Financial Independence High NW CEO, can't convince myself I'm ready for FIRE - why? |
- High NW CEO, can't convince myself I'm ready for FIRE - why?
- My Game is Weak.
- Daily FI discussion thread - December 10, 2017
- An example of how learning to solve a problem saved me time and money
- FI Plan - Case Study
- Losing interest in saving because of already saving
- Which accounts do I invest into if I make $30,000 and under? Planning to FIRE in late 40’s or early 50’s.
- FIRE with less than 50k
- Is there any reason to not keep a large size emergency fund in bonds?
- Uber as commuter benefits
- Grad student who isn't sure if FI/RE is a good goal
- Need FIRE advice - complex siuation
| High NW CEO, can't convince myself I'm ready for FIRE - why? Posted: 09 Dec 2017 07:14 PM PST Throwaway FI lurker. Just turned 40, married sole income earner with 3 kids under 10. I have ~$7.5m net worth with ~$2m in cash, $2m in 401k / IRA (60% allocated) , $1m in rental property, $1m in home equity, $1m in income producing company stock. I live in an expensive part of the country with kids in public schools that I don't want to displace, mortgage is <$1m. I have been working at a fever pace since I graduated high school, fought up to CEO role at an important regional business. I am exhausted after work every day and it's getting harder to deal with family needs after work, let alone any sort of hobbies or interests. As CEO weekends aren't off limits for work, and I usually wind up answering time critical emails throughout, take calls in the middle of weekend family activities. In moments of peace when I look at my balance sheet I don't understand why I keep pushing so hard. Part of it is disbelief that I could completely my nest egg into the market, and expect the return profile that most in the FI community can find their way too. Part of it is realizing that as far as I've come, in the next 10 years I could probably 2 - 3x my NW by staying focused and in the fight - lots of my contemporaries talk about building "generational" wealth as a badge of honor to keep up the hours. I have worked jobs ranging from hard physical labor on up, and I am extremely grateful for my position, but trying to understand a path forward. I respect the hell out of the FI community, welcome your comments. EDIT - I am humbled by the amount of time the FI community has put into your thoughtful responses, THANK YOU. Some true eye openers, I'm going to ingest and maybe post a follow-up with some additional pointed questions. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2017 07:20 AM PST TL;DR: Otherwise smart guy keeps making dumb/lazy mistakes in his financial affairs, and it is seriously slowing his path to FI as well as filling him with regret and self-reproach. What should he do to change this pattern in himself? My (46M) "game" is weak. What I mean by that is I am quite inefficient or plain bad at behaviors that would clearly increase my yearly savings and thus speed me on my way to FI. Here are a list of categories and examples:
The story is not all dire. I have managed to save quite a bit from just being frugal, finally managed to start investing, and I've made some side money over the years. But there are still a lot of holes in the boat that slow my pace to FI/ER and that just stress me. In fact, we would have been retired probably 2-5 years ago had I not made these mistakes (particularly with investing), and now my wife, in middle age, is working the job that she hates more than anything ever before in her life. That kills me. The most recent example: I moved this summer and knew of a type of basic job I could get that, it turns out, can bring in maybe $700/week before taxes. Not great money, but better than the $0 I was earning in those hours. Well, my brilliant plan was to "give it a month or so" before applying for this job--since I mostly didn't want to do it, and hoped I'd land a better job before that. (Of course, why couldn't I be working this job while applying and waiting on other jobs!? That's the kind of stupidity I demonstrate so often). That "month or so" turned into 2.3 months, at which point I applied only to find that the Thanksgiving break caused my application to be delayed almost a month. Ultimately, I got the job, but missed out on about $7,000 in earnings! Sure, I also had all that free time to "enjoy", but I basically just hung out at home doing not much of anything anyway. Then, when my wife went to book a Christmas flight abroad, we were very concerned about the extra ~$1,200 for the flight (due to the choice of days she had to fly) and decided to rebook for February. She will not be seeing her sorely missed parents at Christmastime due to an extra $1,200....when I sat around for 3 months not earning about $6k after taxes! I'm, in other ways, supposedly a very smart guy. I had an advanced degree in a difficult field, talents, etc. But I have such a blind spot in this regard. It seems to come out of a mixture of laziness, fear, annoyance of hassles, procrastination, and being extremely isolated from those who can "rub off on me" in terms of good patterns. How can I renovate my "game" and stop screwing myself over? [link] [comments]  |
