Financial Independence Daily FI discussion thread - Wednesday, August 04, 2021 |
- Daily FI discussion thread - Wednesday, August 04, 2021
- Hit CoastFIRE this week! More motivated than ever and what has helped me
- 10 years of the FI journey
- 15 years of work and put in my notice today
- Weekly Self-Promotion Thread - August 04, 2021
| Daily FI discussion thread - Wednesday, August 04, 2021 Posted: 04 Aug 2021 02:02 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]  | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Hit CoastFIRE this week! More motivated than ever and what has helped me Posted: 04 Aug 2021 12:53 PM PDT Coming here to celebrate a bit as I don't have people to share this with IRL. TL;DR at the bottom. But wow feels freeing! Last night I realized that if I let my investments grow across taxable, 401k, and Roth IRA that we'd hit our number by age 60 in average markets. Have to say the pressure feels off now. We'll be okay. We'll hit bumps I'm sure but we have enough to weather the storm. Now it's all about staying the course and speeding up that time horizon. And while the weight on my shoulders feels less, the motivation is stronger than ever. We're married, 31 years old, 1 kid so far. I'm +90% of our income so feel daily pressure (that I put on myself) to keep the pedal down and keep the family in a secure spot. I've been incredibly fortunate to get some lucky timing in my career that's accelerated earnings last three years or so. No startup stock excitement or FAANG, just moved into sales and uncapped commissions are really good when they're good with the right company. Have grossed over $300k last two years which is the bulk of the accelerated savings. Investments just crossed $600k and the goal is Chubby FIRE with a target investment portfolio in the $3.5m range. Possibly higher if I'm still motivated to make bigger career moves in 5-10 years. Backstory that you probably don't care about but I always like to read others so... Started my career out of college with minimum wage grunt desk work. Moved up with some raises and promotions in the $50k-70k range and thought I was doing really well. Learned about budgeting and YNAB through that time when I realized my bank account wasn't growing on $7.50 an hour and living downtown. Got hints of "FIRE" type ideas but was more excited by compound interest and getting rid of debt. Built some good financial habits in that time by sticking to budgets, attacking debt, and investing what I could, but realized to get ahead I'd need to earn more in order to save more. Doubled down on personal development and career growth and was lucky to have mentors along the way who helped me level up. Goals now are:
TL;DR and Unsolicited Advice (I used to get really jealous at people earning what I am now so I get it if you've bounced and downvoted. Keep at it.)
If you read this far thanks and I hope it's been helpful. I'm bad a celebrating my wins so this is my attempt to do that here in a community that's helped me a lot. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Aug 2021 11:18 AM PDT 10 years ago I had finished grad school and started my first post-grad job. That was also when I had started learning about the idea of FIRE, and I was sold. My net worth was negative (hi, student loans). 10 years later, I'm not there yet, but I'm closing in - the end is in sight! My entire career (both pre- and post-grad school) has been in tech - the video games industry for a long time, then Yahoo, and now in fintech. But I'm not a software engineer or a product manager - I started my career in customer service, and I still work in customer service management. No real tech skills here, just gradual development of leadership skills. I really, really hate debt, so even though the interest rate on my ~$50k grad school loan was fairly low (I think like 5% or so), I focused on paying it off quickly. I know that investing that money in the stock market would have been the financially optimal decision, but for me personally, paying off the debt was more important for my own mental well-being. Along the way I also picked up a side hustle, which is daily fantasy sports. I both play DFS and I also now create content around DFS strategy. The income here has swung wildly (including one year in which I lost money), but in aggregate my total net income from DFS, both playing it and creating content for it, has been around $300k over about 7 years (so, about $40k/year or so). My wife is an artist who has somewhat worked on her own small art businesses over the years, with a break after we had our kiddo (and another forced break due to Covid). She's made some money in this space (she makes silicone mermaid tails, of all things!), but the majority of our income has come from my side of things. Here's a year-by-year highlight reel (net worth numbers as of August of each year): 2011 - Started new post-grad job in customer service at an online game developer. Net worth about -$40k, salary $52k in San Francisco (so, not exactly a lot for SF!) 2012 - Promoted to manager, new salary of $75k. Net work "up" to about -$10k. 2013 - Moved to Portland, OR to open a new office for my employer. Got a raise to $100k. Net worth finally positive at $59k, student loans paid off! 2014 - Promoted to director, new salary $155k, net worth up to $125k. Bought a house for $530k (planning to have a kid at this point, wanted to buy a house large enough and in a great school district, so paid more here than we "had" to so that we could be in the area we really wanted to be in). 2015 - Changed jobs and went to Yahoo in a senior director of customer service role. New salary $160k, but also with bonus + equity (prior role was a startup, so I had stock options, but the company was floundering so options weren't likely to go anywhere). Net worth up to $196k. 2016 - Salary didn't really change, but between the equity and bonus part of my comp at Yahoo, my income went way up (sadly I only have net after-tax income tracked here, but it totaled about $176k after taxes). Net worth almost doubled this year (!!) to $396k. Daughter was born in September, woohoo! We also purchased a single family home as a rental property this year as a way to diversify away from a pure stock market investment strategy. 