Articles with decisions

Fall Clothing Evaluation: Let the purge begin!

I have a problem. A clothes problem. I hate ironing, and I don’t like doing laundry. Actually, I don’t mind doing laundry, but I don’t like putting away the clothes afterwards. Generally, I wait until it reaches critical mass before I break down and put my clothes away. That’s okay because I have a system in place that supports this behavior. Generally, I have enough clothes to not have to put away clothes for close to a month if I time it right. Yep, that’s a lot of clothes, and that’s what led to my Spring Fall cleaning this past weekend.

New job, New state, New Lifestyle! Maybe not…

As you may know, Mrs. SSC has been looking for teaching jobs, so every week she gets emailed new postings and if she sees something that looks interesting for me, she will also forward it along. I had an interesting job opportunity forwarded to me from Mrs. SSC that we both would seem to fit, and the company wanted both a geophysicist and a geologist. Double bonus! We figured it could fit our needs if we both got an offer, so we applied.

Last week, I got an email from that company saying that they would be interested in talking with me about the position. I returned the email and gave them some open dates and they responded with, “Would you be free tomorrow morning around 9am?” I was excited because who doesn’t like getting picked, but the down side was that Mrs. SSC hadn’t been contacted, bummer…

During the call, I found out about the position, job responsibilities, office setup, and more and it sounded great. Better yet, I qualified to start on the upper end of the pay spectrum, around $95k/yr! My schedule would stay the same with 9/80 style, and there were some other Lifestyle Change perks as well, but it was looking pretty good.

Then, reality struck, hard and heavy. We had already vetted some cost of living (COL) increases in this area, assuming we would both get offered positions. Even then, we knew that with 2 salaries it would be tight, because I haven’t mentioned this part yet, but this job was in California… GAH!!! We thought it would be worth it though, because we could start our Lifestyle Change a bit early, but just take a different path than we planned. I mean who wouldn’t want to live in California for a few years? This would be in Camarillo, which is near Ventura and Oxnard, and has topography, and well a milder version of seasons, but at least different from Houston. Also, there are a lot of parks and hiking around there, as well as the beach, and other fun stuff to do with the kids. You can even see snow on the surrounding mountains in the winter! Oooohhhh…..  🙂  Based on those types of things that we want in our Lifestyle Change, we thought it would be fine to go there for a few years, even if it would delay things a bit. We’d have better work schedules, and be living in a better geographically pleasant area.

I started doing some rough calculations based on what we spend now per month on essentials to see where how good or bad it might be. Since we’ve got a solid year plus of tracking that info, it was easy to ballpark the COL in California. When I started adding these up we were left with about $265/mo left over. This was assuming no daycare costs with Mrs. SSC staying at home, and other minor adjustments like no maids, no cable, no gym, etc… When I got to the end of the month, I had very little left over… It was depressing, as you can see in the chart below.

Even with big unrealistic cuts, it's tight.
Even with big unrealistic cuts, it’s tight.

Between taxes (27%), 5% contribution to 401k, and housing which was about $2600-$3600/month for a 3 BR house, we were left with enough to survive and that’s about it. This would mean that we wouldn’t be able to add anything to our “extra” retirement savings, no college savings for the kids anymore, no allowance money, no replenishment of the emergency fund if/when something happened, and no extra money for anything. It’s good we’d be in beautiful CA, because we couldn’t afford to leave to travel anywhere else. With realistic tweaking of the budget averages from last year we would only have an extra $3100/year. Per year… That was not adding in the real adjusted COL to our averages, rather assuming we could cut ~10% and the rest would take care of itself in the wash.

I looked at our highest spend categories to see what other cuts could be made. Our car insurance is about $182/mo for both cars, but we have another year of $323 car payment on Mrs. SSC’s vehicle. So even if we paid it off before we left, which would be entirely doable, that still only frees up another $3900/yr to buffer the budget. Also, I asked Mrs. SSC, “What’s the house and misc. shopping, do we spend that much just shopping?” She said, “Well, that would be your clothes, my clothes, the kids clothes, light bulbs, toilet paper, stuff like that… You want toilet paper right?” Hahahaha Not a whole lot of wiggle room there either, especially since our allowances wouldn’t exist and they used to cover our clothes. We don’t want to derail our FFLC plans this close to the goal, so I ultimately had to turn the position down because it would put us in a negative/neutral financial position.

Thinking about this from a standpoint that we’re in now though brought me back around to the positive side of things. First, it’s good to know that in a few years, this position might be open again, and I would be an effective shoe-in to get that spot. Second, since we’d be at our FFLC number, we wouldn’t have to worry about whether we have extra savings to add to it, because according to our plan, we’d be living off of it solely without any extra income. A position like this would effectively allow us to live in CA with the only real expense being me working for a year or so. Since we wouldn’t be touching our savings, they’d just grow too. Now that’s a win! Third, this is exactly what Mrs. SSC has been talking about in the sense that if a geologist job or other random teaching type of position opens up, it’s fine if it only offers $30-$40k/yr if it’s somewhere that we would like to live for a few years. We could live somewhere fun and interesting, explore around there for a few years or more, and then move on to the next cool place.

This whole exercise did make me realize that our budget for FFLC is looking pretty nice though. Even with it re-adjusted since we’ll be renting for a couple of years, and then possibly buying in a more long term area, we should be doing well and living fairly comfortably without a lot of worries about needing extra income. Also, I realized that if any unexpected expenditures that come up, we have our allowances to use as a buffer, which is comforting too. In the end, it did end up with me feeling a lot better about our numbers, plans, and expectations of our Lifestyle Change. I’m even more excited now, knowing in another year or so, we’ll be in full control to do what we want, and not have to be constrained by the thoughts of “Can we afford to live there on that salary?” That is a pretty cool feeling. Until then, we’ll just keep sticking to the plan and counting down days. On the plus side, we’re under 850 days to go until then…

breakdown from Smartasset.com and their tax calculator
breakdown from Smartasset.com and their tax calculator

Am I too comfortable with life Now?

