“I am learning a lot about myself. It's exhilarating and horrible at exactly the same time.” Tricia, aspiring career changer I am a career coach, and one of my clients emailed me that sentiment to describe the mental gymnastics of trying to change careers after 10+ years in an area that no longer excited her. She was excited at the prospect of change, but the change itself felt really hard. I [...]
We posted before about how we are targeting FIRE in stages of increasing spending levels: Our stage 1 is relocating full-time to Costa Rica and a level of spending that can easily be covered by our current income streams. This first stage is also purely hypothetical -- a Plan B option we set up just in case we need to drastically reduce our spending. As of now, the longest time [...]
The end of a year is already an introspective time, and now that Scott and I are officially empty-nesters, we are taking advantage of our slower, freed up schedule to dig even deeper. We are organizing our mementos, decluttering our stored items, updating our estate plan -- various tasks which prompt us to get even more introspective about then and now. Click to pin me! Some of the tasks, like [...]
I recently posted a guest blog on Sisters For Financial Independence. This is personally exciting for me because the site is helmed by Filipina sisters like me (one of whom coincidentally has the same name as my sister!). It’s also professionally exciting to collaborate with fellow FIRE-fighters and see my writing published elsewhere. Finally, the publicity factor – getting your work out in front of a broader audience – is [...]
CNN Health reported on a new study out of Heidelberg University in Germany, which found that parents are happier than non-parents in old age, but ONLY if their kids have moved out. We are a sample size of one: we dropped off our youngest to college in late August and were on a plane to Costa Rica within the week. While our oldest still lives at our official home address, we [...]
Continuing our posts on your FIRE questions, such as when you are late to saving, when you and your spouse disagree or when you don’t want to pinch pennies, we come to another savings obstacle – the high cost of elder care. How do you insure for long-term care?How do you budget for the unknown costs of elder care – your parents and your own?How can you use geo-arbitrage when [...]
Thanks to the feedback we received on your FIRE questions, we have tackled how to make FIRE possible when you and your spouse disagree or when you don’t want to pinch pennies. Now, we’re tackling another question, this time about retirement in general, not just early retirement: How do you make FI possible when you’re later in life and still haven’t saved enough for retirement? Specifically, the questioner shared that [...]
If you saw the press around how Jay-Z is hip hop’s first billionaire, you might have glossed over it for the entertainment value but missed how important it is to your FIRE plans. Sure, Jay-Z and other celebrities have outsized paychecks that bear little resemblance to the money you and I have to work with. However, the way he and other astute celebrities have managed their career, time and money [...]
Recently I wrote about making FIRE possible when your life partner isn’t as committed to FIRE as you are. This was inspired by several questions that came up from a survey of participants of our course, Making FIRE Possible. Another common concern was how to reach FIRE when you don’t want to pinch pennies or deeply cut your expense level. One course registrant mentioned she wants to save money, but [...]
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you click one of those links and purchase a product. Not only are Scott and I working on achieving FIRE together, but we are also in business together. In fact, we are currently developing a new course called Making FIRE Possible, which covers the main strategies we have used to exit the traditional corporate grind [...]
