Financial Independence Daily FI discussion thread - Thursday, July 01, 2021

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• Daily FI discussion thread - Thursday, July 01, 2021
• How do you decide when it’s time to risk moving on from a comfortable job to something that pays more?
• Did severe office politics, workplace bullies, awful bosses, or a traumatic firing cause you to save aggressively for FIRE?
• Hello + my first quarterly update

Daily FI discussion thread - Thursday, July 01, 2021 Posted: 01 Jul 2021 02:00 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. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

How do you decide when it’s time to risk moving on from a comfortable job to something that pays more? Posted: 01 Jul 2021 10:42 AM PDT I am curious what your thoughts are on this from a FIRE standpoint. My current job: Great team and boss Mostly stress free, semi flexible schedule Average benefits Great work life balance Room to learn more but not necessarily move up (maxed out) It's mostly work from home. All this is for about 110k, about ~20% below average. I have opportunity to jump ship to a similar position for a ~25k salary increase, with slightly better benefits. The new job may have a commute of about an hour each way once a week (hybrid wfh). I really like and enjoy my current job and have doubled my salary in 6 years, but realize that that I can't hit the higher salary brackets without moving. How do you decide when to risk the comfort and move? Specially from a FIRE standpoint? One can probably just "coast" but if it accelerates your FIRE plans by 5 years, is it better to take the risk? On one hand my job can be considered a "dream job" by many, but I can also be making 20-30% more. submitted by /u/CumFlakess [link] [comments]

Did severe office politics, workplace bullies, awful bosses, or a traumatic firing cause you to save aggressively for FIRE? Posted: 01 Jul 2021 12:01 AM PDT About 20 years ago I had such a terrible work experience that it completely changed my impressions of careers, people, and materialism. (I was terrorized by an extreme workplace bully, outrageous office politics and eventually a very aggressive harsh employment termination. I was treated so harshly that it put me in therapy. I had PTSD. At the time I was a typical American who lived on 110% of my income, getting in debt and living paycheck to paycheck. I could not afford to leave my job and miss even one paycheck so my bully boss had me wrapped around his finger. I have had many bad bosses and office politics since that awful job of 20 years ago but I don't feel quite as scared and helpless due to my bank balance growing and the awfulness just encouraged me to save even more money for a quicker FIRE. I am trying to survive the corporate rat race till 2022. After a long job hunt and poverty, I found a good job and I decided to never let that happen again. I scaled down my lifestyle and fixed expenses and started to live on 50% of my income. I invested my money wisely and soon had enough money to be more comfortable. Some called it a XXXyou fund. I wonder if I had not experienced such harsh treatment at work if I would have not have saved enough money that I can now retire early next year at age 60. So, did you have some type of traumatic experience at work or with your money that encouraged you to save aggressively for FIRE? Tell us your story! submitted by /u/rarelywearamask [link] [comments]

