Financial Independence Daily FI discussion thread - January 25, 2020 |
- Daily FI discussion thread - January 25, 2020
- NYT: 38yo attempts to FIRE in Costa Rica, pays $3000 rent, buys SUV, gives up after 11 months
- 24, male. Just hit 100k NW. Immigrant, moved to Canada as a student in August 2017
| Daily FI discussion thread - January 25, 2020 Posted: 25 Jan 2020 12:08 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]  |
| NYT: 38yo attempts to FIRE in Costa Rica, pays $3000 rent, buys SUV, gives up after 11 months Posted: 25 Jan 2020 07:36 AM PST I Quit New YorkCameron Carling, 38, left to pursue a dream life in Costa Rica. Then he quit that, too. Interview by Alex Williams Jan. 20, 2020 I moved to New York in 2007 from Los Angeles, where I had been living after college at U.C.L.A. You show up in New York for a week in September, and you're like, This is the most magical goddamned place on the planet. This is where all of the things are happening in the world. I had no job, and figured that New York would just provide for me, and it nearly didn't. I was on the verge of running out of borrowed money when I landed a job at a huge tech company via a temp agency. That turned into a full-time gig, and I ended up working there for 11 years. I met my wife, Marcella, two weeks after I arrived, at a party. New York was awesome as a couple with no kids. We would go to outdoor movies in Bryant Park, see the symphony in Central Park. But after a decade or so, I started to burn out. Part of it was that my wife and I had two kids and we were living in an 1,100-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn. It's a common refrain, but trying to raise a kid in New York is like growing an oak tree in a thimble. Also, I'm originally from Utah, and wanted to be closer to nature, but in New York it's hard to find a tree that's not growing out of cement. One day I was out on a terrace at work and listening to the hum of the city, and it just felt so unnatural. "Menacing" is too harsh a word, but it's this hum of anxiety. Everyone is so tense, so hunched. Even the cars feel hunched. I thought, I've got to get out of here. A buddy of mine had already given me a book called "Tools of Titans," and that got me into the FIRE movement. It stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The idea is that you learn to cut out luxuries and extra expenses and try to boost your personal savings rate as high as 70 percent of your income. There's this concept called geo-arbitrage, where you take your savings and move to a place with a lower cost of living. My wife had always wanted to live abroad, so I started running the numbers. If we moved to a cheaper country, I thought I could just retire, and we'll all be happy. I could write a book. My wife speaks Spanish, and wanted our kids to learn it as well, so Spain was one option. We went on a fact-finding trip to Granada and Valencia, but life there rhymed too closely with New York. We'd still be living in an apartment building, in a city. It was New York with an accent. We figured we couldn't look at every single country, so let's just zero in on one. Costa Rica comes up on the list of everyone's favorite places to vacation. It's beautiful, there's tons of outdoors stuff, and it has good international schools, which became sort of the tail wagging the dog for us. The whole family went down there on spring break and ended up in a town called Playa Potrero. It had this great view of the ocean, and you could hear howler monkeys in the jungle. You get swept up by the beauty of it. Also, it is very New York opposite. There's one road. My wife was an elementary schoolteacher, but she took time off for the kids, and was just working part-time. She loves New York and was hesitant, but she felt outnumbered. She felt everybody needed more space. For the most part she was trying to support me on this I've-got-to-get-out-of-here mission. I was in this mind-set of, I'm never going to work for a company again, so I put in notice at work, and then it was a mad dash to start packing up our lives. We moved to Costa Rica in June 2018. Soon after we got there, Marcella took a job teaching first grade at the dual-language school our kids went to. So we did a swap. I became what they call an "amo de casa," a house husband. We ended up spending a little more on housing than we wanted to. We knew people who lived a little more rustically, with no washer, dryer, no air-conditioning. You can get that for $300 a month. But we didn't know how long we were going to be down there and we wanted to land in a good spot. So we rented a modern two-bedroom place on the beach. It was $3,000 a month, but it had a pool, and we would open up the gates to the backyard, and that was the sand. I took about three months to decompress, but I realized pretty quickly, I couldn't retire. This is insane. I've worked all my life. I get a lot of joy and fulfillment by creating things. And so, I started writing a book with a friend of mine back in Utah who wanted to adapt his podcast into a book. That was an interesting part of the move. I was 38 and just starting out as a writer. People said you can't do that, it's too hard. But moving to a new country was this way to uproot some of these limiting beliefs, the idea that you can't just go and do something totally different. Sure you can. So I was writing the book, but my full-time job was mostly taking care of the house and grocery shopping. I had this very silly, not-real vision of riding my bike to the store and filling up my little basket with fruits and vegetables, but in reality, the roads are obscenely dangerous. There's so much rain that they're designed with a drop-off of three feet on either side for drainage, and everyone uses the same road — and when I say everyone, I mean cars, people on foot, people on bikes, dogs. You try going down the road and all of a sudden a cow appears out of nowhere. We ended up having to buy a car, a big Toyota S.U.V., but you pay at least 50 percent more for a car there than you would in the United States, because of all the taxes. The nice thing about the town was that there was a very intense, small-town feel, so breaking into the expat community was not super-difficult. But we were looking for an integrated experience, and it was much harder to break into the local community. I tried to volunteer a couple of times, but my Spanish wasn't up to snuff. Also, my wife has always been more the social connector, and I'm the introvert who can sit inside all day long. But she was working full-time, so we were in the wrong roles. Our kids loved it there, and probably would have stayed forever, but we already knew by about three or four months that it wasn't the right place for us. That December, we took a weekend trip to see the Arenal volcano, and I was like, This is going to be great, we're going to go out into nature. We were staying at this random Airbnb, this giant place like a furniture showroom way out in the middle of nowhere, and there was a bat in the ceiling that was making all this noise. I had just tried to hack a coconut in half with a dull machete and almost cut my toe off, and it was like, All right, what are we doing? We were already planning to head back to New York for the winter break, and when we got there I met up with a former colleague of mine at my old company, and she was setting up a new team in Austin. I thought, O.K., we've got to start making some moves in another direction. We moved from Costa Rica to Austin after 11 months, but I think we had to move to Costa Rica to end up in Austin. It was all about that relativity. Speaking for myself, I had to have that swing, to go there and say, "That's not right, the answer is somewhere in the middle." I now ride my bike to work, safely, every day. It's 15 minutes along the lake. It's beautiful. The kids are going to a Spanish immersion school and they're doing great. We live in a historic neighborhood called Clarksville, and we checked all the boxes: We got the rescue dog, and my daughter got some cowboy boots. We're settling into this new life. But again, who knows? I might just be a serial leaver. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ I thought that my (editorialized) headline would nicely sum up my thoughts on the guy. Evidently it did not as my post was removed...sorry mods :) The lesson here is: don't attempt to perform "geographic arbitrage" without doing an ounce of research ahead of time about the place you are moving to. This goes for international moves, like the author's, but also for moves to different regions of your own country. You are setting yourself up to be scammed ($3000 rent in Costa Rica??), but it is also deeply disrespectful to locals if you do not make an attempt to fit into the culture and customs. This man even had the advantage of a Spanish-speaking wife yet made little attempt to learn the language or venture outside of the "expat" (cringe) areas. [link] [comments]  |
| 24, male. Just hit 100k NW. Immigrant, moved to Canada as a student in August 2017 Posted: 25 Jan 2020 03:43 PM PST Hello everyone. I have been extremely fortunate; in terms of health, education and my career. It's been a lazy Saturday, so I just wanted share my 2 year financial journey. Before anyone jumps to conclusions, no, I am not from a ridiculously well-off family that sends me money very month. In fact, other than my initial GIC deposit of $10,000, I've never asked for money from family. On the contrary, I have sent money to my grandparents, for their medical and living expenses. That being said, I am also extremely fortunate that my sister has done really well for herself, and offered to pay for my first term's tuition fee (close to $9,000), which I told her I am am willing to start paying her back anytime she wants me to. Background Even though I am from a decently well-off family, my parents have always been extremely down-to-earth and frugal. Big cars, fancy clothes; showing off to society was a never a thing for them. The only thing my parents used to spend more than normal on, was food. Because my dad has really high standards for nutrition, quality and taste of food. Fortunately, these qualities have passed on to me and understand how valuable this is for the journey I am on. I am so grateful for this because my lifestyle is second nature; I don't have to force myself to be frugal. My financial journey since 2017 During university, I was offered a Teaching Assistantship for all my study terms; this covered my living expenses during that period. I also did 2 co-op terms with good pay. Throughout university, I was paying $400/450 for rent and my living expenses were maybe $300-$400. With my Co-op pay and leftovers from study terms, I was able to save close to $23,000 and invested all of it in VFV and VGRO. I also made good money from Math and Computer Science tutoring for middle/high school students. I would usually do it on the weekends. The schedule was erratic (more demand during exam season), but was good pay while it lasted. I love teaching and helping kids, but it's to find such opportunities in Toronto. Just a side note and this is probably unconventional for a story like this, but I used to be addicted to sports/e-sports gambling. I started out making a lot of money through some big bets and consistent wins, but later on, I made many (many) impulsive, non-sensical bets and lost a significant portion of what I had won. It got a point where it was affecting my full-time work because I would check odds/scores at my desk. Good news is that I've completely dropped the habit. When I stopped, I was was still in the green; around $5000 over 15-16 months; which is totally not worth it because $5000 is such a small amount for all the stress it caused over such a long period. I've been working full-time for 9 months now. I left my previous company a few months ago; the work wasn't really my cup of tea, but the benefits were great. The pay at my first company was 75k, now it's 80k at the new company. Through my full-time pay, sign-on bonus, RRSP contributions, my savings so far are 36k. Mind you, I am yet to pay taxes on the bonus). After starting full-time work, my savings rate has always been 60-65%. I live with my sister in a 1-bedroom condo (Downtown Toronto). It's super convenient and I love it! She took the main bedroom, while I have a sofa-cum-bed in the living room. I am a simple guy, so I am completely comfortable like this. :) My current expenses:
My increase in net-worth has to do a lot with the market performance. The market has been extremely favorable to me. My entire portfolio is in ETFs (VFV, TEC, XEQT). The only individual stock I hold is BAM.A, which has done really as well. What next? The plan is to continue investing my monthly salary into stocks (the market might tank, but that's okay. I have time by my side) . My salary is good, I love my work and the people I work with, so I am in a great space, career-wise. At this point, owning a house does not appeal to me at all. I also invest through LendingLoop, it's been pretty good for me (13.5% net interest), but I don't think I will put more capital there. Other than my career and investments, I also want to find a partner who has a similar mindset: simple, and financially literate, which I think it's really hard to find (in my experience at least). I have friends from university and work, but things do get lonely from time to time (weekends especially). Otherwise, things are great. I am extremely grateful for what I have. I thank this subreddit and r/PersonalFinanceCanada for all the knowledge they've given. I honestly I don't member how I stumbled upon these subreddits, but I'm glad I did. I work and live in Downtown Toronto. Please reach out if you'd like to know more about my journey. Would love to talk/meet like minded people here. :) [link] [comments]  |
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