(This was written last summer in 2023 and I just decided to publish it).
It’s been a few years since I’ve written anything on this blog. There’s a reason for that. Full-time teaching became all-consuming, and I had no time or mental capacity to type out blog posts.
Now, though, I find myself pulled toward the computer screen, desperate to type out how I’m feeling, and that’s no accident. This past May, I sent my school a resignation letter and I retired from teaching. I am currently looking for work in other fields, but I have been able to take several months off to rest and recover.
I realize I am incredibly fortunate to be able to take a break from working, and it’s due to a lot of reasons. One, and most importantly, my husband still works full-time and earns a good salary. Two, I didn’t earn a lot of money as a teacher working in North Carolina, so we didn’t rely on my salary overmuch. Three, we are debt-free (except for our mortgage) so we can cut some savings goals while I’m not working and be okay.
My husband had a taste of financial freedom himself back in 2022. After a series of painful and unfortunate events, he left his job. It took him a few months to find another role, but he had some time to rest, visit his family in Chile, and reflect on what he wanted to do next. Because he received severance pay, we were not concerned about our monthly bills, and I had health insurance, so he was able to enjoy his time off, as much as anyone enjoys time off while still looking for their next job.
We reflected on our situation last year and compared it to how we felt when he was laid off twice in 2008. That was really the beginning of our journey out of debt, and when he was laid off more than a decade before, we were in crisis mode. Because we were newly married, we hadn’t developed the assets to carry us through a crisis. We had a 95% mortgage on our home, car loans, credit card debt, and a one-income household. We had an eighteen-month-old toddler. We’d never faced such a stressful situation before.
In 2022, however, we were in a completely different financial situation, and it was thanks to that crisis from 2008. We had substantial assets in the bank, both in taxable and non-taxable accounts that we could tap into if absolutely necessary. We had healthcare and money coming in thanks to my job. We had no car loans, no credit card debt, and the ability to decrease our spending should we need to. Additionally, as a preventative measure, and in an extreme stroke of good luck, we refinanced our ten-year mortgage to a thirty-year mortgage, at 2.5%.
Mr. ThreeYear, in typical form, found an excellent job by March, so he spent a total of not-quite-three-months unemployed (he is a paragon of what to do when searching for a new job, whereas I am much slower with my own search these days).
Taking a few months off has given me glimpses into retirement. And it’s definitely given me nudges about how FIRE feels. While we’re not completely financially independent, and not retired, we are hopefully about five years away from both, and since I have time off and Mr. ThreeYear works from home, we have some moments that feel close to FIRE. Here is how I imagine FIRE feels based on my glimpses of it with my slower schedule.
A Slow Start
One of the things I hated the most about my job was my early start time. I had to be at school at 6:50am and start teaching at 7:25am.
Imagine facing a room of high school freshmen at 7:25am, and channelling the energy to get them excited about learning Spanish. They’re nodding off or slowly sipping at their watery Starbucks drinks (I taught in a super bougie school) and I am using everything in my arsenal to wake them up and get them to answer my questions, in a foreign language they don’t speak all that well.
If you know me IRL, you know that mornings are not my best time of day. I require several cups of coffee before I will answer questions or talk to you, and I like to get moving at a lot slower rate than I had to with my teaching job.
Now, though, mornings are lovely. They feel like this: I get up at 6am (which is still excruciating). I caffeinate myself and sit on the sofa budgeting on YNAB until it’s time to get up and pack the boys’ lunches. They come down, we tell them goodbye, walk them out to the car, and then my oldest son drives them away to school.
Mr. ThreeYear and I put Lucy on her leash, then head out for our 2.5 mile walk around our neighborhood. We get sunshine, exercise, and a chance to connect, all before 8am. When we get home from the walk, I eat breakfast, do my chores (making beds, cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry) and then head upstairs to start looking for jobs once I’ve taken care of the house.
Being in charge of my own time in the morning is life changing. I don’t ever want my mornings to feel different, because this routine feels so good.
Margin
Leaving my job gave me margin, which I lacked before.
I have space,
time,
room in my schedule and in my life to think, to write, to plan.
I have time to prioritize my health, by fixing myself healthy fruit smoothie breakfasts and giant salads with air-fried sweet potatoes on top.
I have energy to check in with the boys when they get home from school, and help NotSoLittleThreeYear with his homework whenever he’s ready to do it.
I have time to focus on spending our budget more intentionally, which I had little time to do while teaching. With teaching, I used grocery delivery, eating out, and impulse purchasing to feed my family and soothe my own frustrations.
Since I’ve left teaching, I have made budgeting one of my top priorities. I’ve taken on several previously outsourced tasks, like pest control and house-cleaning. I’ve slashed our grocery budget from its inflated highs in the Spring, and worked so hard to eliminate unnecessary spending.
Intentional
I’ve never been great about being intentional. I usually end up doing things because I get talked into them (I know, I have terrible boundaries).
Since I’ve stopped teaching, though, I’ve worked hard at being more intentional.
I say “no” a LOT. Whenever people ask me to volunteer for something, no matter how small, I say no. Especially if they say “now that you have all this time.” I won’t have time if I volunteer for everything I’m asked to do.
I think about whether or not I want to do an activity before I commit. For example, I rejoined my neighborhood tennis team, and I get asked to play more than the two days per week I committed to. I think hard about whether I will have the physical energy and time I need to take care of home and look for jobs, and often I’ll say “no” to extra practice or games. This is a big deal for me.
I say yes to very few evening engagements. I am plant-based and don’t drink, so half the time they’re not super fun for me anyway. And I don’t enjoy going out in the evenings in general. I like to read in my bed, so I do.
How Fire Doesn’t Feel
Leaving my job didn’t cure all my issues. I still regularly over-schedule my day. I fight low-grade depression. I battle FOMO. I yell at my kids. I ascribe too much importance to tennis. “Wherever I go, there I am” stuff. Even though I knew that I would struggle with the same issues I had when I worked, I conveniently forgot that life wouldn’t get easier when I had less paid work.
Let me repeat: life doesn’t get easier when you have less paid work.
Mr. ThreeYear asks me how I’m doing a lot, and I say, “tired.” I still get tired, but more often I’m physically, rather than mentally or emotionally overloaded.
I battle the anxiety of an unknown working future. I have to work through some boredom. It still takes loads of restraint not to over-consume coffee. If the weather is gray, I have to turn on all the lights in my house to lift my spirits.
I thought I’d have cleaned out all of my closets and drawers by now. I have not. I am slow to tackle small home projects, as I always have been.
Wherever I go, there I am, in other words.
But I like this glimpse of FIRE. It’s really nice.