Conversations in our house lately have focused on when we can we really pull the plug and embark on our Lifestyle Change. Not maybe, but really, really, like “Well, what about next year?” type of thinking. It’s gotten pretty real, and pretty crazy if you’re not thinking outside the box and don’t want to get out of your comfort zone. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so for new readers let me quickly catch you up in the next 4 sentences. I know, I probably won’t make it in 4 sentences, but I’ll keep it brief, I swear.

This started with our industry downturn (Oil and Gas), which got us really challenging everything and getting ready for the fact we may both be out of work sooner than later. This led to realizing that if we both get laid off, finding a new job that’s equivalent around Houston is not practical, so we brainstormed what else could we do outside of Houston. This led to a fair number of “out west mountain” sorts of jobs, and Mrs. SSC revisiting all of her spreadsheets and coming up with multiple realizations of our potential scenarios, which in turn led to realizing we could rent for a few years and de-risk our mountain living dream, and this is where our story begins… (Woohoo, that’s 4 sentences, including this one!)

It’s been a really busy work week for me, and Mrs. SSC has been busy as well, but not nearly as busy. She has a bit more time on her hands to pontificate about Life, the Universe, and Everything else. This has led to much searching online at sites like city-data.com to learn about potential landing cities we may be interested in; searching Zillow for rentals in said towns; recalculating the many spreadsheet scenarios; planning vacations to said towns – wait, those are more like pricing out reconnaissance trips; and many more things related to moving out of Houston. Also, the job searches… Oh, the job searches… I get forwarded any job that is remotely close to anything I may be interested in. For instance, Vernal, UT has a geologist position open, to which I replied, “Honey, that also doesn’t have 4 seasons, they have topography, but think Moab style moonscape environment. I don’t think you’d like it.” Apologies to any readers in Vernal, it’s pretty, just not my kind of pretty. And yes, I have been there; more than once even. Grasping at straws is how I describe the current behavior from Mrs. SSC.

This means my day is then peppered with short 2-3 sentence emails throughout the day bemoaning growing old (we’re only 38 for goodness sakes), life being hopeless, work being unfulfilling, and usually wrapping up with something about only 1 more year of work left, or the more dramatic “We’re never going to get to retire – sigh…”. Yes people, this is my current experience. However, this doesn’t begin to cover the conversations these types of research lead to.

For instance, the other night it started like this, out of the blue mind you:

Mrs. SSC: “Maybe we should trust our future selves to figure it out and just do it!”

Mr. SSC: “Do what exactly? Who are we going to trust to figure what out?” (I’m a little slow sometimes)

Mrs. SSC: “Say screw it and just be done with work after next year. We’ve calculated everything, and if one of us worked even just a little we could figure out the rest. We’re smart, I know we can do it. Let’s just do it!”

Mr. SSC: “So what you’re saying is that we should leave our jobs before we get close to our number you feel comfortable with, and we just go ahead and “live the dream” and figure the rest out as we go?”

Mrs. SSC: “Well yeah, but you know we’ve done the calculations and you know I’m going to be stir crazy not working anyway, so I’m going to have to do something, but why not? Why not trust ourselves and get out sooner than later? All the retirement articles say people don’t save for retirement because they don’t see themselves in the future. But, you know? We practically obsess about our future selves and planning for them, and getting them set up for a nice time, why not trust they’ll figure out how to make it work if we “jump” before we hit 100% of our number?”

Mr. SSC: “Ummm…. Kaaaayyyy…. You know, we can probably just wait until our companies lay us off and get a little bump on the way out the door? If that doesn’t happen then we just keep saving like we have been and keep getting closer to our number. That’s the plan right? So, why not stick to the plan and just stick it out another year or two and hit our number?”

Mrs. SSC: “I sent you a job in MN, it’s teaching, and you could even develop an Earth Science program.”

Mr. SSC:  “True, but it’s flat there, and they’re currently predicting a high of 10 F today, and the winter looks like it’s about 7 months long and windy (thank-you city-data). Oddly enough, it has a really high crime rate too, so, nnnnooo on that job in MN.”

A little more back story – I know exactly why Mrs. SSC is thinking like this, because this is where I was before I quit that company and went to my new one. For new readers, we used to work at the same company before I left. I’m much happier at my new place, and I love my new company environment. BUT, I was as miserable as Mrs. SSC is now, before I left my old company, and unfortunately with the industry as it is, that’s not really an option for her. She’s pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place in an unfulfilling job, at a company that couldn’t care one bit about her (not that I think any big company does – it’s just business) but they killed her loyalty and now she’s just trading time for money. Not a great place to be, so I get it… I’ve been there.

So then why am I resistant to saying, “Hell yeah, let’s go start our new chapter! Lifestyle Change here we come!” I mean, just today on the drive home, someone made an illegal U-turn in front of me, I had to slam on the brakes and slid to a stop right beside their car, and they flip me the bird. WTF Houston, WTF?! Yeah, I could be done with this. But I’m resistant, so the question is why? Is it because I’m out of my comfort zone if we leave our jobs and try a different way of life? I mean we’re all but set up if we quit now. Yeah we’re not totally there with savings, so it might suck at times, but we’re resilient so I know we’d make it work. So what’s my deal?

I think it still goes back to my whole fear of this adventure turning into a situation like I grew up with where we’re broke all the time and struggling to make ends meet every 2 weeks. Meanwhile, I know that won’t be the case, because we’d do things so much differently than my parents, but still, it’s that nagging voice telling me it will be that way. I bet it’s just the unknown, and me knowing that, “Hey, I have a job I don’t just like, but I love and it challenges me, and makes me think in so many different ways, every day. It pays great, I like the social aspect too, and I’ve got a good title, and people come ask me about problems they have and how to fix them. I love that, getting challenged with a “cold eye look” at someone else’s problem and offer a different way to look at it.”

