Financial Independence Daily FI discussion thread - October 31, 2020 |
- Daily FI discussion thread - October 31, 2020
- We hear success stories from here all the time. However, we never hear from people who actually failed at FIRE. Can we get input from people who actually FIRED and failed?
- Finally worked up the nerve to tell my little story in the hopes that it can inspire people here
| Daily FI discussion thread - October 31, 2020 Posted: 31 Oct 2020 01:08 AM PDT 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]  |
| Posted: 31 Oct 2020 08:23 AM PDT I think this would be a great discussion for those who are still trying to achieve FI. We all know the 4% rule to achieve FI and to maximize our savings by investing in ETFs, bonds, real estate, etc. However, there is more to that when you actually achieve that 4% goal. Anyone mind sharing their failure stories when they tried to achieve FI? Thanks! Edit: Wow, didn't think I would get this many responses! It's always nice hearing other people's struggles through their FI journey as a young person trying to get into this path. [link] [comments]  |
| Finally worked up the nerve to tell my little story in the hopes that it can inspire people here Posted: 30 Oct 2020 08:38 PM PDT I'd like to tell my story because it's been different, difficult, and hopefully it can revive some of your spirits as we keep packing those savings away. Also, this isn't necessarily short. But trust me, I left a lot of things out. If you have any questions feel free to ask or DM me. My path to FIRE wasn't very conventional. I spent my 20s—well, spending. I was a hard drinker, a writer (still am), and fairly good at my job, which was in capture and contract writing for the family sign language interpreting business. I guess that's a pretty organic way to segue into my upbringing and circumvallated route to FIRE. I'm an only child of deaf parents. (They call us CODAs for child of deaf adults, but that sounds weird to me.) We were poor when I was born. My dad had quit his job at IBM to start his own interpreting business. By the time I was 8-9 years old, we weren't poor anymore. He's a pretty incredible person for a lot of reasons, especially within the deaf world. I grew up with that sort of presumption, not that we deserved anything but that my parents would always do what needed to be done to keep us in good shape. It wasn't until I hit 14-15 years old or so that I stopped unconsciously assuming such. That's around the time that I started doing drugs. Long story short, after grad school I started working for my dad while pursuing my writing career. I spent pretty much every dollar I had in a very very very very HCOL city. You've probably heard of it. It sounds like me religion and what we're not allowed to eat. I always dealt with bad depression and anxiety, and drugs and alcohol were my coping mechanism. They were always a problem that I kept under control until about 27, when my agent left the industry and I couldn't find another one. When I started with the hard stuff on a regular basis, it was downhill from there. It's such a complicated irony because drugs were the only reason I survived into adulthood—but they're also what kept me from finding the correct solutions (which were definitely not the 16 years of therapy and psychoanalysis). Just before my 31st birthday—July of 2019–I entered rehab, and my life changed immediately—for the worse. Okay, not really, but sort of, in that I couldn't cope with anything. But at least I wasn't threatening my own life. By the time covid hit, I'd basically separated from my girlfriend and moved back home with my parents. They were in Florida at the time, so for the first time since getting sober I was alone. I was so terribly down, I didn't have a job (my father and I agreed it was for the best that I leave), and I was slowly breaking up with my gf. I'm still shocked that I didn't relapse, but that's probably because I always think the worst of myself. Around that time I remembered that my 401k was still with the company, and I could roll over the rest of what I'd invested after my bar mitzvah. I realized I had a somewhat decent nest egg, without having even paying attention to the 401k, since I'd maxed it out and hadn't paid attention to it. Added up I had $45,500, which may not sound like much to a lot of the 32-year olds here, but for me, who had always lived under the assumption that I'd be poor until I died, it was a fairly great awakening: wait a minute, I can actually take this somewhere. Before I ever heard about this thread, I started scheming out the numbers. If I lived at home for a few years and sacrificed an adult life pretty much, what kind of progress could I make? I started picking up odd-jobs to pay the remaining 6 months' worth of rent in the religiously/banned food HCOL city. I walked dogs, picked up groceries for elderly people remiss to go out during lockdown, and started carpet bombing my resume. I got some business up and running through Rover and the neighborhood listserv. I started working for instacart and Grubhub. I got to about $500 a week. Then I got a remote position with a small communications business, in capture, only without the bigger contract writing duties I had with the family business. So easier than my last job, right? I should've seen the red flags. The boss flippantly joked, when we met for the third interview, that they were working on Memorial Day because 'what else is there to do?" They bullied me when I negotiated my salary, which was so low I can't even repeat it here. The first week, I worked 70 hours. No mention of OTP. So I quit. Only if it were that easy. This was the first time I was confronting a 'boss' in my adult life. The only bosses I'd had outside the family business were at SUBWAY and the UMD dining hall. And of course, no drugs, which for me was the equivalent of no one to talk to about my situation. I totally broke down. I mean 100% lost it. It was so bad that my dad had to bring the equipment back to them. I was so ashamed that I couldn't simply tell them the job wouldn't work out for me that I just shut down and was suicidal. I know, it sounds crazy, but it's the way I'm built. It's not fun. I'm a totally rational person—in my mind. But my emotions totally overwhelm me in specific situations. For the next few weeks, from July through early august, I slowly came out of my deep funk. I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed me medication that's been utterly miraculous. I started picking up the same work I was doing before the full time job. Then I got some freelance writing work. I got an editorial consulting job. One of my short stories got published in a contest magazine and came in second. I picked up a tutoring gig for a little kid here in the neighborhood. I started getting really good at the delivery business, hustling every single night and gaining an edge to the point where that alone bags me a cool grand a week. The people at the company I freelance for fell in love with me and are giving me more and more work. Nine months ago I was unemployed, broken, alone. Now, I have a clear mission: FIRE. I've always wanted this kind of freedom. It's why I wanted to become a writer, to get lost in stories unrelated to this rat race. It's why I love books and really why I love life, for being human outside of the capitalist grind. But in another sense, I do enjoy numbers, business, and economics. I've always loved investing. So when I found this sub, I felt verified. At this point, I'm making a bit above $92,000, PLUS I have crazy deductions and some under the table pay. I went from totally hopeless at the beginning of 2020 (like many of us), to feeling more sure of myself than I have in YEARS. I'm up to $84,000 in assets, all stock, with no debt. Again, nothing too impressive for a lot of you here, but for me it's truly special. I know the market is a bit frothy right now so things could be rocky, but I've been investing since I was 13, and that first decade was a hell of a ride. And I plan to sacrifice my early 30s to get as much money stuffed into the market as I can. I hope this can help some folks here who feel like things are too hard. If you're here, you're already ahead of the curve because you're starting to work toward FIRE. Most people spend their money mindlessly like I did until recently. But more than the chance for freedom, this movement gives people such a healthy, simple goal. It's so pure. I'm so thankful for it. Wishing you all the best in these tough times. Keep in mind that a lot of people are suffering right now. Keep your heads up and appreciate what you have! [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from financial independence / early retirement. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment