Goodbye FIRE, hello FFLC!!!

That’s right, we are looking forward to achieving FFLC! “What is this FFLC?” you ask. Well – I’ll tell you! It stands for Fully-Funded Lifestyle Change! “Uh, huh….” you’re probably saying to yourself. “So how is that different than ER or even FIRE?” you ask. The differences are subtle I suppose, but they’ve come from some realizations we’ve had over the last couple months, as Mrs. SSC and I have been seriously investigating places to live, things to do, and the underlying reasons why we want to quit our current lifestyle.

Here’s what we realized:

  • We don’t want to drop out of the workforce totally, but rather find something we can do that we are passionate about — regardless of the pay
  • We want more time to spend with family. We don’t want to fit in family around our jobs, but have our jobs fit in with our family life.
  • Full retirement wouldn’t be fulfilling to either of us, but volunteer work, teaching, mentoring… that is what we dream of

All of this led us to realize that we don’t want to retire– we want a Fully Funded Lifestyle Change!

No Free Time

In short, our current lifestyle sucks in regards to family time and free time. It’s great in that it allows us to save for the upcoming FFLC, however, there is SO much more we would both rather be doing with our lives than grinding away, day in – day out, for a corporation that will not notice one bit when we leave. Having 11-12 hour days from leaving the house until getting home 5 days a week just isn’t what I bargained for, or envisioned as “success!”.

The Talking Head’s song Once in a Lifetime really sums it up for us:
      And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
      And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife,
      And you may ask yourself
      Well… How did I get here?

If you’re not familiar with the song (I don’t know how you couldn’t be) check it out on youtube  here – you’re welcome!

We are hoping we will have a view like this from our porch!
We are hoping we will have a view like this from our porch!

To us, the song represents what your dreams and vision of success were when you were younger, compared to the reality of the sacrifices you make to have them be what they actually are today. As music critic Steve Huey better describes it, the main theme is “the drudgery of living life according to social expectations, and pursuing commonly accepted trophies (a large automobile, beautiful house, beautiful wife).” a  Although the singer has these trophies, he begins to question whether they are real and how he got them. This leads him to question further the reality of life itself.b

This is Success?

This is exactly how Mrs. SSC and I came to investigate early retirement, pre-tirement, FIRE, and all the trappings associated with pulling the ripcord on what is a fairly “successful” life. Sure, it’s nice and comfortable and we’re the “model of success” but to whom? It sure as hell doesn’t feel like that to us. To us, it feels like we’re just grinding it out for the man until we can hit that retirement point. We end up so tired from the long days, that it makes it hard to have energy to put towards the kids. The weekends arrive, and we are catching up on all the errands that need to get done, find something fun to do with the kids, and restock the pantry for the next week. Next thing you know, it’s time to crawl in bed Sunday night, set the alarm, and repeat… endlessly… We don’t want this lifestyle, because this is no way to live. How did we get tricked into this situation? Better question, how the hell do we get out of it?!

Well, we’re figuring that out as we go. Instead of living according to social expectations, we choose to live how we see fit to get the most out of life and make the happiest most satisfying life we can. For ourselves and our family. For us, this is bailing out on our work and careers and making a major lifestyle change to fit this new dreams and expectations.  Until then, we’ll keep planning, saving, and discovering what it is we truly want to do once we walk away from this lifestyle.

I don’t know about you, but viewing it as a “Fully-Funded Lifestyle Change” instead of “early retirement” has me excited more than ever to see what the future holds.

Do you feel like you’re stuck in the hamster wheel of life and want out?
What have you done to change your life to focus on what you deem important?
Do you think we are just bat-shit crazy and dealing with a mid-life crisis?

 

 

a: Huey, S. “Once in a Lifetime”. Allmusic.
b: Gittens, I. (2004). Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime: The Stories Behind Every Song. Hal Leonard. Pp.68-71. ISBN 9780634080333.

Dream vacation: What’s the rush?

Recently, I came across an article about “Fly-in, Fly-out” fishing trips in Canada. These are mainly to go after pike, walleye, and grayling, and all the pictures show people holding big, toothy, 40” long fish. A trip like that seems like it would be a blast, so I began to investigate the options. I invited a couple of friends along thinking it could be a good “guy trip”, you know, travel, fishing, some camping or relaxing in a lodge each night, and general shenanigans that end up with some great stories. The guys and I have done other charter fishing trips in the past, so I figured they’d be on board. However, the price can get a little ridiculous, Heck, it can be a LOT ridiculous, so I sold it to them as, “Hey, I think we should take this trip to Canada and get some monster pike! Fly-in, fly-out style in a bush plane! Doesn’t that sound awesome?!” Little do they know that my main motivator for doing this trip sooner rather than later is that in a few years, I’ll be retired and money will be a little tighter. So, how do I tell them that?