I think I’m scared I’ll miss my job. I really like what I do, and how much I get to help other people figure out problems, along with figuring out solutions to my own problems. Added bonus, I’m really good at what I do which makes it even more enjoyable.

Maybe I do need to trust our future selves more, and let them figure out how things will go. We won’t know how they’ll be because it’s all just speculation, and mathematics tied in with a lot of optimism in the stock market, the economy, our own health lasting, and so many more things we can’t control.

Like most retired people say, “I wish I’d done it sooner” maybe I should think more like that and get on with living life and not just “hamster wheeling it” down here in Houston. Stay tuned, because changes are afoot and the box is slowly breaking as we’re figuring out our exit from this current lifestyle.

Small Decisions, Big Outcomes; How I met Mrs. SSC

Have you ever read any of those choose your own adventure books? I’m probably dating myself, but when I was a kid there were books that let you make a choice at some point in the story. For instance, your character comes to a door in a castle and then you’re offered a choice. If you choose to go through the door, turn to page 109. If you choose to keep going down the hallway, turn to page 95. This would go on until you get to a resolution, typically I died a lot… However, I would usually go back and read all the different choices to see what various outcomes I had missed out on. Too bad you can’t do that in life, but it’s moving ever forward and ever onward. A favorite blog of mine Our Next Life wrote about this referring to it as “Sliding Doors”, while other folks may think of it as a butterfly effect.

Like those choose your own adventure books, have you ever looked back and identified key points in your life where a decision you made seemed to greatly affect your life’s trajectory from that point forward? I have a couple pretty significant ones, but I was reminded of one recently that put me where I am today in SO many ways. This one began on a Monday night, but not just any Monday night; a Monday Night Football (MNF) night.

I love watching football, especially at the beginning of the season, when you’ve been starved of football action for months, so I was excited there was a double header that night for MNF. I was in grad school and still working full-time as well, so I was pretty beat, because I’d been at work from 6am until 2, then school from 2-6 pm. As I was heading out of the building a friend asked if I was sticking around for a talk by a recruiter from one of the major oil companies. I told him, “Nope, I’m going to watch some MNF, have some beers, and relax.” He asked if I could help get it set up at least, since I was also a fellow officer in our American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) student chapter. Reluctantly I agreed, and set everything up and then ultimately decided to stick around for the talk. Little did I know how much that seemingly small decision would affect my life.

Afterwards, I noticed some people talking with him and another company rep about setting up interviews for the next day. I had looked at their online interview schedule previously, and it had been full, so I considered it “taken care of”. However, I went to stand in line to ask if I could get an interview spot, when I heard 3 different people in front of me mention the online scheduling system wasn’t working right for them and didn’t allow them to block out an empty spot. The recruiter said she would open some more interview spots to accommodate that, no big deal, so when I got to her, I also mentioned I couldn’t get a spot booked either. Of course, I didn’t mention it was because they were full, but I got an interview slot just the same.

Maybe I could work here?
Maybe I could work here?

The rest of the night was spent watching MNF in the background and totally reworking my resume. It was a nightmare because I hadn’t updated it in what seemed like years… Years! Plus I needed to get it in a good state to highlight how I could be an asset for this company even though I had zero Oil and Gas experience. I highlighted all my work experience with managing projects, drilling crews, reports, new bid proposals, and more to get it into decent shape for my “early” interview at 10am. The interview went well, and a few months later I got an internship offer for that summer which I accepted. Woohoo!!

We wandered around here a lot on the weekends.
We wandered around here a lot on the weekends.

My internship was in New Orleans, and they put us up in a hotel near the office since the company figured this was easier than having a bunch of interns in sketchy housing they found themselves. There were only 3 Geologists in the whole group of ~30 interns, and we were the oldest of the group by far. When we heard another geologist would be joining us in a few weeks, it was exciting to have the prospect of someone else older than 25 that we could hang out with. I remember the first time I saw this geologist, she walked into the lobby to meet us all for lunch, and I remember thinking, “Why can’t I be with someone like that?” Little did I know this was the future Mrs. SSC.

We hit it off that summer, and spent most of our free time together; at work, outside of work, duruing lunch at work, and we realized we wanted to be together. Then the internship was over and I returned to Denver and she returned to Chicago to finish up school. Booo, long-distance. We talked daily, and traveled as much as our schedules would allow, and I proposed to her that following Spring when she came to visit. She said yes, and we started our lives together that Fall. It was a pretty short engagement, and yes, we ultimately married within about 15 months of meeting each other – long distance no less, but I wouldn’t change anything for the world.

Us a few years later in Tahoe, with our oldest.
Us a few years later in Tahoe, with our oldest.

Just that small decision to not go watch MNF changed the whole trajectory of my life. Had I gone home, I wouldn’t have gotten that interview slot, nor would I have gotten that internship with that company and never met Mrs. SSC. All stemming from a decision of “Fine… I’ll stick around and listen to the talk.” I would’ve accepted a different intern offer, and I’m sure my life would be pretty different. Mrs. SSC helped me realize how to not spend all the money you have. She’s showed me how to be more financially responsible and the power of investing. She’s done a lot for me on the financial side of life that helped get us where we are today, but even more she’s showed me a lot about how to be a better person for her, for myself, and now for our kids as well. She’s been a great friend, supporter and confidant, and added so much positivity into my life, and it all started because I decided not to be lazy and go watch MNF. Amazing…

Looking back I had no idea of the power of that decision, even though now it reads like a choose your own adventure book type of decision point. I chose something atypical for me, and my life literally changed paths from what typical Mr. SSC would do. I can imagine had I not made that choice, I’d still have credit card debt, school loan debt, car loans, probably a boat loan, home loan, and wondering why I am still struggling with money even though my salary had more than doubled. I’d complain about how it’s tough to make ends meet, and be oblivious to the fact it starts with me and my spending habits, and has less to do with how much you make than how you allocate it in your life.

Wait, I need those dollars!
Wait, I need those dollars!

