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It’s Still About a Lifestyle Change – Not Early Retirement.

Over the last week or so Mrs. SSC has come up with FFLC (Fully Funded Lifestyle Change) version 3.0. I think it’s 3.0, but it’s probably more like version 12.0. This is focused more on how we see our Lifestyle Change and less on whether or not it’s truly Early Retirement. Version 1.0 was that we both quit at the same time and move out West, or to the East Coast and become full-time stay at home parents. Version 2.0 was that Mrs. SSC would continue teaching and I would quit and become a full-time stay at home parent, but we’d still be moving out of Texas, and definitely Houston. So what’s different with version 3.0?

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Not moving close to views like this…

Well, with the lack of jobs anywhere in the U.S. for Mrs. SSC to apply to, and the fact that she loves her current gig where she is now; this version of our Lifestyle Change has us staying in Texas, but moving out to Hill Country. Yep, there’s still no snow, still no snowboarding, but I’d be able to be a stay at home dad, she’d be able to continue teaching and we could live in a drier more hilly part of Texas. Again, we’d be Changing our Lifestyle, not necessarily focused as much on “just not working”.  What’s driving this new change and where did it come from so quickly? In short, we’re making our own future and not waiting for it to happen to us.

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I Like Work, but I Love Life More

Last week, Mrs. SSC and the kids were on Spring Break and they went to visit her parents for a few days leaving me alone in the house with the dogs. I missed them, but it was nice getting some quiet time to myself around the house. When I mentioned this situation to a co-worker, “Sue”, she responded with, “Oh, so you’ll be able to stay late and get a lot of work done this week, huh?” To which I promptly replied, “What?! No, I plan on leaving on time or maybe even early every day. I can finally be unbalanced on the life side of work life balance.” Then she mentioned when her partner is out of town she likes to come in early and work later than usual. I didn’t think too much about it though, you know, to each their own.

Then yesterday morning Sue was having a conversation with “Bill” and was asking him if he took any time off over Spring Break.

Bill: “No, I don’t generally take time off.”

Sue: “You must roll over a lot of vacation, then. That’s nice”  (How is it nice accruing vacation if you don’t use it I wondered?)

Bill: “Yeah, I’ve got over 200 hrs of vacation right now. Well, I take a day or two here and there, but no real time off. Just generally Fridays, but even then I’ll work on things from home. It’s not stressful, I just like it.”

Sue: “Yeah I like working from the house too. I’ll usually do some work on the weekends if I can squeeze time in.”

This conversation just blew my mind. I know workaholics exist, but neither of these struck me as that kind of personality before. The way they were talking about work made it sound like no big deal to work away from the office and not enjoy their time away from the office. Then the judgy-pants came on and I started thinking “What kind of life have you built for yourself if you would rather do work from home than live your life while at home”?

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Saving Money Isn’t Always Worth It

Okay, I know that in this “financial space” it might not be gauche to talk about why saving money isn’t worth it, but hear me out. I made a mistake a week ago and thought I’d save myself some money. To save myself ~$8 I cost myself almost 3 extra hours of time. Yeah, that doesn’t sound frugal, that is starting to sound cheap, and not to mention I cost myself a lot of extra work too. What mistake could cost me that much time for so little money? Brewing beer. Yep, homebrewing can be a great way to save money per beer, but when you add in the time cost, for me at this point in my life, I’d rather have time over cheap beer. So here’s what started the “saving money” idea and what led to me understanding how much that “saving money” actually cost me. I basically cost myself 3 hrs of working time to save myself $8, wtf was I thinking?! How did that even make sense?! This is what made it make sense in my head and how I forgot why I quit all-grain brewing to begin with.

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February 2017 Spending: Our Money Went Where?!

February was a great month for us! Or maybe it wasn’t who knows? Oh wait, I should know… Maybe I should write “February was A month for us!” and just leave out a descriptor, good or bad. There wasn’t a lot of change although I noticed our “pets” category comprised 10% of our total spend for the month. Yipe! I got a bonus at work – woohoo! That was pretty unexpected considering we still didn’t make money last year, but I am not complaining. Beyond that, it was a pretty normal month. For the number voyeurs out there, here is a look at the charts and graphs of our spending and how it stacks up to last month.

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Retiring Early Creates a Perspective Shift at Work

This week has been crazier than usual and has me a little out of sorts. I hadn’t felt in the right mindset to write anything even with a funny idea like “Our retired greyhound needs an ikigai” sidenote – she does though, the transition from racing 69 races to retired has been a little rough on her. Even animals go through a transition from career to retired and it’s not always smooth.