I suggested to my friends that we plan for 2016. I need to save up for it, because this trip will require some hustling, both financially and getting Mrs. SSC’s mother to visit to help with the kids. I found fishing outfits that had 5 day fishing trips from $800/person up to some ridiculously expensive all-inclusive trips that are way more than I could afford. The big catch here is figuring out what I get for my money. The all-inclusive package is all your meals are cooked for you, all amenities of home, fishing tackle and lures are provided, and a guide every day in your boat. The guide alone accounts for ~$900 of the cost. The $800 trip is more my style though. We get our own outpost cabin that we get flown to, and then the boat is sitting there waiting for us. We have to provide our own tackle, lures, fish finding, cooking, and groceries. While it is more my style, do I want to trek from the Gulf of Mexico to Upper Saskatchewan with enough fishing gear, clothes, and food for a week all the while just hoping the airlines actually keep it all with me? Short answer, No sirree Bob! It would be fun, but not the first time out.

Hopefully I'll catch fish bigger than this!!!
Hopefully I’ll catch fish bigger than this!!!

Plus, it’s still a lot of money, and I’d feel better saving up and spending it now, rather than in a few more years when I will be retired. I’m still not sure how to impress upon them why I want to go on this trip now rather than “in a few years.” I suppose my main urgency in trying to schedule a long-lead-time trip like this is knowing that I may not have the extra cash sitting around in 5 years. However, in my friend’s cases they will have more time and money in a few years… I mean, these guys aren’t planning on retiring for another 20-25 years, so what’s another 3-5 more years? They’ll have earned another week of vacation, and more money from promotions and raises, so they don’t have the same drivers as me. I almost feel deceptive, like I am trying to ‘trick’ them into taking this trip before 2018.

Then, my buddy Ted proposed another trip idea*. His uncle takes groups of guys fishing in the Wind River wilderness, 1 day in, 3-5 days fishing, 1 day out. We’d take horses instead of hiking to be more efficient, and increase the cool factor, and since it’s his uncle the cost is, umm, well, practically free. I guessed at $200-$500/person and Ted replied, “Well, we essentially have to get there and pay for food.” And his uncle doesn’t even fish! That sounded like a slam dunk, but then I’m back in the “I want to do the Canada trip before retiring, which could be as soon as 2018. The Wind River trip would push my dream Canadian fishing adventure back to at least 2017.” Gah!!!

Maybe I’ll tell them we expect money to be tight in a few years, but that sounds even odder, as Mrs SSC works with both of these guys. That alone would raise a red flag that might take some explaining. Maybe I’ll have to “Goonie it up” with a speech like, “Come on guys, this is our time. It’s our time to go fishing now. We may not get this chance again.” While I feel it’s a bit deceptive to not come out with it and tell them, “Look man, we’re planning on quitting the oil industry and moving to Virginia in a few years, and things may be a little tighter with funds. If I don’t do this now, it might be a lot more years before I get the chance to do this again.” In reality, this probably wouldn’t be a big deal, but I’m not comfortable enough with co-workers and even ex-co-workers knowing about and starting to gossip about my 5 year plan. Ultimately, if things don’t go as expected, I’d like to keep working where I am and not have my boss think I have one foot out the door. I’m not sure how I’m going to approach it, but I’ll be sure to let you know how it plays out.

* – Names have been changed to protect the innocent

Have you run into this in any situation with co-workers?

Have you told anyone about your FIRE date, and plans to abandon work?

Anyone have any better ideas for some good Pike and Walleye fishing trips?

TGISB! (Thank God It’s Spring Break)

SUCK-ville! Don't worry, we were stopped. For a while...
SUCK-ville! Don’t worry, we were stopped. For a while…

These last 2 weeks have been awesome! First, Harris county was on Spring Break, and then the outlying counties have been on Spring Break! Hopefully next week some other set of schools is out on Spring Break also. Why do I care about Spring Break since neither me nor my kids are even in school? I’ll tell you, because “Traffic has been great!” (a phrase rarely uttered anywhere near Houston freeways) I’ve been getting to work in 30 minutes, traffic is flowing well, and even when it is storming outside (which normally causes HUGE delays everywhere) traffic is still moving fine.

I remember last summer when I started my new job. (Initiate dream sequence music and sparkly fade out) It was mid-June, the birds were singing and the commute was nice. Traffic flowed well, there were no major headaches to deal with twice a day. Better yet, it was almost the exact same as my last commute. Then one day, everything changed and it went from “nice” to “SUCK-ville” overnight! Clogged highways no matter which one I took. Worse, the surface streets were just as clogged and slow too! I started looking at different commute routes but it didn’t make a difference overall. Somehow my commute had increased a consistent 10-20 minutes each way. I just couldn’t figure out what changed and then someone mentioned school. Oh… school… Riiiight… Man, that makes such a big difference. I guess people take vacation time off centered around Spring Breaks, Christmas Breaks, Summer Breaks, and other school closures.

You wouldn’t think that a few schools out would make that much difference, but based on how empty my office building and parking garage has been the last few weeks, it seems everyone with kids takes off this time to do something with family. It could be that there isn‘t a vacation, but rather a forced stay at home to babysit the kid. Most people I talk to though turn that into a vacation of some sort instead of just sitting around the house. I never ran into this too much growing up because my mom was home for most of our school age. For us, it was just another week to not have to go to school, which is still awesome in and of itself!

Note the string of cars on the bridge. FYI, they're stopped too.
Note the string of cars on the bridge. FYI, they’re stopped too.

