice or shabby clothes as you choose to buy without affecting the family finances. Ultimately, we may have times where we spend money on “needless” things, but we are consciously doing it and make the choice that it is worth it, like the cruise. No one needs to take a cruise, ever. They can be a huge money trap depending on what you do onboard, but we enjoyed the quiet time reading and relaxing on our balcony, and getting to relax for a few days without the kids. It was forced relaxation, because where else are you going to go?

Ultimately, we didn’t read the news articles and finance articles saying “you need 70% or more of what you make today to retire comfortably!” and then think to ourselves, “Well, we’re never going to get to retire.” You shouldn’t do that either! We analyzed our spending, bills, etc.. and found the number we needed and are now working towards it. Within 5 years, we will be able to take the kids to school, come home and have some coffee on the back porch before we get to what it is we’re doing for the day.

What’s your number, and how close are you to getting there? Are there things you’ve done to be able to get there sooner than most of America? Let me know!