It’s been a bit hectic at work, which is a nice change of pace, and the work has been fun but man, some people just haven’t figured out their new roles in this reorg. This week has made me so glad that today is my Friday. Yippee for the 9/80 schedule where I get every other Friday off! Seriously, since 9am Monday morning, I’ve been looking forward to today. Even with a positive perspective shift on Monday morning, it still only took 3 hrs of work before I was ready for the weekend. Here’s how it got to that point so quickly and why I’m excited about spending tomorrow outside, trimming bushes, doing yardwork, and weeding the flower beds.

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“Intimate” Interview at Fruclassity

Last week Ruth who writes at Prudence Debt-Free and Fruclassity: Frugality for the not-so-bad ass wrote an article about personal finance and sexual harassment in the workplace. In the comment section I mentioned that I too had experienced sexual harassment during my 7 year run in the restaurant industry. It led to a follow-up interview about my experience as a guy being sexually harassed in the workplace. Unfortunately, this is one of those things that happens regardless of your gender, and your workplace, anyone remember Disclosure?

 

To read more about it, click on over to Fruclassity for the interview.

 

Please comment and let me know what you think about sexual harassment in the workplace from a guy’s perspective. Is it taken as seriously as sexual harassment reported by women? Have you experienced this or even witnessed anything like this in any of your workplaces? Read more about my experiences and let me know your thoughts.

 

If you’re not familiar with Fruclassity it’s a site that was created by Ruth and Laurie. Ruth as mentioned above writes there and at Prudence Debt-Free, while Laurie also writes over at The Frugal Farmer. They tag team a lot of great articles dealing with keeping frugal classy and The 10 Commandments of Fruclassity which I liked when I came across it almost 2 years ago now…

It’s Not Always About the Destination; Except When It Is

The destination to FIRE can seem like it’s all about getting to that endpoint, but that’s not really what it’s about right? Isn’t it more about the journey and the freedom you’re giving yourself by getting to that stage of your life? There are loads of posts about “enjoy the journey” and “we shouldn’t be focused on the end goal, we should be present”. Hell, I think my 2017 goals were to be more relaxed and present and quit worrying about the end goal. I think the best description of trying to get to FIRE, is from Maggie at Northern Expenditure when she describes it as a “sprint followed by a rest on a moving sidewalk”.  I second that feeling!

So then what am I talking about with the destination being important? Well, imagine you’ve been working towards your version of FIRE and a few weeks before you hit your number you find out that, nope, that number has been moved, the dates have changed, sorry, Wally World’s Closed… That’s how I felt this past weekend when I found out my 1st Olympic triathlon that was scheduled for March 5th was bumped back to Oct. 8th. Yeah, friggin’ October! So how does this relate to personal finance, early retirement, financial independence and your own planning? Bascially, there’s only so much you can control, so how do you plan for it? I don’t know, and I’m no financial planner, but let’s discuss the similarities that I found between the sheet being pulled out from underneath me with the race and how that could happen close to reaching FI.

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Visualizing Early Retirement – It only took me 6 years…

I was reading some past blog posts and I came across this one and it reminded me how lucky I am to have met Mrs. SSC. I’m also often reminded by Mrs. BITA, how lucky I am that she is so patient with me, especially because it took me 6 years to realize that achieving financial independence and early retirement (FIRE) before we turned 45 was really possible. Yes, 6 years… The following post elaborates on that backstory and the struggles Mrs. SSC has had to put up with before I finally “got it.” Thanks for sticking with me Mrs. SSC, even though I know it gets difficult at times.

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January 2017 Spending: Our Money Went Where?

January, thank goodness you’re over… It seems like once one thing gets taken care of another comes up. So how did January pan out for us – expensive. Lots of deltas, not too many plusses. Some of it was fun, some of it was sad, and some of it was routine things that snowball into more expensive costs than we expected. Here’s the rundown of our spending this month and where we are in relation to our FIRE/FFLC goal.

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I STILL Have a Spending Problem

I recently got an email from Chase notifying me that my year end rollup is ready for review. They are nice enough to do this for you if you have a Chase card, yeah, they split out your yearly spending into categories like groceries, auto, shopping, medical, and the ever present miscellaneous. They even show you how those categories break out from month to month! Awesome!  I switched from Chase to an Amazon card (still held by Chase so I still get this awesome benefit) mid-year last year so I only had 6 months of spending tracked, but lo and behold, they also still had my 2015 yearly roundup available to review as well. This is only my allowance card, so it was pretty eye opening seeing where I spent my money. Spoiler alert, I’m not rolling out all the charts and graphs, play sad trombone sound – bwah, bwah, bwah, bwaaaahhhh…. Okay, I’ll add some charts because they are pretty useful in analyzing spending. They did highlight to me, the fact that I still have a spending problem.

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