Does this do anything for me financially? No, not really? Does it help me get to FIRE quicker? Even more so, nope. However, if traffic was like this every day, I wouldn’t be in such a rush to pull the trigger as soon as financially possible. I’d be a little more content putting it off for another 6 months, or maybe even a year and build up that comfort factor and savings. Then think, “Well, if I give it a few more months I can stick it out until bonuses get here, and it’d be crazy to give up that much money only a few months away.” This situation still may happen though even with the blech commute. We might have Mrs. SSC going to part-time at her job, and since I don’t think my company offers that, I’ll probably stay full time until things get really serious. Although, I don’t have anything to lose asking for part-time, so I will definitely ask when the time gets here.

From everything I’ve read though, once people pull the trigger and retire their biggest regret is not doing it sooner. Granted, these are mostly older people, but even some of the FIRE blogs I read echo that same sentiment. I’d love to make it sooner, but there are certain thresholds that need to be crossed financially before that can happen. Until then, I enjoy working where I do, with the people I work with and am happy plugging away at our goal until we get there. In the short term though, I’m counting down the days until school is out, and I get this traffic reprieve for a few months!

Commuting takes its’ “Toll”!

 

Man, commuting together did make a big difference!
Man, commuting together did make a big difference!

When we knew we were going to be moving to Houston, our biggest worry was about the traffic and commute distance. We limited our housing search to within 30 minutes of our office, while still being within a good public school district. Man, did that limit our choices. After finding lots of houses with aluminum wiring, or needing tens of thousands in repairs and upgrades, we started looking at the suburbs… Gah!!! We realized this would cost more in the way of gas, tolls, and time in the car, but ultimately, we were able to spend almost $100k less for our house.**

I mention this because I recently looked at our toll usage on Harris County’s Toll Road Authority page and I noticed it was easy to put a narrative to. When I switched jobs, you can see the  increases associated with trying to figure out a best commuting route, and even the effect of airport trips and other around Houston travel. It was eye opening and amusing.

When I was looking for a job, I needed it to be near downtown since we do not live near the energy corridor. I found a company with a great job opportunity that fit that criteria, and the only downside was that we wouldn’t be able to commute together anymore. Well, there was more than that, but that was the biggie. Mrs. SSC had calculated it would be about $8,000 more per year in commuting cost, post-tax (~$12k/yr pre-tax) if I took a new job. This was assumed wear and tear on the cars using online calculators, and doubling our gas usage, and toll costs, since our commute was still almost the exact same distance just to different places. Also, Mrs SSC would have to pay $70 a month to park, since we wouldn’t get the free carpool parking. Ouch!

You can see in the first months on the graph, we’re at an even $45 +/-. This was commuting together and the occasional use of the toll road on the weekends, but it was fairly consistent. In June, I started my new job and you can see the toll bill almost double, and I didn’t even start until Mid-June.

In July, it actually doubled… Something had to be done, because this was ridiculous. I’m all for efficiency but at what cost? Not this one. I first noticed that by getting on one exit later, the toll went from $1.15 to $0.75, which would save about ~$8/month or $96/year. This is assuming 4 weeks off due to holidays and vacations. Every little bit helps though.

Also, I found that my normal route of egress from the neighborhood had turned from 3-4 minutes to upwards of 8-10 minutes due to heavier traffic. I started taking a back route that got me to the same point consistently 4-5 minutes faster than going “the old way.” Plus, it avoided the toll roads totally. This was in August and you can see a big drop on the graph from ~$88 to $65. So that little measure saved $0.75 each day. Which is ~$15/month or $180/year saved. That’s getting better!

September, Mrs. SSC decided that getting on an exit later in her direction was costing more time than the $0.40 was worth so she began resuming that route, but still getting off an exit early coming home. There was a little increase, nothing big, just the ~$8 of savings previously.

It all looks red or orange, every day....
It all looks red or orange, every day….

October: I have no explanation. None, I can’t remember anything going on in October commute-wise or otherwise that would drive that up. Let’s see…. We did do a mini-surprise anniversary vacation on a cruise, so that entailed tolls down to Galveston and back. That was a bit of it, we did a lot of play-dates, and I think just got really lazy with avoiding the toll road on the weekends, and look how it added up. Almost $25 higher than average. Not counting Galveston, that would be about $20 of tolls related to not avoiding the toll road on the weekend. Maybe the kids were especially cranky when we got to that junction each time in October and the 5 minutes less in the car was worth $1.15. I’m SURE that was it, or something similar. J

As the graph points out, you can see the average levels off to ~$67/month except for months when we are flying places or have training classes in other areas of town that are easier to access with more tolls. Booo…. In general though, the overall tolls came out way better than expected. I’ve looked into getting off at earlier exits, but those Highway Robbers have the 3 closest exits to my neighborhood costing the same amount to get off. So, I skip 6 more stoplights and stay on the toll road doing 70 mph for a few more miles.

Overall, I’m still glad I switched jobs, as I really like my new company, new position, and all the people I work with. Had I drug my feet and waited until this oil price downturn, I might have missed my opportunity to leave altogether. While it did have some financial costs associated with it, I feel they are more than made up for with salary, job satisfaction, and the extra amount we are able to save towards FIRE.