I learned that if you keep doing things the same way you’ve always done them, they will stay the same they’ve always been. I made another decision that night and that was to do something I typically don’t do. It’s like the Seinfeld episode where George decides his inner voice has been wrong his whole life, so he does the exact opposite of his inner voice. He becomes wildly successful, gets a hot girl, everything changes for the best starting from that decision. I made a similar choice, and that was if I wanted things to change, I needed to start making different decisions than I would normally do, and for me it all started on that night.

Have you had any seemingly small decision affect your life in a big way? I’d love to hear your stories!

2015 Wrap-up and 2016 Goals

2015 was a pretty good year in a lot of ways for our household. Here’s a brief summary of the year’s financial picture, as well as our December numbers. Let’s begin with a quick over all summary.

In 2015 our savings/investments went up $155,976. Not too bad, but not great since most of that was just us putting in new money.  You can see from the graph that there was a big dip, followed by a recovery, then a flat to downward trend that helped keep that growth slow.  However, I still think we are on track to hit our FI number in mid-2017, if stocks can manage to grow just a little bit.

Instead of doing a full budget breakdown for December, I’ll note that we did well. Our finance picture was pretty boring, which I’ll take any time. Some anomalies not seen in previous months are noted below.

Yearly HOA = $815 Yep, HOA dues. But I think they do a great job with their festivals that they host for Spring, Easter, 4th of July, Fall, Halloween, and Winter. We also get a lot of use out of the pools during the summer.

Extra gift/entertainment = $450 – Miscellaneous gifts, and costs associated with holiday hosting of family.

Car registration = $79.50 – Yep, cars cost more than gas each month. Shocker…

Groceries = $509 – Some extra was put in the ‘entertainment’ category to account for Christmas and New Year’s feasts. Most of the alcohol for those events was covered in November.

Overall we spent $7148.11.  Without daycare and mortgage that is $3419.77.

To wrap up our 2015 expenses for our first full year of tracking – we are looking at a FIRE estimate of  $58,800/year – which comes out to about 8 grand more than we expected at the beginning of the year… What caused this jump? Well, we replaced the AC for $7k, a broken shower door for $1.3k, garage door for $440, AC drain repair $440, and I think that might have been it. That is roughly $9k in home repairs, and yes, some we could have gone the DIY route, but not the big hitter of the AC.  We do have some buffers built in to account for these repairs in the future but it does have us thinking about renting, or even possibly building so we could get a good 7-10 years “problem free”. Gah!! There will be more to come on these choices later.

How does this break down as to where the money goes? On average we spend $644/month on groceries and $173/month on pets.  Pet costs will likely go down, as we had expensive medical bills for Harley, and adoption costs for our lovely greyhound, Lola. Although, Quinn, our second dog is 15, so it could be pricey this year depending on her health.  Miscellaneous shopping was $204/month, and House miscellaneous was $1120 – definitely bad due to the AC.  In total, we spent $113,025 this year (includes 12,000) for allowances.

Lola - resting
Lola – resting
More resting. Greyhounds "rest" a lot...
More resting. Greyhounds “rest” a lot…

We did not reach our goal of saving $150k this year, but we did save $135k or 90% of our goal in 401ks, 529s and personal investment accounts. Not too shabby.  This is actually the first year I didn’t max out my 401k. I got close, but since those accounts are already “big enough” for what we need in “real” retirement, we focused on our pre-retirement gap savings. We both took full advantage of the employer match and again got close to maxing out those accounts, but at this point, that’s not where our savings is focused.  That gives us a savings rate from our take-home portion of 47.8% and that’s pretty darn close to the 50% we aimed for.  This is just $4000 shy of savings Mrs SSC’s entire take home salary, so overall, I’m pretty excited about that.  This year, we will try again for the elusive $150,000 savings goal!!!

For kicks, I thought I would look at where we are in terms of FI goals.  Taking after Eat the Financial Elephant I’ve plotted our savings in terms of the 25-times rule.  So you can see that now we are at about 17.5 times our yearly needs, and by early 2018 we should be at 25 times.  This projection assumes investment growth of 4% and that we save at the same rate we did in 2015. As you may know, we may enact our Lifestyle Change prior to reaching the 25x number, due to an increase in quality of life.

Progress Chart
Progress Chart

How could our quality of life increase you ask? Time, lots more time… Currently, between the commute and 9/80 work hours, I get to see the kids briefly in the morning as I get them ready for daycare and then for about an hr in the evening when I get home. That sucks. With Mrs. SSC being unhappy in her current position for a myriad of reasons, we’re actively pursuing other opportunities for her. While it would make sense for me to stay at my job until mid-2017 when my work/pension 401k vests, I realized that I’m fully vested in the larger of those accounts, so the amount left on the table would be pretty minimal in exchange for an increase in happiness. The Frugalwoods just had a great guest post on that exact subject, which I’d recommend clicking over and reading. It provides great perspective on achieving happiness on your way to your FI number, but I don’t want to spoil it.

That was our year and December wrap up along with our 2016 goal. Our plan isn’t too exciting other than stay the course and keep doing what we’ve been doing. We’ve analyzed what the effect would be on reaching FI if we went ultra frugal and cut more stuff out of the budget, and we’ve decided the increase would be so minimal, that it wouldn’t be worth it currently. So, until something dramatic happens, we’ll just keep plugging away at saving, and trying to find something more fulfilling for Mrs. SSC.

How do you define success?

Dollar, Dollar bill y'all! Oh wait, those are just dollars...
Dollar, Dollar bill y’all! Oh wait, those are just dollars…

It’s no wonder that we as a society are such consumers and create such financial issues for ourselves all in an effort to keep up appearances that we have money and are successful. You can’t go anywhere without seeing ads showing what success looks like, and therefore what we need to strive for. The bigger question that we forget to ask ourselves is, “What does success mean to us and who are we trying to look successful for”?  It all seems to be relative though, driven mostly by how you define success. When you’re constantly looking forward striving for bigger and better and more, at what point do you declare yourself successful enough?