Hello + my first quarterly update Posted: 01 Jul 2021 02:15 PM PDT Hi all - alt account, but I've followed FIRE for a while and it's really inspired me to figure out how to work less for more. FIRE is a major goal for my husband and me, and I've been tracking monthly for about 2 years now. I've always been inspired and educated by updates that people post, so I thought I'd post one of my own. TL;DR: Overall portfolio is $872k. Up 10.6% since BOY. Saving 15% and working toward passive income and/or self-employment; on track to retire at 55 with 401k based savings alone, with a sabbatical in 2023-24. We don't take gifts or inheritances or properties into account in our calcs. We follow the Boglehead theory and focus on long term. Personal details: both mid-30s, married, 2 kids, 3 pets, VHCOL. H works in medical device (engineer), and I work in tech (analytics). I always figured I'd work from 22 --> 65 and that's just how life was. But... turns out working all day in front of a computer sucks, life is too short, kids are growing too fast, etc. Major goals: 1) Retire by 55, 2) take a gap year/ sabbatical in 2023, and 3) build my side business to a full-time business so I can work for myself. Education background: H has a BS in mechanical engineering and has worked in medical devices or biopharma since graduation. He's always known he wanted to be an engineer and has followed a pretty straight career path. I have a BA in Political Science & an EdM in Education Policy; I worked for 9ish years in education research/policy until I realized I could make way more money in tech. Sigh, yes, I sold out and I lost my PSLF, but my salary has gone up +42k in the 2 years. Debt: Student Loans (me) - $71k My loans are paused currently due to COVID; we'd been paying them off as slowly as possible because I qualified for PSLF until I left education 2 years ago. I also have interest in properties that I have gifted my grandparents, and that interest, once sold, will pay these off. I'd really like to be done with them now that I don't qualify for PSLF anymore, but we're in a holding pattern on liquidating properties (more below). Student Loans (H) - $7k It will be paid off in the next 12 months or so Car (shared) - $17k It will be paid off in the next 6-12 months or so; definitely before our sabbatical A personal loan from medical debt consolidation - $11k It will be paid off in the next 3 months CCs - we never carry a balance, but we play the CC sign-up bonus game to try to earn as many miles as possible for the sabbatical in a few years. Salary: Our income has jumped dramatically over the last 2 years. Before that, we were really living paycheck-paycheck, because of our VHCOL. Thanks to salary increases, we aren't that way anymore. H started out at 90k + about 90k in an ESOP in 2009 out of undergrad and is not a big job hopper, which I think has definitely impacted his salary trajectory. He's worked at 2 companies his whole career. He jumped to a new company after about 5-6 years and landed at $110k. Last fall, he got furloughed during the beginning of COVID, found another job, but his company he was furloughed from BEGGED for him to come back with a 25% raise (they were on very good terms). He's currently at $168k and has moved into project management. I started out in the non-profit world at 45k in 2007 out of undergrad, left to do grad school in 2009-10, and started at $55k out of grad school. I jumped to a new org at 2 years to $65k and then left that org 6.5 years later at $75k. Jumped to tech 2 years ago at $90k + 12k RSUs, then jumped to a new org a few weeks ago at $117k + 5k options. My big goal is to develop passive or low effort income. I've also been building a children's brand on Etsy & Shopify for the last year and a half or so. I've built it in a way that it only takes maybe 30 mins a day on auto-pilot. In 18m, I've grossed just under $100k, netted about $30k. Very low margin business. A lot of that goes back to student loans or debt repayment. I run it very part-time now but my goal is to build it to full-time income. Our take-home is about $11k/month from w2 income; $650/month from property income, and Etsy/Shopify goes toward savings, investments, or debt repayment. Investments: Properties My grandparents gifted me (and cousins/family) property over our lifetimes. They died about 15 years ago, but we still hold them. I completely acknowledge how amazing this is, and how much privilege I have because of this. It was a driving motivator for me to enter education and economic impact research (ie how generational wealth impacts outcomes and what we can do about that.) The total value is approx $484,353; this is up about 7% since BOY overall. Property 1 - worth about $4-4.5m (ish? It's a guess); I have a 5.5% share or about $192,150.00 Property 1 was lost in a natural disaster about 3.5 years ago. I own it with 6 other people. It has been a total cluster dealing with the insurance companies and related parties. We're now involved in 1 class action, and on the verge of a lawsuit with the insurance company. This property has appreciated about 40-50% in the last 3 years, however, because of the rabid property market. I would like to be out as soon as possible but I can't because of the lawsuits. This property used to generate about $5-6k of passive income but has not since 2018. Property 2 - worth about $1.2-1.4m; I have a 4.45% share or about $59,020.00 Property 2 has appreciated dramatically in the last 1.5 years and is about to be put on the market. I own it with 6 other people. It used to generate about $2-3k of passive income but has not since 2018, as all earnings have been put aside for the above issue with prop 1. I also cannot wait to be done with this. Property 3 Was sold in 2016 for $5.5m; I had about a 5% share if my memory serves. I owned it with 6 other people. With my sister & parents, we did a 1031 exchange into properties 4-15. Property 4-15 - worth about $2.2m; I have about a 10.5% share (on average), or about $233,183 We did a 1031 exchange from property 3 in 2016. We own 11 MFR units that generate about $170k a year; my share is about $17k gross or about $8k net. Until last year, I let my parents handle everything. We have a property manager but they did the accounting, working with the PM, etc. I took over the accounting in the fall of last year and quickly realized that they had not been on top of 1) pushing rents up appropriately, and 2) staying on top of expenses. While these properties have increased in value significantly since we bought them (about 55%), we are making less monthly than we ever were because the rents have not been maintained appropriately. It's been really stressful; I have a great relationship with my parents, but this is has been very stressful. I'm not in this to be nice to people; I'm in this to make money. I am hopeful that I'll be bought out of this in the next 1-2 years. We do not have an owned primary residence, because we can make more money off investments than off of owning a primary residence. That will likely change in the next 12-18 months (see sabbatical). Retirement I started tracking our retirement balances monthly in Jan 2019. We started out with $210,467. This month, we are at $388,593. We contribute about 15% to our 401k (H) and brokerage (me... job doesn't offer a 401k) monthly. Overall account balance is up +7.98% since BOY but down slightly from last month (this is because we chose to sell my RSUs from my prior company and pay off debt). Savings We hold, in cash, about $15k at any time; however, we put everything on credit cards so I think we actually have about $5k in liquidity on average. We are paying off the personal loan aggressively right now (about $3k/month) and aren't saving anything apart from retirement. Overall Portfolio (retirement + property) Our overall portfolio is at about $872,945; this is up about 21% over June 2020, thanks to the tremendous market run we are experiencing. We play this game with a long-term focus and invest with a Boglehead approach. We do not include properties in our retirement calculations, but will be increasing annual savings to $34,500. Credit Card Miles We're playing the SUB game currently. Right now, we're at about 220k miles; after our current run with the CSP, we'll be at about 430k miles. We are trying to be really thoughtful about a strategy here so we can reduce flight costs for the sabbatical. Sabbatical Since we started dating 15 years ago, we've always said we wanted to take a gap year with our kids. We realized about a year ago that the 2023-24 school year was the best year to do it, because of our kids' ages. In the last year, we have made several major financial moves to get us into this place: We sold a really popular baseball card --> paid off debt We went down to 1 car (now that we're both working from home) to save an additional $800/month We consolidated expenses to increase savings (about $3k a month now) We established a relationship with Vanguard Personal Advisory Services to get advice on our investing plan, and to have a sounding board to bounce ideas off of ($300/year/$100k invested) We are planning to relocate to MCOL in summer 2022 to save an additional $1k a month and also purchase a home. MCOL will also allow us to spend roughly 50-65% less than we do on housing now, not use all of the property investments above as a downpayment, not be required to have 2 high-stress jobs to meet our other personal and financial goals, etc. I am super excited about this. In September, we plan to shift to saving for the gap year; we plan to have about $80-95k in savings by the time we leave. We plan to either rely on that cash, income from the Etsy/Shopify brand or properties if we haven't sold them, or do some part-time work or consulting while on the road. Hope that was helpful! I'll post another update in a quarter or so. Looking forward to questions or feedback! submitted by /u/Many-Neighborhood-88 [link] [comments]

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