** I know this strategy doesn’t fit with the MMM philosophy of live within walking distance to work, but for us that would be an extra $100k in housing costs, plus ~$12-$15k per year per child for private school when they reached school age. The public schools close to our work were rated horribly, and we didn’t see the payoff for closer living to the office.

Have you had a similar experience before with new costs associated with a new job?

Does anyone else have commuting issues like this that you deal with?

Have you been able to escape this part of the rat-race already and this post makes you even more glad you did so?

 

Even Steven Money guest post!

Today we have the pleasure of presenting our first guest post over on Even Steven! He has an eBay side hustle going to help with his plans to FIRE, so I thought I would embarrass Mrs. SSC by writing all the juicy details of her massive eBay buying failure earlier this year… I mean, her introduction into the world of eBay… You’ll have to head over to Even Steven to see exactly how Mrs. SSC wasted ~$130!!!  Oh- the suspense….

Ice Storm: Travel not advised!

Hearing about the travel blights caused by winter storm Pandora, reminded me of my own recent  weather related travel woes. So for those of you stuck in the airport, here’s something to read while you’re standing in endless lines… A few weeks ago, I got to go visit my brother and his family outside of Nashville, TN and I got caught in winter ice storm, Octavia, that shut down a lot of flights. It turned into an interesting time to say the least.

Not canceled yet.... so optimistic!
Not canceled yet…. so optimistic!

I got up that fateful morning and everything was iced over, but it still looked doable. I started checking my flight status online and nothing cancelled yet. We were about halfway to the airport when Southwest cancelled ALL their flights for the day, but I was on United. Ever optimistic we plowed on, literally, because there was about 8-10” of snow and there were no plows anywhere. I got to the airport around 9 am, just as they cancelled my flight. Not that I wasn’t expecting this, but my philosophy is, I’m not going to get home by hanging out at my brother’s house. It’s time to put on a smile, deal with lines, and try my darndest to get home as soon as possible.

I got to my gate and found the shortest line to an agent and started waiting. She was flustered already so I put on my best smile, asked her how she was doing, joked some about cranky people, and did my best to be “Mr. Nice guy you want to get to his destination.” I’d already rebooked my flight for later that day, but I wanted to get my name on standby, if possible, for an earlier flight. She checked and amazingly the 8:40 am flight hadn’t left yet, and I could get standby for that flight. This was excellent, I thought! I then realized I had eaten very little prior to leaving, due to wanting to get to the airport and on standby ASAP. Silly me. I left a refrigerator full of “free” food to come to the airport for a long day. Lesson learned. So I sought out a place to get a bite and a beer. I ate and relaxed a bit before heading back to the fray to wait, wait, and wait some more… I noticed activity near our gate, and low and behold, there were planes coming to our gate, and better yet, Sunshine! A break in the weather, and a few planes were getting de-iced, and there was even one lucky plane heading out to the runway to escape! They made calls for our plane to board, and then called my name and I had a real seat! Haha!! I got on the plane at ~2pm and everyone getting on had a grin like the cat that ate the canary! We were escaping! We just needed to get de-iced and we were on our way. Woo hoo!!

40 minutes later, we were still sitting with nothing happening when the captain made an announcement, “Um folks, there’s been a problem with the thermometer on the de-icing equipment and they’re not sure how hot that fluid is coming out. Since that’s pretty critical to us staying in the air, they’re going to switch out trucks and then de-ice us. It should only take 20-30 minutes before they start de-icing us, then we’re on our way.”

40 more minutes later, we were still sitting at the de-icing spot, and they finally started de-icing our plane. It was about 30 minutes after that when we heard another announcement, “Uh, folks, this is your captain speaking. Uhhhh, as you can see they’re de-icing us, but they still have to apply the final solution and we can be on our way. Unless they take longer than another 30 minutes, then we’ll have to go back to the gate and top off our fuel so we can make it to Houston. In the meantime, our weather window has closed, so Uhhhhh…. Uhhh…. We’re waiting on word from Headquarters for a weather update and then we’ll be on our way….?” He literally finished with an uptick in his voice at the end like he was asking a question.

Free at last - but still in Nashville...
Free at last – but still in Nashville…

The de-icing finished up, and we got tugged back to the gate to top off fuel since we missed our weather window anyway. Then we hear an announcement, “Folks, this is your captain again. Ummm, we’re going to have the flight attendants bring some refreshments around since we’ve been out here a while. We just need to have this snow dissipate and we’ll be (you guessed it) on our way….” It has been ~3 hrs and then we got pushed away from the gate again and taxied out to get the final de-icing solution sprayed on. That happened, and we went and got in line out by the runway. 40 minutes later, our captain cancelled our flight officially, and we made our way close to the gate to debark onto the tarmac.

I’d gotten to reschedule my flight while all this was happening but I had no options for staying the night somewhere. I suggested the airport was doable, but Mrs. SSC found me a room for the night instead. I got off the plane, already booked for Wed. at 6 pm, so I headed to my hotel.

At check in I decided to extend it one day more since I wouldn’t fly out until Wednesday. Bad move there. I kept calling United and after a few hours, a single seat opened up for Tuesday afternoon at 3pm.  I went downstairs to cancel my Tuesday night room and this is where it gets fun… I was told they could cancel but there would be a fee due to it being less than 24 hrs… Seriously?! With the ice storm and travel disruptions, they couldn’t waive the fee? It was almost as much as the room, too. The topper though, I was told to “take it up with corporate, but we can’t do anything here.”  Gah!!!