Then what measure do you use to determine “success”? Is it having enough free cash to do what you want with? Is it the “He who has the most toys wins” mentality? By those standards, I should keep the job I have now for many more years, and spend money like I have a good oil-field salary. Why can’t I have a boat? I love to spend time on the water, the kids are old enough to enjoy it now, and we can afford it. Check – we’re getting a boat! We should get some nicer cars too. Right now we can drive past people and they don’t realize the kind of coin we’re bringing home, not anymore. Check – we’re getting newer, fancier cars! Plus, we need something to pull the boat! Now that I have a boat, I don’t want to spend 1-1.5 hrs on the yard each week to save $25 and I like boating better, so we should get a yard guy. Check – we’re getting a yard guy! You know what, now that I think about it, I like eating out for lunch at the office. I’m tired of my home made sandwiches and chips and apple every day, day in, day out. Check – I’m eating out more! We also need to vacation more, because we don’t get a lot of down time to reflect on our “success”, so you know what, we’re taking more vacations!

Dude, now this is success!! I’ve got a nice boat, a better ride(s), no lawn worries, and I get to have someone else make lunches for me and they’re WAY tastier than my ol’ sandwich. Plus, I get to plan our next vacation for the end of the year and the ones for next year. Talk about living the good life! See, it’s pretty easy to measure success, just look at all our stuff. We have SO much stuff, we even have a storage unit now to hold our extra stuff. It reminds me of when Homer told Monty Burns he was the richest guy he knew, and Monty responded with, “Yes, but I’d trade it all for a little more.” 🙂 So does more stuff equal “more success”?

What would it look like if I defined success by a different measure; a measure of time and freedom.

You're doing what?!
You’re doing what?!

If I tell someone that instead of pursuing all of that, I want to quit my 6 figure job, give up the boat, give up ever owning a fancy car (goodbye BMW dreams), eating out all the time, and give up a “big, fancy house”, so I can try to live off of $50k/yr they’d tell me I’m nuts.Heck, I told myself that before I got on board with this whole lifestyle change we’re striving for. Honestly though, after reviewing our spending this last year or two, I don’t see why we would need to live on more. Yes, more money could be more comfortable, but I’m already comfortable now. Yes, we could feel a little more secure having a paycheck show up each week, but I’m okay with withdrawing money as needed from our savings, as per the plan. You know what I will get more of though? Time and freedom.

I can’t BUY that right now. Let me rephrase that. Right now, I am currently buying future Mr. and Mrs. SSC time and freedom by forgoing the boat, the BMW, a bigger house, and bringing my own lunch to work each day. We still vacation enough for me, and after our lifestyle change, we’ll have more time to do more of that. So I can buy time, but it’s in the sacrifice of current convenience and luxury stuff now. But what about being successful, because I’ve worked my whole life to be a “success”!

Seriously, I don’t know how you could be more successful than by choosing to dictate your life how you want to live it. For me, I want to spend more time doing more family things, and to paraphrase the great Winnie the Pooh, I want to do more “Mr. SSC things.”

Fishing shouldn't only be done on vacations!
Fishing shouldn’t only be done on vacations!

Even more importantly, I want the freedom to do them when I want to do them. Not when they fall into an empty slot on my schedule and I also have the energy to do them. My current schedule has openings between 7pm and 11pm weekdays, weekends (sort of), and every other Friday (sort of). The sort of is a reminder that I still have “life things” to do like dentist appointments, car maintenance, house maintenance, errands, groceries, yard duties, and appointments for who knows what else, like haircuts, kids haircuts, kids dentists, kids birthday parties, dog things, and more. It’s amazing how easy it is to fill those days with things I’d rather not do in my “free time.”

In the end, it’s all about how you decide what success looks like to you. As the Grateful Dead put it, “sometimes we live no particular way but our own” and this rings true all over the PF blogosphere and life in general. We all have different ways we want to live our life, and we all have a plan in place to get to achieve those dreams. Some of us will get there sooner than others and some of us may never get there, although I hope we all get to where we want to be. But I guarantee that none of us will get there if we try to measure up to someone else’s definition of success.

What’s your definition of success? Do you have something you see as a success that others might think “wouldn’t count”?

Are soft skills worth highlighting?

Soft skills offer you glimpse into a persons personality.
Soft skills offer you glimpse into a persons personality.

With all of this talk about layoffs and possibly looking for a new job soon Mrs. SSC has been working on her resume. Don’t worry, she’s been working on it before now, but it keeps bringing up this debate over whether or not to highlight soft skills. If you do list them, to what degree should they be featured and what is the best way to incorporate them? We have opposing schools of thought on this concept. I think they show a side of you that your technical skills may not reflect, while Mrs. SSC tends to go the more traditional route and downplay or not list soft skills at all. Let me elaborate on some of my more humorous soft skills and then I will show how they can be interpreted on a resume.

Soft Skills:

  1. Advanced Banjo, Guitar, and Dulcimer player
  2. Excels at Small Talk: Voted “Most Likely to be in Someone Else’s Office Chatting” by my previous company
  3. Excellent Gardener: Produced 1 perfect tomato from a single plant – expects to double success this fall
  4. World of Tanks: Blitz!:  Deputy Tank Commander of VOLT clan. Achieved a 64% Win Rate
  5. Excels at Weeding: Uses hands to pull roots instead of indiscriminately using chemicals
  6. Franchise owner in Madden XXV: 8 consecutive Superbowl Titles, Developed 2 MVP quarterbacks from Rookie status
  7. Candy Crush Soda: Achieved Level 368 – current level progress may be higher than listed

 

