We Have Moved To Florida And Started FIRE Stage 2

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 we have spent there is one month in Costa Rica in 2019.

Our stage 2 is relocating full-time to Florida and a higher level of spending than Stage 1 but still manageable with our current income streams and work we love.

Making Florida our primary residence cuts our monthly spending with lower taxes, medical insurance premiums and daily living expenses. The reductions are enough that our income from our passion projects and real estate can cover us. We are working, but part-time and on things we love.

Stage 3 for us is maintaining our New York City residence and extensive travel plans, representing our wish list level of spending.

We are spending at Stage 3 levels now because we haven’t sold our apartment in New York City, and we are still traveling a lot, with three international trips planned in Q1 2020 alone! Based on last year’s earnings, we couldn’t keep up this level of spending indefinitely. We would have to work more, or draw on our retirement accounts earlier than planned. We would rather keep our retirement plans untouched and continue working part-time.

Therefore, our 2020 goal is to grow our real estate and business income, such that we can cover Stage 3 spending. If not, we cut back on travel and possibly sell our New York City place.

Living in Florida makes it easy to focus on hitting FIRE Stage 3

From a cost perspective, making Florida our primary residence saves us thousands of dollars each month. Living in New York City meant state and city taxes that took ~12% of our income. Florida has no state income tax. It does have a sales tax, but it’s still lower than NYC (7% in Jacksonville v. 8.875% in NYC) so that’s a wash.

For medical, we were paying almost $3,200 monthly in NYC for our family of four. We now have a plan for two in Florida, a separate plan in New York City for our oldest daughter who remained there and a college plan for our youngest daughter – total cost for all plans is under $1,700.

Daily living expenses should be lower here. We’ll know how much lower once we have lived here longer and can see what our actual spending is, but I already noticed that my favorite Trader Joe’s pasta sauce (three cheese pomodoro, FYI) is 20% cheaper in Florida.

On the income side, our consulting work is mostly virtual, so moving doesn’t disrupt the doing of our work. In addition, the warmer weather helps me focus for longer periods of time. New York City winters seemed to be getting harsher over the last few years. By contrast, it’s January here and we have made several trips to the beach. Putting in a few hours of work, knowing that I have a walk on the beach to look forward to, makes it much easier for me to concentrate!

I was in New York City for the Christmas holidays, and I had less time to work, partially because I was deliberately taking time off for family, but also because I had less mental bandwidth and physical energy. I seemed to need all my strength to keep warm! By contrast, we decamped to Florida just before New Year, and I have already sent over 250 personalized new year’s greetings, booked two new publicity spots and landed three new projects. At this pace, I will be much more productive and may be able to grow our income, while still focusing on just the work I love.

The physical move can be chaotic but also an opportunity to get organized

Our physical move was pretty seamless, as we took over one of our rentals last fall, so no need to search for a place. We didn’t have to worry about a long-distance mover and were able to move our things from New York to Florida gradually, during the road trips we took anyway. Since we are aiming to keep our New York City apartment, we kept our big pieces of furniture there, and bought new pieces for Jacksonville. Our goal is to simplify so we didn’t buy too much. We are not trying to fill up all the space (Florida offers a lot more room than New York City!), and we happily have kept several closets and cabinets empty.

The move is still a work in progress on other fronts. We changed over our state ID’s to reflect Florida as our primary residence – and the visit to the DMV was much shorter and more pleasant than a similar trip would be in New York. Our LLC’s were created in NY, and we can’t move them without dissolving them, so we had our small business attorney register them to do business in Florida since we’ll be working predominately out of here. Finally, we are slowly changing over our addresses with all the places we do business.

It can feel chaotic and overwhelming, but it’s also a chance to get organized. I finally went through boxes we had placed in storage for years and created separate memento boxes for me, Scott, and each of the kids. I even created an Excel spreadsheet so I can easily look up what item is where. As I was sorting through the items, I had a chance to relive some of the memories they evoked – programs from performances, books and toys from the early years, even letters the kids wrote to Santa (some are hysterical!).

We sorted through books, collectible items (I have some very cool playing-card decks that I had forgotten about!) and even Scott’s baseball-related bobblehead collection. I still have to organize and catalogue more things, but I know with the nice weather and roomy living space I will find the time and bandwidth to deal with these projects finally. I am particularly looking forward to going through my vintage jewelry collection, so I am holding out on that fun project till I’m further along my estate planning To Do list.

So far so good in Florida

My current rhythm is to wake up naturally (typically between 6a-7a), let in the natural light and focus on writing or any critical thinking work first. Then I treat myself with some outdoor activity because the weather allows it year-round. It’s late afternoon on a weekday as I write this, and it’s too chilly for a walk on the beach. We have an enclosed balcony in our condo where we can just sit and feel like we’re outdoors. We also have a small gym in the condo complex where I could get in a workout. There is also a pool and community lounge if I just wanted a different place to hang out.

I’m still getting to know the ins and outs of Jacksonville specifically but so far, so good. In later posts, I’ll have a better idea of our numbers – cost of living, how our investments are doing, and income projections now that we’re working in a new location.

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We’re in FIRE Stage 2 and aiming for Stage 3. We’ll see!