I tried to stay positive and just went to bed. The next day, I tried again at the front desk, but to no avail. An even crankier lady was working and she got defensive from the get go. It actual put a smile on my face her tenacity was so impressive. Side note – I don’t think that helped my case much. Same song and dance, “Take it up with corporate.” Then I asked about checking out. In a cranky Southern voice “Well, you can check out if you want, but you’re getting charged for the room!” Mr. SSC: “Yes ma’am, we’ve established that, but can’t I get something saying I checked out or tried to check out to show corporate?” Front desk: “Well, you can, but if your other flight gets cancelled again and you come back here, you’ll have to get another room, because you let this one go because you checked out! You already paid for the room! Why would you want to check out?!” Mr. SSC: (inward monologue – “So I don’t have to deal with this for one more day?” lol) “That’s a great point. You have a nice day, stay warm!”

I got to the airport, and found the shortest line and again I got on standby – just in case. All flights were “full” until Wednesday night, but I wanted to remain optimistic, because there’s nothing else to do… After a couple of “Your flight has been delayed.” I heard “Your flight is cancelled –kidding, we’re just delaying it some more.” I literally heard a gate agent say that. She got the look of death from the passengers and her co-workers after making that joke. She must’ve been new is all I can think because you just don’t mess with people like that.

Ultimately, I was able to fly home Tue night and I got in around 9 pm. Even better, I did take it up with corporate, and I just got an email stating that they would waive my fee for the 17th, and apologies around, someone must not have gotten the notice that the cancellation fee and policy was waived during the storm. Win!

Have you ever run into some situation like that? Did you keep it together or did you lose your top? Better yet, have you run into a situation where you also “lost your money”?
Let me know, so I don’t feel like the only one that’s dealt with this sort of thing.

Retirement Quest: Where to live?

Where to retire is a big question that only you and your family can answer. Maybe you plan on staying where you are now because you’ve already built a life and social network there and don’t want to disrupt it. My dad never moved away from his hometown his entire life, so retirement for him meant not working and getting to enjoy the same social network and activities he did while working. My mom, on the other hand, is more of the wandering artist type that has lived all over and doesn’t seem to stay in any one place too long. She is currently back in my hometown, but I doubt she’ll be there too long, because it gets too cold for her to want to stay too long. That led me to think of what people look for in a retirement town, or even more so, a “pre”-tirement town.

Mrs. SSC and I have been researching different towns and cities to relocate to when we pull the plug and switch to stay at home parents, since we have no desire to remain in Houston. For us though, it’s not as easy as Googling, “Where are the best places to retire”? Mainly, because the word ‘retire’ is associated with people decades older than we will be.  We want an active community, trails to hike, and rivers to fish.  A place that is overflowing with families and good public schools for our kids. A good education is essential to us, and one of the reasons we have a longer than ideal commute currently in Houston.  Sure, we could have afforded to live close to work, but those public schools closer to downtown are horrid. Meaning we would need to move or pay almost $15k/yr/kid for private freaking grade school when our kids got to school age. That’s ridiculous! My college tuition wasn’t that much per year!  Also, in our future pre-tirement town, we want topography and four seasons. After spending 6+ years in the Gulf Coast, we both miss snow, Fall, leaves changing, and seeing bumps in the horizon that aren’t overpasses or buildings. I have really appreciated being able to fire up the smoker on Thanksgiving in flip-flops, shorts and a nice Hawaiian shirt, and be perfectly comfortable outside, but I also miss getting to wear sweatshirts, sweaters, and the feeling you actually need a fire to cozy up to, and not just turn on the gas fireplace because it’s sort of cold out (it dipped below 50!! EEEEK!!!).

How have we figured out where we want to move when we depart Houston? Well, we haven’t yet, but we’re down to our short list. We started by taking those things mentioned above (topography, four seasons, education) along with our knowledge of places we lived or visited and started doing research. Combining our wants with stats on cost of living, home prices, taxes, school quality, and weather helped us cross entire geographic regions off of our list.  Take New England for instance. We both love it and think it’s pretty, even with some harsher winters, but we’d rather not incur such a high cost to live there between taxes, housing, and heating. Another region is California; it’s beautiful and the northern part of the state would be nice, however, it’s expensive, has water issues, and doesn’t meet some of our criteria.

After some time, we narrowed our scope down to the Appalachians, the Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest.

North Carolina has some appeal for us and there are some nice towns there we think could work. So we have a town or two still on the list, but we kept looking. We both liked Oregon, but man, so do a lot of other people, and some of our towns that popped out ended up seeming like Boulder,CO in terms of excellent outdoor activity but ridiculous housing cost. So there are a few Oregon towns on the list as well, but we still kept looking.

Same with Colorado; it fits a lot of criteria, but ultimately the towns we looked into got put into the B list category. Some Colorado Front Range towns are nice and fit a lot of our criteria, but if we’re in CO, we would like easier access to the ski resorts, and if we want some type of mountain living or mountain views, we thought we could find some other places that could be a better fit. Again, there is a drought/water issue that persisted for the 9 years I lived in Denver through to the present.