Interpretation of Soft Skills by Hiring Manager

  1. Creative, and disciplined to become advanced on an instrument – instrument choice shows outside of the box thinker
  2. Good office personality, probably well-liked by colleagues. Would transition well into any group. Plays nice with others.
  3. Prefers quality over quantity! Willing to put in the hard work for little reward. Probably would accept more work for same pay and not complain…
  4. Knows how to strategize, lead a team, and manage risk. Can quickly assess a situation and determine the best scenario to achieve success!
  5. Not afraid of hard work, selective in his thought process and work methods.
  6. Good manager, and can develop people – possibly mentor material and/or leadership position
  7. Persistent, driven to win. Won’t accept defeat, but continues to strive for victory

 

Interpretation of Soft Skills by Mrs. SSC

  1. Choice of instruments sounds like a hippy, maybe not corporate material
  2. Doesn’t stay on task – disrupts others – could be counter-productive to the whole floor if left to roam the halls on his own
  3. Can’t grow anything – must not use internet for help or reach out to others when needed. Who grows only 1 tomato?!
  4. Spends too much time playing games – 64% win rate?! That doesn’t happen overnight…
  5. Weeding by hand?! Who does that – this guy is stuck in the past – chemicals are around for a reason, sounds like a typical work harder not work smarter situation…
  6. Again with the games?! Does this guy have a social life – probably just everyone he chats up at work…
  7. ??? Shows ability to get obsessed with things that don’t matter. Probably heads down lots of rabbit holes in his current work projects. Probably easy for him to get distracted and stay off task…

 

Clearly Mrs. SSC is a bit more harsh than the hiring manager’s interpretation of my awesome soft skill set, because I did get hired by a different company. They tend to like the out of the box soft skills I’ve spent a lifetime developing, but I can’t seem to get Mrs. SSC on board with that. She keeps rolling her eyes and telling me I’m ridiculous and those kind of soft skills would get her passed over for an interview, much less a position. I have to disagree. I mean, I added some soft skills like mine to her resume, and she didn’t protest at all. Although, I didn’t tell her, so maybe she hasn’t noticed yet?

What are some soft skills you would put on leave off of a resume? Have you ever seen anything as ridiculous as my soft skill set on an actual resume?

It’s our 1 year anniversary!

Yeah, 1 year old!
Yeah, 1 year old!

I can’t believe it but it was a year ago that we decided to start this blog. It was a Friday off, and we were enjoying some coffee, on our sort of a “date morning” where we get 30-40 minutes to just catch up and talk about whatever and not be dealing with two demanding little humans. I love ’em, but man!. That week, our conversation was all about our FIRE plans. We’d been discussing it for real, because my brain finally accepted that, “Yes, yes we CAN do this and it’s not a pipe dream!” I was mainly quizzing Mrs. SSC about the intricacies, when she mentioned other blogs she had found that had kids and were in our situation, like Mixing Maroons and Big Guy Money.

I’d recently begun to dig around ol’ Mister Money Moustache and find that not everyone on there was an uber ER extremist, and that was heartening. This was when he was still cranking out posts regularly with his “clown car” and “sheeple” bravado if you can call it that, but all of his posts were great food for thought. They reaffirmed that I don’t need things to be happy, and trying to acquire things to achieve happiness is not a sustainable or healthy lifestyle. It had been a turning point a year or so earlier when I’d broken myself of my, “oh shiny! buy-now, oh shinier, buy now, oh! more shiny! Buy, buy, buy!” sort of lifestyle.

Exploring different blogs, I realized that “hey, everyone has their own thing going on, and our plan is going to be our plan.” Like everyone out there, they all have their strategy to get to FIRE and we have ours. I also realized there shouldn’t be a hangup with our plan being different from everyone elses, because, well it should be different, it’s ours. Reminded me of Full Metal Jacket a little, “This is our FIRE plan! There are many like it, but this one is ours!”  Hahaha….

You WILL retire early, or so help me!!!
You WILL retire early, or so help me!!!

I remember the newby-ness of WordPress, and it seemed so foreign. Yet, I still get SO frustrated when I add a picture that has been turned the right way up, and I’ve snagged it the right way up and re-saved it the right way up, only to have WP turn it sideways when it gets emailed out, GAH!!!!! WTF WordPress?! Anyone else get that? Like this pic (although it will probably look right today).

Yep, that's my favorite mug to drink coffee from.
Yep, that’s my favorite mug to drink coffee from.

How do you fix it? GAH!!!!! But I digress…

It’s been 52 weeks and there have been 69 posts, and 682 comments! I can’t believe there are 69 posts, I mean a year ago I would have thought, what kind of crap serious financial gobbeledy-gook insights do I have? I don’t pay attention to that stuff, I rarely even know the price of oil within $20 and that’s my OWN industry, what views will I have to put out there? All the wrong kind, let me tell you. I know how to burn through money, make bad decisions, and live it up, above my means with the best of ’em!

So at least in the beginning, that was my voice and how I wrote. I find I still gravitate towards that sometimes, but I find it easier now to understand where those bad habits came from, why I felt that they were justified, and what it took me to break them. If I figure out how to put that all out there coherently in under 10,000 words, you’ll hear about it. It’s a twisted story my friends, but maybe one day… Besides, I’m sure more than a few of you have probably had your own version of the same experiences. Maybe we could start a “Before FI” series – Oooohhhh….

Now, I just like to write about what’s on my mind, and how our FIRE FFLC affects everything and a lot of our seemingly little decisions can affect that date. It’s also made me realize that while financial security and a constant paycheck is great, it ain’t everything. I’d rather take a chance and walk away from my industry and career while I’m just getting to that “show me the money” stage to have more time to get to make memories with my wife and kids. Having those little guys around has made the ER goal even more concreted into my brain because I’d love to have more time with them.

I got to spend the last weekend with my 2 yr old daughter, it was just us, and except for Friday, we didn’t even leave the house. We gave each other multiple “haircuts”, threw balls across the house, and each time she’d say “one more time throw ball!” and about 15 times later she went to go do something else. We played dress up with her baby dolls, and had lots of tea parties. Heck, we didn’t even get out of our pajamas all of Saturday and Sunday. We had a blast just getting to hang out and be, and cook, and play chase, and do what we wanted. When I dropped her off Monday morning at daycare, she was crying and sobbing, and I felt like it too, because I’d much rather have another day getting to hang with her than go to work.