| Daily FI discussion thread - December 10, 2017 Posted: 10 Dec 2017 03:07 AM PST Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply! Have a look at the FAQ for this subreddit before posting to see if your question is frequently asked. Since this post does tend to get busy, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| An example of how learning to solve a problem saved me time and money Posted: 10 Dec 2017 12:42 PM PST Yesterday, after having upgraded an SSD in my computer (pretty much the last main bottleneck on my computer I'll notice in the next two years), my gaming performance suddenly and precipitously dropped. In one game I normally ran on high graphics with no slowdown, I was suddenly stuttering like crazy even on low. I'd built my computer with the help of guides, but this was a situation I hadn't faced before. I'm not a tech wizard by any means. What happened? Did I screw up my GPU somehow when I temporarily unseated it to get a better look at my motherboard? I had a few options. Figure out the problem, take it somewhere to get it figured out, or replace parts and hope. To get it figured out would have been at least $50, not including parts, plus I wouldn't have had my computer in that time, etc. etc. If I were to replace parts, I would have started with the gpu. And while I'm replacing I might as well upgrade. And, it wouldn't have ended there because it wasn't the GPU at fault as I'll mention in a second. I'd be looking at probably $400+ on the upgrade, plus another probably $150+ to "fix" the real problem. So I decided to tackle it head-on, before getting anyone else to look at it. What was the actual issue? I downloaded some GPU monitoring/tweaking software, and lowered the fan curve so it was more likely to stay cool. Boot up a game - slightly better, but still really choppy. Something else is going on here. Download some more software, this time to monitor fans and temperature. GPU temps are doing fine, especially with the lowered fan curve - they were only hitting 60C at max before but were comfortably down at 40C with this change. But hello, what's this, CPU temps are nearly 100C?! So I turn off my computer, jiggle the fan and sure enough it's super loose. Pull it off completely, man that thermal paste is dry. Turns out it wasn't well seated in the first place, and jiggling around parts when adding the SSD made it break the thermal paste bond completely (what little must have been left with how dry it was), leading to very little cooling. And now that I knew the issue, it took $11.23 to buy some thermal paste and isopropyl alcohol to clean off the old and install the new. Computer runs as nicely as ever, CPU temps stay around 50C on the very high end. Net result: At the very least $40 saved, probably hundreds since I bet I would have jumped to upgrading parts instead, and even more important: the enrichment of knowing how my computer works just a little better than I did before. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2017 03:11 AM PST Hi guys, I am 36 years old and I am an economist working for a multinational professional services firm in Europe. I am almost married (although without children), so I can not freely make decisions such as changing residence or renting a house of a lower level than the current one (rent is € 15.5 k/year, my wife pays half of that). I work in a very specific area of financial consulting, not directly related to M&A or IB. Decent salary, counting fixed and variable compensation. I do not think a long-term career is feasible in my current job, for various reasons. However, it is a relatively safe position that could still develop for a few years, in which there would be some economic progression as well. If I change jobs, I assume that it would be more feasible to get a job in the financial area of a company, which would mean a significant reduction in my current salary. A professional change would require investment (economic and time and effort)... most likely CFA+MBA (€ 50-60 k), but I'm not at all sure that that is my wish. I have not bought any property nor do I have to pay a mortgage. I have no car (I do not like them and I do not need them, public transport is efficient in my city, although I spend quite a lot in taxis/Uber). I suppose that one day I will inherit a house in my hometown (but it is not where I work and live). I do not lead a frugal life, but I do not have absurd expenses either ... I just live well (spending on restaurants, once a year I take relatively expensive holidays and I have some superficial expenses like personal trainer, supplements and technology items and other hobbies). My goal is not so much to retire and stop working as to maintain an acceptable standard of living once I change jobs and have a less demanding position in terms of hours and pressure. Having my own business, not related to consultancy and professional services, maybe it would be a long-term solution, although entrepreneurship is not easy in my country. Retiring early would be a dream, but who knows... My estate is distributed as follows:
