I’m going to get off my usual blog topics for a minute and share about something that’s been an important journey for us since 2009 but especially this last year. We were blessed with our first child in 2009 and she inspired a massive career change for me and a new financial path for our family. It’s now time for the next chapter of this journey as we work towards financial independence and early retirement!
Perhaps in the future I’ll go back in time and tell some stories about how and why we got to where we are today but I’ll be a brief for now as I want to get to some current details.
In a nutshell…
Soon after our daughter was born we decided to see if we could afford for me quit my job and stay at home with her. We made about the same amount of money so that meant cutting our household income in half. I had recently found Dave Ramsey and so we followed his steps and put our financial life in order. It really started out as a bet. Neither one of us thought it was possible so we gave it our best shot in order to prove we really couldn’t live off just one income. But we were wrong. It took some time but we finally found the budget cut combinations that allowed me to quit AND for us to continue living a lifestyle that we thought was still comfortable.
9 years later – the next chapter of this journey now begins…
A few weeks ago I came across a post in a homeschool Facebook group about the idea of FIRE…Financial Independence/Retire Early. It was such perfect timing because I had just mentioned to my husband about how I’d become bored with Dave Ramsey. We’ve listened to him so much over the years and I was ready for something new. I wanted to dive into new information. I needed something to reignite my enthusiasm for the financial path we’re on. I found it within the FIRE community.
I’ve been reading and listening to podcasts during most of my spare time these last few weeks. I had no idea this world existed and now I’m buried in so much new information and inspiration! There are some HUGE differences between Dave Ramsey and FIRE. A few of them are a little hard to swallow after being Dave fans for so long. There may be a few FIRE ideas that we just can’t buy into and that’s okay. It’s our journey and we can tweak it as we go. I’m looking at our finances with new eyes and renewed energy to crunch some numbers to see how we can do better and reach our goals faster.
Here’s a quick snapshot of our family…
– We’re both 41 years old.
– We have two kids (as of this post 6 and 9 years old).
– I homeschool the kids and don’t have an income.
– My husband’s income has risen enough that he now earns more than we made together when we started this journey 9 years ago. And he has a side gig. In other words, he works extremely hard to take care of us and help us reach our financial goals! ***
– We are debt free except for our mortgage. We pay cash for everything.
– We are attacking our mortgage and expect to have it paid off in less than 3 years.
– We are not particularly frugal but we are intentional with our money.
***A word about actual numbers…It feels really weird to throw out real numbers about our income, expenses, retirement and mortgage payoff. Some of our real life friends and family read my blog and it just seems taboo to lay our finances all out in the open. So, for now I’ll use percentages to try to paint a picture of where we are, where we’re going, and our plans to get there. Perhaps in the future, we’ll feel more comfortable going into real dollar amounts.
Our short term big financial goals
– Pay off mortgage in 3 years.
– Disney World trip in 2019 – Shhh, don’t tell the kids! It’s a surprise!
– Yearly (at least) trips to visit our family back in the Midwest.
– Summer vacation cabin rental somewhere in the mountains near a lake.
My Action Steps – the top of my to-do list as we start this new chapter.
– Calculate current savings rate so we can measure progress as we increase it.
– Address grocery expenses that have increased significantly this year.
I’m excited to share our story as we learn more about this FIRE path and continue with this next chapter of our financial journey. I LOVE the acronym FIRE. We haven’t reached FIRE but it is the perfect word to describe my excitement. I’m FIRED up and ready to go full speed ahead! I hope you’ll join us on this journey.
Related Posts
My Favorite Financial Independence and Early Retirement Resources
Grocery Budget Challenge – How We Saved $200 on Groceries
Hi! I got sent over by Kate of Onourwayworld.com. Looking forward to reading more of your blog Congrats on your new financial goals! It’s an exciting and perspective-changing path we also entered just a while back
Thanks for stopping by! I just saw that Kate sent me a link to your blog too. I’m excited to check it out! I love “meeting” others who are on similar journeys.