A lot can change in a year, and I can’t even begin to guess what a year from now will look like in our household, much less many of yours. Steve at Think Save Retire is planning on being done in 2016, and looking at Even Steven Money’s Financial Independence Day list, a LOT of you guys, that I follow anyway, are looking at 2017! It should make for some interesting reading, while I’m in my office… Hahaha!

Until then, I’ll keep cranking out some posts and thoughts and do my best to keep it entertaining. I can’t say there won’t be more song and music analogies in there, because I do love music and find lots of ways to relate lyrics into real life, if you hadn’t noticed. 🙂 Thanks for a great year, and thank youall for putting out the great content you do that keeps me  coming back for more. You all have been super supportive, helpful, and dang interesting to follow and get to know!

Layoffs are looming: Part 2!

With the upcoming layoff cycle, we’ve been looking at how we’d be affected if it happens to us. Chances are possible of Mrs. SSC getting cut, mostly due to the heavy, ~30%, cuts they’re making in her department as well as up to 20% business unit cuts. If you read the last post on this you might think, wait, wasn’t it only 12% cuts reported? Yes, yes it was, however, the biggest hit is geoscientists, so while overall it averages out to 12% company wide, the geoscientist group is getting hacked at 20-30% across the board. Yeeowch!

This affects us way more than I first thought. I figured, eh… we should be okay, just a little tight on savings, but then it sparked conversations on life, what we really want, if this career path is even fulfilling enough to go back, and if not, then what? I mean, this could drag out into at least 3 posts, haha! Don’t worry, I won’t belabor you with that, unless it’s still on my mind in a week and I haven’t found something shinier to focus on. I’m sure I could think of another music analogy post… Seriously though, beyond the financial part of all this is the innate thing we’re all searching for, and that is “what do I want to do, that I can get satisfaction from and get paid for?” Currently, that’s not Mrs. SSC’s job.

The other bigger conversation that has been brought up is, what to do next? I mean, Mrs. SSC hasn’t been happy at her company for almost 5 years now. Anyone else see how this timing ties into when Mrs SSC began plotting for FI? Haha! Coincidence? Heck, no!

For most of life we get driven to go certain ways in life or down prescribed career paths by our parents. For Mrs. SSC it’s even more extreme since she is very self-driven. She’s been driven to work hard, get a degree, work harder, save well, and all the other things will sort themselves out with life. At that point you’re already successful, so good job! For me, well I was driven to umm… well… I mean come o,n I was aspiring to be a long haul trucker for the glamour of it. Not exactly the same upbringing, and so let’s just say I took the long loopy path to where I am, and in the midst of all of that, I got to find myself. Mrs. SSC hasn’t had that experience yet and so she’s kind of wanting some time for that self-discovery that she missed when she was younger.

Personally, I think she’d be just as happy working in a bakery decorating cakes, and doing something she can see real results on. I loved working construction and getting to see an empty field become a hospital, or an empty plot of land turn into a house, it’s amazing when you see what you work on turn into something, anything, and not just be a nebulous “ XX barrels of oil/day produced”.

The beleagured point of this is that Mrs. SSC isn’t even sure she wants to go back to this field if she does get laid off. One of my colleagues recently brought up that 50% of people that get laid off in the Oil & Gas industry don’t come back. I’m sure that is an overblown number, but I know over a handful of associates that are okay with walking away for good if they get laid off. Straight up not coming back and finding something else to do with their degree. They have spent YEARS in school working on those degrees to work in this field. Now, if laid off, they’re content looking into gov’t jobs, academia, and even jobs with nothing related to their degree at all.

Heading forward, no looking back. Except this is clearly looking back…

Ever since one of our friends got laid off this spring,  we’ve been working to see how this would affect us if it hit either of our companies. Well, it’s going to hit us in a few different ways but like most people, it starts in the wallet. We maintain a pretty good savings rate of about 50%. So, if we lose one salary, our savings rate would effectively be 0%. We are fortunate to be way ahead of many colleagues, since we generally live off of one salary already. Maybe even a little under that, but for the most part, all of our “essentials” can be taken care of alright with one salary. It’s not nearly as stormy an outlook as I was thinking at first. Plus, Mrs. SSC might get an added bonus of a forced “get to know yourself and what you want to do.”

 

Stormy, but hey, the sun's still shining!
Stormy, but hey, the sun’s still shining!

If a layoff occurs, we would have to find a way to move that savings rate from 0% to hopefully 10%, just to keep FI happening before we turn 50. We’d leave our oldest child in daycare full-time because he thrives well there and does great with the structure, friends, and the like. He will be in his last year before kindergarten, so it’s not a long-term bill, maybe 6 more months tops. Our youngest could do well with a 2-3 days per week/part time day care situation as she seems to be more independent and is a super fast learner. Plus, Mrs. SSC is looking forward to having time to spend with her and help her learn more too.

 

The biggest obvious budget hits are just the other luxury allowances we have now that would go by the wayside. These are the same things that will get cut with the FFLC anyway, so nothing to drastic yet. I’ve saved us about $1200 this year just doing the yard all season (it still has about 3 months before it ends) so that’s good, and we’d cut the maids saving us $260/month, and then Mrs. SSC parking and work gym would get rolled into an outside gym fee, which would likely even out. That’s her hobby, outlet, and she likes it and uses it, so we’re both good with that. Plus, we would be saving quite a bit on tolls and gasoline, since each commuting day is the equivalent of ~2.5 gallons of gas or ~$9, and $2.50 in tolls. At 220 working days a year, that is just over $2530/yr. Maybe we could even get the car insurance rate dropped on her vehicle too! Groceries budget could easily go down by $50-$75/month since Mrs. SSC would have time to shop for better deals, and we wouldn’t have to buy ‘convenience’ foods anymore. We could likely trim another $25-50 of general spending a month for the same reasons.

