I QUIT MY JOB TWO YEARS AGO!
Isn’t that crazy? I can’t quite believe it’s been two years of early retirement. Two years with no boss, no annoying colleagues, and living every day like it’s the weekend. I can hardly believe it, and can’t wait to dive into it. What are my finances like, after two years with no income? What has it been like emotionally to leave a career in software engineering and instead take on the age old wisdom to sleep when my baby sleeps (he’s 8 months old and meows).
What Do You Even Do With Your Time, Financial Mechanic?
In my first year of retirement, I traveled throughout SE Asia. In my second year I went back to SE Asia for 3 months but the rest of the time, I mostly stayed local. I am originally from Colorado, so I spent more time exploring California. I went to Big Bear, hiked around Santa Barbara, and hosted get togethers with friends. Then in January my partner had some time off. He’d heard me talk about Thailand (where I spent my 4th month of retirement) so much that he wanted to go too. We kicked 2024 off by flying there together.
Takeaway: During this trip I learned the value of booking cooking classes and food tours. Highly recommend, especially if you are going somewhere with cuisine like Thai food. I met some really fun travelers and know vaguely how to make curry as long as all of the the ingredients are sourced and prepped for me in little bowls.
After my partner left to go back to work (whomp whomp) I continued on to do some solo travel to Sri Lanka and then the Philippines. That was all of my international travel for the year after coming home in Mid-March.
Sometimes it felt like a waste to be home when I could be traveling. The pressure to be doing something EPIC all the time when I don’t have work to anchor me was enormous. I had to (and keep having to) remind myself that 3 months abroad is still a long time, and still a privilege! Through so much travel, I came to appreciate being home even more.
In late March, my partner proposed to me (again. It’s been about 4 years since we split and we are back together now)! The story of our relationship is fueling material for a book I’ve been working on. According to my writing software Scriviner, I have written about 79,495 words, which equates to about 300 pages. So if you are curious, you will get the whole story when that (hopefully) gets published!
A Poem Dedicated to the Second Year of Early Retirement
Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
The Domestic
In the spring, I started selling a lot of things on Facebook Marketplace to prepare for an imminent move to Sacramento. I explored the little things in Santa Barbara that I missed the first few years: the botanic gardens, walks on the mesa, day trips to cute nearby towns like Ojai. I also worked on my ceramics projects and started taking a memoir writing class.
Then we said goodbye to Santa Barbara and moved to Sacramento!
You Promised Us Numbers
It’s been a while since I kept monthly expense reports. I am not an excel-sheeter/planner/tracker by nature. I kept those records for you, dear reader. And also because you need to know your spending in order to know if you can retire. Along those lines, I should probably keep track of spending to know if I can stay retired… but I didn’t.
If you recall, I retired with $650,000. See exciting announcement here: It’s Happening! I’m Retiring At Age 29 With $650,000.
Last year, I logged onto Empower Dashboard to see how I did in my first year. I clocked in at about $730k.
So what’s my net worth going to be this year? For some side income, I helped a few people design their resumes to help land them jobs. I earned about $500 from bank interest in my High Yield Savings Account (I like Ally!). So I made about $1,000 total in one year on my own endeavors. I do wish this was a bit higher! However, the stock market did it’s own thing. It has been on a run, hitting an all-time high last month.
This year I hit a personal record breaking net worth of $860,000 as shown here on my Empower Personal Dashboard.
I did not work at all, yet my investments brought in the same amount as a job paying $105k per year (!!!)
Funding My Lifestyle
I still have not sold any stock. I have been drawing down on my cash cushion and supplementing with any dividends that weren’t being reinvested. However, I think the time is coming soon for me to sell as my cash cushion is low. It started with about $20k-25k when I first quit my job. Now I only have about $7k of liquid funds, which is getting to be too low for my comfort.
Expenses
I do not have exact numbers for my spending yet. I plan on doing a deep dive later. However, as a benchmark, my dashboard shows a year spending of $24,700, or an average of about $2k per month. With this spending, I would be good to go with a portfolio of about $625k.
BUT just to make it complicated, the dashboard includes a joint spending account that my partner also funds. This account pays for our total rent and other shared expenses like groceries. The dashboard shows all expenses from that account, but we actually split them up. The software doesn’t account for that. It’s cool to see that I could pay for the entire rent myself and still come in under budget!
However, my actual spending is more likely in the range of $15-20k. It’s a bit hand-wavey, but at least I know even with the maximum number I’m not at risk of overspending in retirement.
What’s In Store
We are only going to be in Sacramento for a year, but then the world is our oyster. We plan on taking a few months to travel in the summer, but we also have to choose where to live! For the last 10 years, most of where we lived was dependent on my partner’s career. When I got to choose, I lived in the UK and Amsterdam. Now he’s about to have to the freedom to decide where to go as he can work remotely. So we have some big decisions on the horizon, including another move. (I don’t want to think about it having just finished moving to Sacramento…)
I do plan on continuing to work on the book and start querying, contacting agents, and doing all of that fun stuff!
What Do You Want To Know?
What questions do you have about early retirement? Did I answer of them in this post: Cracking The Code To Early Retirement: 17 Revealing Insights To Your Burning Questions!
If not, leave a comment in the space below!
If you have any opinions on great places for early retirees to live, drop me a comment for that too!
I always look forward to your intermittent emails,they are really fun,engaging and informative
Genuine question, why do you call him your partner? To me, this word sounds so transactional and commercial, as in business partner. Rough and unromantic. How about boyfriend, fiance, bird, papasito or something like that? I’m not criticising you, I’m just giving my perception of this word and am curious to hear your thoughts.
Wow. Fantastic stuff, FM. I envy your flexibility-enabled travel. I hope to get back to that scenario once my youngest goes off to college in a few years. Also, amazing about the portfolio growth. I imagine you do double takes when you see the numbers. 😉
If I had a drink– I’d spit take every time! It’s wild to me. It’s helpful to remember that we’ve been on a run and it can easily go the other direction! But I’ll take it this way 🙂 I look forward to flexibility-enabled travel one day for you too!
That net worth is FIRE! Is this the resident partner? Write that book! 😀 Nice update.
Yes, ol’ Mr. Mechanic is back but I haven’t had the nerve to write an update post after the last one 🙂
How do you keep your expenses so low? And what was the cost of that place you pictured in Santa Barbara? As it certainly looks nice and I thought SB a very expensive place? Same question about your living arrangement in Sacramento and cost? As just housing alone I would think would make your expenses much higher. But congratulations on your retirement and best wishes going forward as well.
Hi Lou! I recorded all of my expenses for the first few years of the blog here: https://financialmechanic.com/category/expense-reports/
That includes my portion of the rent of the place pictured in Santa Barbara (which ranged from $2.6-$3k while I lived there). We got lucky finding a place that was priced under market. The rent was raised to $3.5k after we moved, and probably could have even rented for more.
One way I’ve kept costs low in the past is living with roommates. Renting out a room in a house can bring costs down a lot! I’ve also lived alone, paying the full rent myself while living in Amsterdam. It really depends on the location and being really diligent in the search process. I’ve even negotiated rent down before moving in.
You wrote in 2021 about leaving an abusive relationship. Is this partner the same person?
Yes
Can you tell us exactly which stocks/index funds/EFTS you invest in?
I’m primarily a VTSAX-and-chill person, which is my own strategy and not investment advice. Low cost index funds.