My portfolio is 30% stocks -mostly US-, 50% investment funds (active management) and 30% ETFs (S&P500, Emerging Markets and Bitcoins). YTD yield is over 8% (it could have been more, but I had some awful domestic investments and my IF for US markets -Fidelity America- incomprehensibly, had a bad year). My investment philosophy with stocks is medium-long term and based on trend analysis. For IFs I follow a very long-term strategy and I make periodic contributions (it could be said that they are completely opposite strategies). IFs cover almost all markets (Europe, US, Global... a bit in local markets, a bit in emerging markets... some small caps and some bets on specific sectors like healthcare, robotics...). I can give a detail of this if you want. In 2018 I want to make changes... maybe get rid of so much cash and increase my investments but looking for lower risk alternatives. I'd love to hear your your voices and your opinions on my situatioon, I'm open to every alternative. Cheers and thanks for reading! [link] [comments]  |
| Losing interest in saving because of already saving Posted: 10 Dec 2017 06:31 AM PST Late 30s and have 1.5M in savings (Stocks, 401k, real estate etc). Assuming retirement at about 60, calculators suggest that using the Principle of 1.5M, I would have over $5M by the time I am ready to retire. If I kept depositing into my savings from my own income, it would raise my retirement total by another 200- 500k. An addition in the total savings, but not enough to justify the impact on my quality of life. This mathematical impact is changing whether I want to continue saving and is now making me think that its better for me to spend more money now (and enjoy it), than wait till later. Anyone else feel like saving more at this point in their life is simply not worth it anymore? How do you get past it (or do you not?) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2017 12:15 AM PST I make 15k a year currently and 24k soon. I usually save about 1,200 a month on the 24k a year income. It is frustrating that much of the information I find seem inapplicable to my circumstances. I am very very frugal. I have no grand ambition. I don't need as much as most to FIRE. I just want to live with less stress and more time to pursue my aspie interests. Now my question is to put my money into a Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, or regular brokerage account? I am 22 so at least 25 more years of working. I'm not going to need any of the money until I FIRE. Income will probably never go past 30k, not adjusting for inflation. I'm quite healthy and disciplined so I don't have health issues. I will not get married or have kids. A 40k condo/apartment will be my only real estate asset. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Dec 2017 04:44 PM PST I'm looking for people who managed to FIRE on a salary of less than 50k a year. I have an associates in a job and a field I absolutely love but the pay isn't spectacular. I see so many story's of people FIREing on six figure salaries and I just want to know that someone has successfully done what I'm trying to do. Anyone? How long did it take you? What % were you saving per month? [link] [comments]  |
| Is there any reason to not keep a large size emergency fund in bonds? Posted: 10 Dec 2017 09:04 AM PST I would like to take a sabbatical sometime soon ish. I'm thinking of making my emergency fund large enough to accommodate it, but I am not sure when it would be. Sometime in the next 2-3ish years. I am thinking this will be about 50k I need to save. Stocks won't be a great choice because I will need somewhat fast access to it. Should I do bonds then, or a money market account? Or is stocks worth the risk if I need to pull that much in the next 2-3 years? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Dec 2017 06:04 PM PST Does anyone know if UberPool Qualifies as a qualified IRS commuter benefit? [link] [comments]  |
| Grad student who isn't sure if FI/RE is a good goal Posted: 10 Dec 2017 09:50 AM PST I'm starting graduate school and my take home is a bit over $1800 a month. Luckily, I went to a school near my home and my parents are letting me live at home rent free with the occasional free meal thrown in there. This means I can comfortably put away $1,000 a month in savings and investments, meaning I will save $12,000 a year for 5 years. In comes the issue. I read a lot of the advice on this sub and want to put myself in the best position financially to hopefully FI/RE; however, I think my more immediate goal would be to buy property. Should I still be maxing out my Roth IRA when it is approximately half my savings? My end-goal is to FI/RE but my short-term goal is to own a home and I'm afraid a long term savings plan would limit that possibility. If anyone has any helpful advice I'd love to hear it. One additional note, it's graduate school for a STEM field focused on pharmaceuticals, so the post-school job has the potential to be very lucrative. P.S. I'm pretty sure the recently passed tax bill is going to nail my take-home hard but I'm not certain where it will put me so I'm just going to bury my head in the sand until I see my paycheck drop. [link] [comments]  |
| Need FIRE advice - complex siuation Posted: 10 Dec 2017 12:57 PM PST I think it's time, at age 41, to admit that my fatalistic approach to finances is not working at all. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Here are the current stats, which I admit are largely self-created, despite economic cycles:
Personality traits:
Go. [link] [comments]  |
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