 

That beach might not be the most comfortable, but it's still beautiful!
That beach might not be the most comfortable, but it’s still beautiful!

When we looked at our FFLC date, it is a different story though. First off, I’ve gotta give a shout out to my man, compounding interest! Yeah, that’s my boy!! We’ve been good at feeding our FFLC accounts so they’ll still be working in our favor, hopefully. With our savings effectively reduced to 0%, we know we’ll just have to play a couple rounds of “what expense goes next?!”. We’re assuming we can still save at least ~$1k/month/yr and then increase it by $1k/month the next year due to my raises and maybe Mrs. SSC getting a part-time gig. I think we may be able to save more, especially if we make it a challenge. Take that and assume  a 6% investment growth, and we’re still looking at mid 2020 for our FIRE date! We’re not looking at a date as early as ThinkSaveRetire, but we’re still doing better than most in this downturn since we still have an early retirement date before we’re both 45!

That’s a lot better than I was thinking initially. It helps to know your target number, and be aware of your budget, because of the case in point. My mind totally blew out of proportion how negatively we’d be affected, and then you do the math (I try to not ever do the math) and it’s like, “whoa! We got this, and we can adapt. Alright then… We can do this!” And then hope we don’t have to do this. Until we find out what we’ll be doing exactly, we’re just going to keep on, keeping on.

Forever In Blue Jeans? Done!

I love music, and I have since I can remember. It can give me chills, make me smile, make me cry, it’s the one thing I truly love in so many of its forms. My dad also loved music, stuff I can now appreciate musically, but most of which I still consider “crap” (sorry dad, but a lot of it is bad). Mom was more Motown, R&B, and “oldies” centric, but R&B when it meant rhythm and blues, The Temptations, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, Ray Charles, man, I’m giddy just remembering those guys, and yep, just started a good Motown playlist in the background. Aaahhh…

One musician dad was a huge fan of that stuck with me though is Neil Diamond. Man, I love me some Neil! Cheesy as it can be, those lyrics cut to my soul so much, because I just get it. Although, as Mrs. SSC put it, “Neil Diamond, Neil Young, same diff, right?” Oh, Mrs. SSC…

Neil D
I don’t know that he ever wore blue jeans…

But one of his songs in particular lately has struck a chord with me, “Forever in blue jeans.” What a song! It resonates with most of what I read on your blogs most every week, which is mainly that acquiring loads of money doesn’t matter, but as long as you have each other or what you deem your priority in life, you’re good. It’s about getting your life to a point where you call the shots and where you’re happy. Who doesn’t want that?

My whole life I’ve been money centric.

Money, money, money!! This was one of my first purchases as an intern in New Orleans.

Growing up broke as can be with parents that have zero good financial sense, I’ve tried to work towards making as much money as possible so that money is never a worry. Worrying about money, is the worst feeling in my life. It ranks up there with finding out someone you care about has died. I really hate worrying about money. This was my hangup with ER. Why the hell would I walk away from a nice comfortable setup to go back to scrounging just to not work?! No way! But then my focus changed.

For me, it was my kids. After having them I realized 2 things: 1. I’d do anything in the world for them. Yes, this really most exclusively means trading my life for theirs if God forbid that was ever an option, 2. I want to spend as much time with those guys as possible while I can.

One day, they’re going to go make their own lives and it is coming way sooner than I want. I already know this, and they just turned 2 and 4. I only have 16 years before they’re gone and off to college or career or who knows what, but it’s coming.

How does this affect me or my lifestyle or even our FFLC? Man, has my priority switched, because, since then and now, we’ve found our number that we’ve been living off of and can live off of and we have a date when we should reach that number. That date is in about 3 years and then we’ll be leaving our jobs.

Coming back to the Neil Diamond song, I realized my focus was echoed by these lyrics.

“Money talks,
But it don’t sing and dance
And it don’t walk.
And long as I can have you
Here with me, I’d much rather be
Forever in blue jeans”
….”And if you pardon me
I’d like to say
We’ll do okay
Forever in blue jeans, babe
And long as I can have you
Here with me I’d much rather be
Forever in blue jeans, babe”

Let’s see. Our “comfy life” as it is now, involves an almost 1 hr. commute each way, 9’ish hr’s at the office 4-5 days a week, to see the kids an hr or two a day before bed, and then get to hang with them while catching up on other errands/chores and what not over the weekends… Yeah, we’ve made it!! Versus taking a chance that our ER plans go as planned, but maybe we’ll be forever in blue jeans? I’ll take it.

I get really freaked out by this sometimes, and I try to put on a brave face, but I still get worried. Worried that we’ll try and fail. Worried that we’ll leave our “nice” jobs and end up in a horrid life of scrounging, scrimping, and worrying about money constantly. Kill me now, please. The knot and 20 lb weight in my stomach just writing about it makes me SO risk averse, part of me just wants to keep working until I’m really, really, sure I’ll always be good. And this is probably what drives most people to work for SO much of there lives. But that “horrid” life of watching our funds and scrounging for money, if it came to that still sounds like it’s a way better quality one than I’m living now.

I realized I’d rather be doing my life on my terms and forever in blue jeans, than in an office answering, “Yes, sir! Of course sir! Tomorrow sir, you’ll have those reports!” and if sh!t hits the fan, well, I’d rather try and fail than sit by in quiet fear and trepidation wondering what if. You know what I won’t get back ever? Time with my family. I also know that between me and Mrs. SSC, we can be making half the money my family was raised on and we’ll make it work comfortably. So, yeah, I’ll take that chance on spending as much time with family as possible while also maybe making my life way less comfortable than it is now. I have to say, the “comfort” I’m giving up versus the comfort I’m working towards I’ll take any day. And if we’re forever in blue jeans, I don’t count that as a fail either.

What made you want to get to FIRE/FFLC/Not working for the man and doing thing on your terms?

 

Neil Diamond Picture from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAWpkBurVno