financial independence Archives - Slowly Sipping Coffee

You’re Promoted! Thanks, But I’m Quitting…

Man was Friday an exciting, stressful, adrenaline fueled sort of day. It definitely added another notch in the career belt for “crazy things that happen at work.” If you didn’t catch what happened on Twitter this past week, here’s the short version of what happened.

I just got promoted to Subsurface Team Lead… I’m still planning on leaving in 3 months… Hooray and oh shit… That sure complicates things pic.twitter.com/lhgaW5Q6Av

— The SSC’s (@coffeesippers) 4 May 2018

If you’ve been following the blog for a little while, you’ll know that my GM “Bill” put me on a development track to get recommended for “the next available” team lead spot. While some positions came and went without me being promoted to them, true to his word, Bill did recommend me for a new team lead position. On Friday he announced to me and my current boss that I would be leaving his team because I was being promoted to the Subsurface Characterization Team Lead for Texas Delaware Basin. Essentially, I got promoted to my boss’s position just a different part of the basin. What neither of them knew was that I wouldn’t be an employee here after August 2nd. Whoops… That led to some soul searching as to what would I do, and the “not as awkward as you would think” conversations I had when I ultimately declined the promotion.

Chain of Wealth Podcast Interview!

Today, I’m featuring our podcast interview with Chain of Wealth. If you haven’t heard of them, you should check out their site. It is run by Denis and Katie and they set it up to document Katie’s debt payoff story while inspiring other folks to tackle their own PF issues. They blog about Katie’s debt payoff story and other personal finance related topics and they put out podcast interviews with other inspiring people on Mondays and Thursdays. Currently, their podcast has 58 episodes and includes names like Erin from Broke Millenial, Tanja from Our Next Life, Billy from Wealth Well Done, and Matt Lane from Optimize Your Life just to name a few.

This week, we were featured on the podcast in an interview that you can check out here. It was a lot of fun getting to chat with Denis and Katie about us, our new upcoming Lifestyle Change, the Fully Funded Lifestyle Concept, and more.

Give it a listen and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it.

Thanks again to Denis and Katie at Chain of Wealth for featuring us!

By Mr SSC
Posted on April 19, 2018May 21, 2018
1 Comment on Chain of Wealth Podcast Interview!

Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC): Origin Story

Our journey down the path to Financial Independence Early Retirement (FIRE) began with the usual suspects, unhappiness at work and a doggedly busy schedule. While Mrs. SSC was convinced that we could do it, I wasn’t so on board with the idea. This was because the few examples I saw were too extreme and so I resisted. It took years for me to come around to the fact that our plan didn’t have to be like anyone else’s.

What didn’t take that long to come around to, was the concept of a Fully Funded Lifestyle Change, or FFLC as we call it. What’s different about that concept is that it isn’t focused on FIRE, it’s focused on making the best lives for ourselves now. In short, we wanted to be able to abandon the fast paced, hectic days filled with long hours away from the kids. What we didn’t want to do was abandon the safety and security of not worrying about money, bills, and more that we had grown accustomed to. So, we made a plan that when we hit a certain number in savings, brokerage accounts, and 401k’s we would jettison our hectic lifestyle here and relocate to a better lifestyle somewhere else. The better lifestyle for us meant more time with family and freedom of schedule, even if it came with a greatly reduced income. This was the basis for our Fully Funded Lifestyle Change concept.

By Mr SSC
Posted on April 9, 2018
15 Comments on Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC): Origin Story

The Freedom to Make Fully Funded Lifestyle “Choices”

There has been a lot going on in the SSC household this year, with me getting positioned to move into a leadership role at work and Mrs. SSC making it to a finalist position for a new job at another university. These changes may or may not shake up our latest Canyon Lake plan, depending on which one comes to fruition, but it reminded us that we’ve positioned ourselves to be able to fully evaluate and take advantage of these opportunities when they come up. We have the freedom of choice in whatever opportunities show up. We keep talking about a Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC), rather than Financial Independent Retire Early (FIRE) because we feel like we will most likely do something when we early retire. Like most bloggers that reach FIRE, few actually “retire”, but instead transition into having the freedom to work at the schedule, lifestyle, and type of work that they want to do, rather than be stuck in a 40+ hr a week job.

What we realized is that we won’t be leaving the workforce totally, we’re just transitioning into something else. Mrs. SSC has been more hesitant about this transition than I am which is what ultimately led to our Canyon Lake plan. She had the “misfortune” of getting her dream job a couple of years before we were planning to hit FIRE and enact our FFLC plan. Now that she’s been in that job a few years and away from megacorp, she isn’t scouring the PF blogosphere looking for “ways to early retire” from a job and lifestyle that she hates. We’ve been able to transition into a good comfortable lifestyle with both of us working jobs we love. Most bloggers, us included, talk about “retire to” something, or “find your ikigai” so you have purpose post career. What if your career is fun and you don’t necessarily want to retire from it?

March 2017 Spending: Our Money Went Where?