2017 - Stable at Yahoo, total after-tax comp was $217k (difference from prior year primarily due to a higher bonus). Weird that Yahoo was paying such generous bonuses when the company was struggling, but they were really trying hard to compete for talent. Net worth up to $633k primarily thanks to great stock market performance. Yahoo was also purchased by Verizon in the middle of this year. 2018 - It's becoming clear that the future at Yahoo/Verizon is not promising. Yahoo had an agreement that guaranteed any employees a strong severance package if any acquirer laid them off within 1 year of acquisition. I was in a position to engineer my own layoff here, and I took it, ending my employment in November 2018. I got 6 months' severance pay, insurance, plus immediate vesting of all outstanding equity. This resulted in net after-tax income of almost $300k in 2018. Net worth in August 2018 shot up to $835k. 2019 - With a young daughter and a generous severance package, I decided to take some time off post-Yahoo to spend a lot of extra time with the kiddo. I didn't start a new job until May of 2019 but I would not trade this time for anything in the world. In my new role I was hired to build out a new customer support office, with a starting salary of around $180k plus equity. Total net salary this year was only about $70k (because I only worked half the year), but a lot of the Yahoo equity that was vested after my layoff did not actually "process" until early 2019, so my net income for the year still ended up being about $170k between salary/equity. This is also when I started creating fantasy sports content. Net worth passed $1M in February (with the big equity chunk vesting) and was at $1.25M in August. 2020 - Ah, the Covid year. Fortunately, my job isn't impacted, and in fact our company does phenomenally well during the pandemic (as many tech companies did/are doing). As we saw with Covid, there was a disproportionate economic impact - those with money and secure jobs did extremely well due to a booming market, those without money and/or secure jobs really struggled. I was extremely lucky to be in the former group (and as a result, upped we upped our charitable giving). Got a modest raise and an incredibly well-timed equity grant at the annual merit cycle (the date on which the equity grant was priced was near the bottom of the Covid market crash, so that meant my grant of $X resulted in more shares). Net worth climbed to $1.42M in August. 2021 - Another annual raise has put my base salary at $215k, with estimated equity vesting at almost another $400k/year. The equity is (obviously) a massive component of my total compensation, driven by the company's stock more than 3x'ing since the date I joined (and the 2020 equity grant is at about 6x the grant price). All of this plus a really strong stock market rally and my best year of fantasy sports to date has pushed our net worth up to almost $2.3M. Our target number is around $3M or slightly higher - it's so close I can taste it. Some comments:
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| 15 years of work and put in my notice today Posted: 03 Aug 2021 10:08 AM PDT After working 15 years starting from McDonalds and leaving my current position as an HR manager, my retire early plan is now starting the next phase. I was able to reach $2.4 million over 15 years and granted due to some luck that accelerated my timeline, but I also was a student and worked 1-2 jobs for about 9 years. I only had 1 job for the last 6 years. My last day will be when my child is born in 8 weeks as they talked me into helping during the transition. They will pay my medical insurance through my 12 weeks of FMLA along with 8 weeks of pay. I am very excited and do not have a ton of people to share with because I'd rather them continue to guess on the financial figures. My plan is to tell people I work in finances (Since I do manage my investments). I found the main key to FIRE is living below your means. When I told my boss I was leaving, he had no clue but was happy for me. He said you would never know looking at me that I had money. It's very easy to get caught up in material wants and desires. Luckily I married someone like me who also had the same mentality for stuff. We still both live like we did when we both made like $35k a year. My 1st job at McDonald's I made $6.95 per hour. Eventually I joined the Army primarily for free college. I was awarded a full ROTC scholarship and continued to drill with my national guard unit. During summers I worked landscaping jobs making $10 per hour. My senior year I had a part time internship in HR, full time school and ROTC/National guard. I graduated and got married with a net worth of ~$5,000. I stayed in the national guard and found a position making $35k a year plus NG money. I left a year later for $50k, and after 3 years left for $75k. I currently make about $85k. I had failure in there. I was fired from a job. The 1st $1000 I put into my brokerage account at 18, I lost it all. I lost my dad and needed to help my mom. The greatest feeling of FIRE is not about what I can have, it's about what I don't worry about. When I was fired, my co-workers were upset because I had a young child, and they did not know my financial situation. Being on the FIRE path allowed me to not be upset about losing the income. Where I got lucky was crypto. But if it was not for my savings and lifestyle, I would not of had the capital to invest in the 1st place. I heard about Bitcoin in college around 2012 and I was deployed in 2014 and thought if it made it here, it might make it further. Over 6 months I bought $20k worth of Bitcoin using the extra deployment money. That story worked out well even thought I had many people over the last 7 years tell me to sell and I was dumb not taking the money. I was expecting to hit my goal without crypto by 40. Because HOLY SHIT compounding interest as Einstein said IS the most powerful force in the universe. Starting the goal young and utilizing my time and efforts in my early. Hearing in college that I was frugal as a joke from friends. Some people will never understand my lifestyle, but it is what it is. I look at $2.4 million as $90k, not that I can spend $2.4 million. To anyone out there, start early, pounce on opportunities, live below your means and spend wisely, and set a reasonable goal. As everyone says, the 1st $100k is the hardest. The journey is not always easy but it's possible for many with planning and enough time. Currently my assets are and $0 debt
My spending is excluding daycare is about $35-40k a year. Daycare is ~$22k a year which I am going to watch my kids 3 days a week which will reduce that expense down to ~$10k a year. Although I know the crypto part of the story some will say I am lucky which I was. I thought my story is worth a share and wish everyone the best on their path to FI. The flexibility is worth every time I said no to buying something. Onwards to pursing passions and giving time to my group of non profits and not just financially. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Weekly Self-Promotion Thread - August 04, 2021 Posted: 04 Aug 2021 02:00 AM PDT Self-promotion (ie posting about projects/businesses that you operate and can profit from) is typically a practice that is discouraged in /r/financialindependence, and these posts are removed through moderation. This is a thread where those rules do not apply. However, please do not post referral links in this thread. Use this thread to talk about your blog, talk about your business, ask for feedback, etc. If the self-promotion starts to leak outside of this thread, we will once again return to a time where 100% of self-promotion posts are banned. Please use this space wisely. Link-only posts will be removed. Put some effort into it. [link] [comments]  |
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