Category: Money Management

We’re working towards financial freedom. How we save, invest, and spend is a big part of that. Read about what we do to save more, invest better, and spend wisely in alignment with our values (family, travel, and FI).

How FIRE Feels

Boardwalk at beach
How FIRE feels

(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.

How to Stay Motivated to Save When Your Investments are Booming

Like so many of my posts, this is one I’m writing for myself. Because my spending is…

Luckily, our investments are doing well (as are pretty much everyone’s at this point). Mr. ThreeYear and I have been investing most of our adult lives, and are finally at the point where our net worth increases more each year than we make.

We’ve never been particularly frugal (I haven’t, especially), so we are cruising through life at this point, eating out, buying food (food is always our Achilles Heel), planning vacations, and generally not being especially careful with our money.

Luckily, our old standby tricks of saving are helping, somewhat, but as I look at our cash reserves throughout the year, they are decreasing, precipitously, as the months roll on.

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Eating Plant-Based: How’s It Going?

In early November, I posted about how our family had made the decision to eat plant-based. Ok, I made the decision to eat plant-based and made my family go along with me.

So how’s it going?

It’s been approximately eight months since we transitioned to a plant-based lifestyle, meaning we mainly eat veggies, fruits, and grains (lots of grains to keep full) and rarely or ever eat meat, cheese, or other dairy products. I say rarely because I have occasionally eaten ceviche and cheese, and my boys eat meat as often as they can, which is usually when we go out to eat.

How has the transition gone, and have we noticed any benefits or any negatives to this lifestyle?

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Our Kids’ School: Next Year

Hello! I am not dead, as I hope you’ll be glad to hear. I’ve been overwhelmingly busy this spring with school (which coincides with students going back full time and my mornings no longer being quite as flexible to blog).

This post is a follow up to my post Why We Put Our Kids in Private School. In it, I detailed our decision to put our kids in an expensive private school (where I worked) and outlined our thought process to get there.

If you had asked me five years ago whether or not I would put our kids in private school, I would have laughed in your face. Then again, my ability to imagine a global pandemic was limited. If this past year has taught me anything, it’s that we have to make the best decisions we can, in real time, given the unique set of circumstances we face.

We chose to put both boys in private school for this school year and they had an incredible year. Truly, it was magical.

Now, let’s talk about next year.

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How to Shop Costco

Mr. ThreeYear and I fell in love with Costco when we lived in Atlanta. It was conveniently located, the prices were great, and you could occasionally find very good deals on cool items for your yard or your house. But in New Hampshire, the closest Costco was over an hour away. So, for eight years, when we lived in New Hampshire, I occasionally shopped BJ’s Wholesale Club (we could get a discount membership through Mr. ThreeYear’s work). But it really wasn’t the same.

Fast forward to December, 2019, when my good friend and fellow deal lover took me to the newly-opened Costco near our house. I bought a membership that day, loaded up my buggie, and several hundred dollars later, decided I needed some ground rules regarding how I shopped at Costco.

Only Shop with a List

First of all, if you are browsing in Costco, prepare to check out with a much-higher grocery bill than you planned. You will be tempted by the fourteen-pack of ready-to-eat Indian Chana Masala, the chocolate-covered almonds, or whatever your weakness is. Costco is a master at products that entice you to buy them when you weren’t planning on it. I think their products have some weird electronic signal that attracts you to them.

Instead, when you go into the store, have a list of what you’re planning to buy. It’s okay if your list is vague, like “Boys’ Pants”–sometimes you don’t know exactly what they have for sale–but have an idea, and a price range, of the items you’re looking for. Otherwise, you will buy things you don’t need.

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The No Spend Month: How’d We Do?

In January, we learned we had to replace our downstairs HVAC system to the tune of about $8,000. We decided, after that big spend, that a no-spend month was in order.

So we deemed February our no-spend month. We would not spend money in any category other than food, gas, and essential bills. The idea was to use the money we didn’t spend to replenish our savings after spending so much on the furnace.

How did we do?

Well, it felt like we did terrible. We didn’t take the no-spend month very seriously, especially towards the end of the month, and we broke a lot of our rules about spending.

Still, we managed to save quite a bit of money, so despite our mediocre performance, I’d still call the month a win. And I feel like we have some momentum to keep going in March, so we are going to keep saving.

Two wins: Junior ThreeYear decided to stop swimming with his expensive swim team and is now running track, which doesn’t have a monthly cost. We saved money in lawn care because it was February and no lawn care was needed.

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Why We Put Our Kids In Private School and What We Plan to Do in the Future

If you had told me last February that we would have spent the majority of 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic and that now, a year later, both of my boys would be enrolled in private school, well, I would have had trouble wrapping my mind around that.

Even though I work in a private school and get a 50% tuition break, I still was hesitant about putting my kids in private school, mainly because even a 50% discount on tuition is waaaay more than “free” which is what public school tuition was.

But, I had vaguely considered putting Little ThreeYear in because he’d had a bit of trouble fitting in in his elementary school. It was a lot bigger than his New Hampshire elementary school and he hadn’t found a group to click with. We’d also had a weird situation at the school and wanted to get him away from that.