March was a pretty good month. The “year of spending” seems to continue as we had another month and another round of big ticket items show up. Specifically, the fence got replaced, well on 3 sides of the yard anyway. Our other neighbor didn’t feel like replacing the side we share, so that’s fine with us. On the upside, we also got about 30’ of fence replaced that no one paid for. Not us or our backyard neighbors. At $22/ft. that saved us about $330 (that’s going halvesies with the back neighbor). We dumped my bonus into the kids 529’s so they got a nice boost, but beyond that, there wasn’t a lot of craziness in our spending.

A quick look at our FI target shows that we’re still at 84% of our goal, down ~0.5% from last month. That’s all market driven as we’re still contributing the same and just watching and waiting. Some fun stuff that happened last month was our first trip out to look for property for the Lifestyle Change. For more details on that plus where the rest of our spending went last month read on.

By Mr SSC
Posted on April 12, 2017
27 Comments on March 2017 Spending: Our Money Went Where?

It’s Still About a Lifestyle Change – Not Early Retirement.

Over the last week or so Mrs. SSC has come up with FFLC (Fully Funded Lifestyle Change) version 3.0. I think it’s 3.0, but it’s probably more like version 12.0. This is focused more on how we see our Lifestyle Change and less on whether or not it’s truly Early Retirement. Version 1.0 was that we both quit at the same time and move out West, or to the East Coast and become full-time stay at home parents. Version 2.0 was that Mrs. SSC would continue teaching and I would quit and become a full-time stay at home parent, but we’d still be moving out of Texas, and definitely Houston. So what’s different with version 3.0?

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Well, with the lack of jobs anywhere in the U.S. for Mrs. SSC to apply to, and the fact that she loves her current gig where she is now; this version of our Lifestyle Change has us staying in Texas, but moving out to Hill Country. Yep, there’s still no snow, still no snowboarding, but I’d be able to be a stay at home dad, she’d be able to continue teaching and we could live in a drier more hilly part of Texas. Again, we’d be Changing our Lifestyle, not necessarily focused as much on “just not working”. What’s driving this new change and where did it come from so quickly? In short, we’re making our own future and not waiting for it to happen to us.

It’s Not Always About the Destination; Except When It Is

The destination to FIRE can seem like it’s all about getting to that endpoint, but that’s not really what it’s about right? Isn’t it more about the journey and the freedom you’re giving yourself by getting to that stage of your life? There are loads of posts about “enjoy the journey” and “we shouldn’t be focused on the end goal, we should be present”. Hell, I think my 2017 goals were to be more relaxed and present and quit worrying about the end goal. I think the best description of trying to get to FIRE, is from Maggie at Northern Expenditure when she describes it as a “sprint followed by a rest on a moving sidewalk”. I second that feeling!

So then what am I talking about with the destination being important? Well, imagine you’ve been working towards your version of FIRE and a few weeks before you hit your number you find out that, nope, that number has been moved, the dates have changed, sorry, Wally World’s Closed… That’s how I felt this past weekend when I found out my 1^st Olympic triathlon that was scheduled for March 5^th was bumped back to Oct. 8^th. Yeah, friggin’ October! So how does this relate to personal finance, early retirement, financial independence and your own planning? Bascially, there’s only so much you can control, so how do you plan for it? I don’t know, and I’m no financial planner, but let’s discuss the similarities that I found between the sheet being pulled out from underneath me with the race and how that could happen close to reaching FI.

Visualizing Early Retirement – It only took me 6 years…

I was reading some past blog posts and I came across this one and it reminded me how lucky I am to have met Mrs. SSC. I’m also often reminded by Mrs. BITA, how lucky I am that she is so patient with me, especially because it took me 6 years to realize that achieving financial independence and early retirement (FIRE) before we turned 45 was really possible. Yes, 6 years… The following post elaborates on that backstory and the struggles Mrs. SSC has had to put up with before I finally “got it.” Thanks for sticking with me Mrs. SSC, even though I know it gets difficult at times.

The New Plan is “Relax and Be Present”

Welcome back everybody and I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year’s holiday! I took some time off and am back and ready to go, woohoo! There have been so many bloggers posting 2016 wrap-ups and 2017 goals I’ve just been enjoying reading them while I took a break from our blog over the holidays. In this post, we’ll discuss the state of the SSC household, what we plan to do the same and what our new plan is in 2017. Next week, we’ll be back to discussing numbers with our 2016 wrap-up and financial changes for 2017. With so much stuff to cover, we just couldn’t fit it all into one post! Well, not one post that wasn’t 4000 words long, lol.

You’ll Never Know if You Don’t Try…

Over the weekend, I was catching up on some recordings of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and I was struck by a conversation that went on during the show. The really short setup is they’re looking for something based on a map they’ve found, and they have been digging holes, fairly randomly at one of the “X” locations. When Todd wants to quit digging and look somewhere else, Dirk points out that they’re in as good a place as any to look for their treasure, so why quit. As he puts it, “What if you’re only one shovelful away from finding it but you stop. You’ll never know, will you, because you gave up. What you’re looking for could be right there, and you walk away right at the worst moment. I’m trying to say, You’ll never know if you don’t try.” That last part really stuck with me in relation to our Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC) journey, recent career changes, and even a new venture concept I came up with a few months ago. Let’s start with the FFLC aspect.