We even came across a town in northern Idaho that seems to have stayed at the top of the short list. Idaho… I still cringe when I look at a map and see that we’re basically looking at Southern Canada. Seriously, talk about one extreme to another. I’ve been monitoring the weather for this area, Denver, and Chicago, IL as these are all points of reference to climates Mrs. SSC and I have lived in that we liked or don’t want to be as harsh as. So far, it’s been trending just like the historical weather data has shown. Which is still pretty, pretty, cold and with a long winter season. So, lately, we are  looking back at the Appalachians with its more moderate winters, and think we may have found a good spot in western Virginia.

We both spent a lot of time in the Appalachians either growing up in the region (Mrs. SSC) or just hiking in them (Mr. SSC). Roanoke, VA has good school ratings, good home prices, good home layouts (yes, I get bored and house shop on Zillow). I find there are a lot of houses out there that would work great for us. Some of the houses need some updating, which is ideal. We want to do remodeling to make the home reflect more of our personalities, without having to redo the whole house.  Many homes have workshops already built, which is ideal for my woodworking equipment and projects. Also, there are some houses with killer views and a little land, so no suburbia feel to it either. Now, to hope the perfect house pops up on the market in another 3-4 years!

So, here is our current short list – I’m curious to see how it evolves over the next several years:

  • Roanoke, VA
  • Boone, NC
  • Coeur d’Alene, ID
  • Bend, OR

Our “long” list includes satellite towns near these, or other “B” locations in the same state. For instance, most of the smaller areas around Roanoke (Salem, Cave Springs, etc..) have good schools and housing options. The same is said for Boone, NC and Bend, OR. Mrs. SSC’s family likes to play “what town are you guys retiring to this month?” when they visit as the short list gets shuffled occasionally. It’s fun for us to research different areas, and it keeps the reality that soon, we can permanently be in one of these places at the top of our thoughts.

I think Virginia could be a great fit, and can’t wait to check it out from a “we could be living here” perspective. It feels more like home to us, and we love the green landscape of the Appalachians. This is the 6th town in the last year to top out the short list, and so far we haven’t found a deal breaker yet. They have a good tax situation, and pending Mrs. SSC’s “dry-run” for what our tax situation could be like when we retire, it might be a bonus for that state.

What is it you look for in your perfect retirement place? Someplace warm, or cold, or with abundant water, maybe abundant golf, maybe a nearby college that allows for a steady stream of renters if you are going the property investment route? Let me know, I’d love to hear about some things I may not have thought about. Does anyone else house hunt on Zillow to check out what type of houses to expect in their retirement destination, or is that just me?

Out of my control? Then get out of my mind!

After my recent post about freaking out that our early retirement plans will fail and we will be in the poorhouse by our own choices, I came across an article about people and their regrets about retirement. I found it pretty enlightening and it helped ease the worry, and caused a laugh or two at some of the answers. Ultimately, it was pretty divided between, “I should’ve planned better” and “I should’ve trusted my planning better and not worried so much about it.”

That article made me realize that I’m in the “I should’ve trusted our planning, and not gotten so freaked out about it” camp. Remember in my potato chip post, that the practical side of me that slapped me silly for spending 4 minutes debating whether or not to go with the cheaper store brand chips and save $1.50, or not? Well, my face is stinging from another slap back to reality.  I need to quit spending so much time worrying about the un-knowable. I could wallow in the land of worry if I let myself. Its so easy to just pull up a chair and have a good time in “Freak-out Land” worrying about everything from terror attacks on U.S. soil, Ebola (get the masks!), the economy crashing, layoffs (come on oil prices, creep back up…), will the kids stay healthy, and a myriad of other worries I have ZERO control over. Feel free to add yours in the comments below. These aren’t things that I typically worry about, rather things that someone could worry about, and get themselves all worked up over.

For instance, last week, I spent a good 15 minutes listening to one of my co-workers talk about how her biggest fear in our office is that our doors don’t have locks. First of all, hooray to a company that still has actual offices and doors, and not cubes, fishbowls, or any variation on open work spaces*. These are pretty solid wooden doors too, so I mean, hey, I can actually shut it, and have a private phone call if needed. Score one for those doors! Unless you’re my co-worker. She worries about not having locks, not so she can take naps, or do whatever she needs to behind locked doors at work… She’s worried about, “When someone goes postal and I hear gunshots, I won’t be able to lock the door!” This is in quotes, because that’s exactly how she said it. As a certainty, nay, an inevitability that she needs to be prepared for. She then went through her plan of tipping over the file cabinet to block the door (I’d be really surprised if she could actually do that just based on physics and basic principles of force), and hiding behind her desk… She’s really worried about it and started hyperventilating a little while talking about it. I mean, people, people, people, get ahold of yourselves. Yes, that can happen, but we’re talking about a building that has pretty decent security with badges you need to swipe to get anywhere, security guards that wander around, although they seem to be on their phones more than “securing” anything. But the point is, this isn’t even a sort of work place where you read about these types of occurrences happening. Yes it can happen anywhere, but why should I waste time, energy and emotion worrying about it?