Once the quarantine hit and I saw how his public school was tackling virtual school (compared to how our school was tackling it), the decision was a lot easier. Little ThreeYear did not do well with self-directed, asynchronous virtual learning with zero live classes.

Both of my boys have ADHD and anxiety. Both are very smart but struggle in school because of the lack of executive functioning they have due to the ADHD. Both have improved tremendously over the years in their ability to manage their work and homework, but it’s never been easy.

As a mom, that has been hard for me, because I was an excellent student. I never had any trouble in school and my parents never had to help me with anything school-related.

With my boys, I have had to sit next to both of them to do homework until grade 6 (so, for Little ThreeYear, I still sit next to him to do homework, or I at least have to be in the room).

The Decision Process

One of the hardest parts of Covid has been making decisions. We were given massive amounts of new information and scenarios to sort through as a nation, as a world. Making decisions about what to do in unknown or untested scenarios is hard. There were also many unknowns. When would be able to go back to work, school, restaurants, in person? If we could go back in person, would we have to be virtual in the winter? How could we keep our families safe?

We had a great number of unknowns, a lot of information (some of it misinformation), and some pretty dangerous consequences.

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A New Furnace and a No Spend Month

Ahh, the joys of home maintenance. A few months ago, our furnace started working intermittently. We’d wake up to a very chilly downstairs one day, and then the next the heater would work again.

We thought it was just a part that needed to be fixed, but… you know what comes next.

“A new furnace,” the repairman told us. “Your furnace is already fifteen years old, and you’ll just spend a couple of grand repairing it only to have to completely replace it in a few years.”

“And here’s a quote for adding in a new AC unit, too. They’re all one system and it’s way more efficient to replace them at the same time. Your AC is twenty years old and it looks like it could give out any day now.”

Our AC has already given out once. We got it patched up by the Home Warranty company, courtesy of the one year of home warranty our realtor had given us.

By the way, home warranties are a terrible idea, in my opinion. They nickel and dime you for everything–we ended up paying several hundred dollars for the AC repair–and they refuse to replace anything, opting instead to patch up your appliances, hoping they give out after you’ve cancelled your membership. Many years ago, in our first home in Atlanta, we had a home warranty and it worked much better. Our oven and hot water heater died, and the company replaced both without charging us more than our $75 service fee. This company, however, was terrible and I much prefer to pay for home repairs out-of-pocket, which I suspect in the long run will be more cost effective (although not enjoyable the moment I am coming up with the money out-of-pocket).

We got three quotes from local repairpeople, including the repair company that partnered with Costco, who all told us the same thing, and decided that we would replace the furnace and AC all at once, since it was cheaper in the long run and we knew the AC would give out soon.

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Saving Money Through Routine

If you’re of a certain age (eh-hem, late 30s and 40s), you’ll remember well the opening scenes of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, where the delightful Fred Rogers walks through his TV set’s front door, walks down the stairs, heads to the front closet, removes his dress coat, puts on a cardigan, takes off his dress shoes, puts on his sneakers, and then sits down to tell us about the day’s episode.

This daily ritual was purposeful. Pastor and psychologist Rogers knew that young children craved routine, and indeed, watching that opening sequence brings me, to this day, a sense of peace and serenity seldom found when I watch television.

Routine is necessary for maximum efficiency in life, and maximum efficiency is very often necessary for saving money.

If your life is highly routined, then you and the people you live with know what is coming. You can plan for it, and save for it. More importantly, your brain doesn’t have to waste precious neurons deciding how to manage unexpected decisions.

If you currently waste money repeatedly in the same way, a routine will allow you to examine that cost and change it so that you save yourself money again and again simply by making one decision at one point in time.

Let me break this idea down a bit more.

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Living Your Values

I have several friends I’ve made during the two-and-a-half years we’ve living in North Carolina. We’ve been fortunate to meet some very nice, interesting, generous people.

Some of our friends happen to have much larger incomes than we do. While we may not know exactly how much larger, we’ve had enough hints to know that some of our friends easily make double or triple what we make.

Good for them. I think that’s awesome that they’ve developed businesses and careers to generate large incomes. I am happy to hear that they are doing well financially.

Sometimes, though, it’s hard to listen to a litany of purchases and decisions that feel so counter to my own values. I certainly don’t want to not make friends with someone just because they spend more than I do, and in fact, I think it’s important to have at least a few friends with different financial situations than your own, just to ensure that you don’t live in a bubble.

But I also regularly feel like the poor friends, which is funny given our above-average net worth. However, we do live in the smallest house in the neighborhood, drive older cars, and eat out way less often than some friends.

We also have several friends and neighbors who have similar values to our own, and usually after talking with one of them, I am reminded that there are plenty of people like us in the world, making similar decisions about time, spending, and energy.

One thing I’ve had to learn, over and over again, is that I must make choices that make me happy. I have spent large amounts of time worried over the choices we’ve made in our lives, especially when others’ values are different from mine. I’ve said yes to things I didn’t really want to say yes to, in the name of friendship or what I thought was the right thing to do. Gone on trips, met people for drinks, put my kids into more activities than I thought we could manage.

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