This was when my practical side slapped me and said, “You sound exactly like this when you talk about FIRE fail, and being broke, broke, broke-ity broke due to a circumstance you can’t foresee. The only difference is, that you have actually tried to account for unknowns with cushions built in here and there. These are to lessen that emotional angst about having no contingency plan if the sh!t hits the fan. All of the simulation models show your plan working, plus you and Mrs. SSC can be WAY more effective with very little money due to your ability to know how to prioritize, budget, and get jobs if needed! Snap out of it buddy, because you sound just like her!”

Soooo, that was when I thought, “You know, I make some pretty good points!” We’ve accounted for contingencies as best as we can. Except for working for 10-15 more years to gather enough cash and savings to cover most of those extraneous contingencies, there’s just no way of knowing what the future may hold. Anyways, lets get back to different retiree’s regrets from that article I mentioned earlier… One person’s regret was not retiring sooner because he’d spent his whole life building the perfect retirement for his family only to be diagnosed with 2 types of incurable cancer, soon after retiring. He was happy his family would get to benefit from it, but regretted not spending more time with them instead of working so much, and not taking more vacations. I’ve experienced that scenario first hand with a close friend whom died 2 weeks after retiring due to some rare virus. There are lots of things we could worry about, but I’d rather be a “cross that bridge when it gets built” kind of guy than a “Let’s figure out a way to get across a bridge that doesn’t exist, and we have no idea how big it is, how wide it is, or how long it is” kind of guy.

Like Aaron Rodgers told his fans when they were freaking out, “R-E-L-A-X. Relax….” So, I’m going to try and make that my approach. I’ll be prudent, but not Chicken Little, and I’ll stop freaking out about retirement, economic collapse, stock market fails, world wars, zombie apocalypses (it could happen you know!) and any other things that could wreck our retirement financial planning.  Mrs. SSC swears that if I can stop wanting to prepare for EVERY case, and just for an average case we could knock quite a bit of time off of our working years.  Maybe that is part of the key, trusting yourself to be innovative and be able to handle the black swan events in family finances.  Maybe we will have to get a job for a year or two to make some extra cash to cover a medical situation or stock decline… but isn’t the chance of needing to work for a year in the middle of retirement better than then definitively resigning yourself to work a few extra years just to cover some hypothetical situation?

Do you have freak-outs about stuff you can’t control? What do you do to reign yourself in? Do you think there will be a zombie apocalypse? If so, how would it affect your early retirement?

I’d love to hear your comments and what you occasionally worry about.

 

* – A “fishbowl” is a term used to describe the offices at my last company. 2 solid thin walls on each side, a big glass window in back, and then the front of the cube is all glass. Yes, there’s a sliding door and some of it is frosted, but with it being glass, it has quite a “fishbowl” look to it.

Why FIRE “Freaks me out, man!”

WHYOver the last few days, I’ve had a bit of a revelation regarding FIRE and my comfort level with it. I realized that I’m pretty uneasy about walking away from our nice paying jobs with paychecks that come in every other week. Trading that to enter a life that depends on a pile of cash not getting drained, and even growing while we whittle away at it year after year hoping we planned correctly and it lasts until we die, makes me a wee bit nervous. The biggest revelation wasn’t that I’m nervous about that being successful, it was the WHY behind me being nervous. After some contemplation,  I realized that it boils down to this: In my childhood, I was always subjected to fears about money, specifically, not having enough of it, and not utilizing what we did have effectively at all. And now as an adult, I worry that I could end up back in that situation, by choice! Gah!!!

Here’s the back story:
My parents fit the typical American model of “no emergency fund so to speak, definitely no savings, no concept of financial responsibility or good decision making with money”. Yep, typical American. We lived literally paycheck to paycheck, and there were times we would have $0 until dad got paid. Sometimes it might only be a day, sometimes 2-3, it just depended on what bills REALLY had to get paid and which ones could be pushed off. The cars were NEVER reliable, so there was always an impending car repair being put off until it really broke as well. This was always stressful, although I’m guessing my parents didn’t realize how stressful it was for us kids. I don’t know if my brother or sister ever noticed or worried about this, but man, it was one of the loudest things in my head. “Where is grocery money coming from? Why are they buying that, that’s our lunch money. How are we going to get the lights turned back on and have money for gas to get us to school, the grocery store, dad to work, etc… why do other families not seem to struggle with this so much?” Seriously, if anyone is familiar with the show Malcom in the Middle, or Shameless, those shows were more in line with my childhood, but more like Shameless and less funny than Malcom in the Middle. We couldn’t win for losing.

For those reasons and others, I’ve been working since before I was legally able and was the “best” in my family in regards to money sense. If you’ve read any of my Bad Decisions posts, you’ll think, “Holy hell, if Mr SSC is the best in his family, that is a pretty bad situation!” Anyway, I hate the feeling of being broke. I went through that for another stretch in college when working full time and doing school full-time. I broke my collarbone, and was laid up for about 8 weeks with no work, which meant 8 weeks with no income, you know, I think this was what kicked off my student loan becoming my emergency fund money and more problem. I burned through my meager savings pretty quickly during then, but fortunately had a super awesome landlord that let me repay back rent, with no penalty, over the next few months. Still, except for that time and growing up, I usually had a decent savings fund, paid bills on time, sometimes even early, and tried not to overspend my income. Yes, the wheels came off that in grad school, but I was within sight of a great paying job then, so it’s okay, right? According to my family, sure!

Back to the point of this post. Even thinking back to those times makes my skin literally crawl, and makes me feel frantic and I go into hoarder mode. The stress levels peak (I’m seriously stressed just writing this post and being so deep in thought about those times, ugh…) and I just want to get a second job as a buffer to ease the worry about money, lol. It’s ridiculous. On the one hand, I’ve done my best to avoid turning out like that in my current life. I told myself in 7th grade, I’d never live like that and I’m not settling for that to be the lifestyle I strive to achieve. Rather, I promised myself I’d do better and find a way that I wouldn’t have to worry about money 24/7/365. So far I’ve done pretty good on that promise. I’ve had my own missteps, but not really lifestyle failures, just bad, bad decisions here and there…

That gets me long-windedly to the point again. I have this constant fear of ending up like that again, which if you’ve read any of my “light-bulb” posts realize, I am NOT down for the Ramen, trailer lifestyle just to not have to go in to the office, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Maybe this sheds more light on why, but this was my main criticism with FIRE in the beginning. Now that it’s something we’re both on board with and focusing on, I still have this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me, “You’re not saving enough… This will never work… You’ll quit your job and be dumpster diving in no time, stressing about how to pay utilities, find food for the kids, etc…” I know it’s silly because the numbers work out, the calculators and simulators show we’ll be fine, and that’s with all these extra “cushions” built into the yearly budgets. Growing up how I did, I KNOW we can live on WAY less than we have planned, if need be. I have no problem doing that. I just get freaked out thinking about giving up a really good paycheck.

In the end, I know if our FIRE fails, there will be lots of other people, companies, economies in more dire straits than us, because something really big went really wrong at a higher level than just our financial planning. I also know I’m strong enough to survive anything life has thrown at me so far. And I know that more likely than not, it will all just work out fine, but that doesn’t help to quiet that little voice in the back of my head telling me otherwise.

What types of fears do you have over FIRE, planning of it, and the success of it coming true and holding up for years and years? Let me know, because I’d like to know I’m not the only one out there with these types of fears.

Decisions, decisions…

Which would you chose?
Which would you chose?

This past weekend, I was at the grocery and had an interesting moment arguing with myself over a dollar fifty… Yep, a dollar fifty… It started like this.

I was in the potato chip aisle looking at which options to get for my lunch the upcoming weeks. I usually tend to get the mix bags of 20 or so bags to keep up variety. I’ve tried buying a big bag of the same chip and parsing it out, but it never tends to last as long, because I overfill and then I get bored of the same chips all week long. Anyway, as I’m contemplating the different flavor combos for the next 3 weeks, I notice the price difference in store brand versus name brand. I’ve noticed this before, but rarely pay too much attention to it. As I stared back and forth, I was thinking, “Hmmm, $4.98 vs $3.48. The bags are the same size, flavors are mostly the same. I’ve tried these before and they’re ok, I mean it’s hard to screw up chips.   Hmmm, no Cheetos in the store brand, or equivalent… Hmmm, $3.48 or $4.98? It is $1.50…. We could save that just by choosing different chips…” At this point Mrs. SSC had moved on to the dairy section while I stood locked in debate with myself over which brand to choose.

Suddenly, I felt this sharp stinging sensation like I’d been slapped. Startled, I was like “WTF?! Where did that come from?” Then I realized it came from me. Not my logical side, but my more practical side which just entered the debate. Apparently, this whole chip debate had only included the frugal side and the logical side and they were both about to agree on store brand when the practical side jumped in and literally knocked some sense into me. It went like this, “Slap! Seriously? $1.50?! You idiot just wasted 3 minutes standing here debating about chips over $1.50?! Look dummy, you’ll have the rest of your life on a budget when you can eat store brand chips. Right now, you can spend a $1.50 and get the name brand chips. And QUIT standing in the chip aisle looking slack-jawed at the chips. This isn’t a groundbreaking Supreme Court decision, it’s chips!”

So I grabbed the name brand and wandered on with our grocery shopping. That got me thinking. I’m at least becoming aware of being frugal, and have worked it into my life in many other ways. Recall the tolls and money saved by using the next on-ramp? Now, I skip the morning tolls altogether due to finding an even better route. But back to the point of this post. I have no problem eating store brand on a lot of things. Our local grocery makes awesome store brand foods, and they’re almost always better quality and price than name brand. I also don’t like the feeling that I’m shorting myself just to save a buck. It  makes my skin crawl and reminds me of the times growing up when we had to short ourselves because there were no bucks to save, much less spend on things other than rice, beans, other staples, and utilities. So I find it’s worth the $1.50 to “treat” myself to something that yes, I could buy cheaper. If everything is save here, pinch there, cut this out, cut that out, I tune out and lose interest in any savings because there’s nothing that bring a little joy.

What are the little things you still get even though you know they could be cut out? Do you have any things like “my chips” that give you a little smile when you enjoy them?

Let me know, I’d love to hear about them!