Halfway There

Halfway to where, you ask?  Halfway to financial independence.  Still a little confused?  Financial independence (“FI” for short) means having enough money to be able to support your desired lifestyle in perpetuity without ever having to work another soul-sucking minute.  You know when you throw out a scenario with an undeniably pleasant result in casual conversation, to which your friend/family member/colleague longingly replies, “That’s the dream…”?

In our household, FI is “The Dream.”

And as of July 31, 2020 (upon final monthly reconciliation of all spreadsheets), we are halfway to The Dream.

So, how much does The Dream cost?  In our case, about $1,250,000 should do the trick.  I’ll get to the math behind that number and how exactly we plan on blowing it in a future post.  Full disclosure:  I’m an accountant by trade.  My idea of “blowing it” involves spending about $8 on two pints of craft beer (using a BOGO coupon, of course) and socking the remaining $1,249,992 away in a diversified investment portfolio.  That hardly sounds like The Dream for most (my wife included) so there will likely be a little more complexity to our future than that – details to come.

To us, being FI means having the freedom to choose a lifestyle that allows us to pursue our interests and desires, rather than slogging away at the beck and call of our employer for the next 30-35 years before finally lugging my bionic hips out the door for the last time, hopefully spending a few of the subsequent years doing nature walks wearing a khaki-colored vest and taking Norwegian River Cruises, or whatever it is that old people do.  That’s assuming I haven’t keeled over in my office chair before then.

While I fully anticipate and embrace that bionic hips could be a reality at some point in my future, the rest of that hypothetical scenario doesn’t quite do it for us.  By no means do we intend to portray our path to FI in the form of this blog as the singular, most optimized route to financial independence and beyond.  Our intent is to simply document our journey and hopefully provide some entertaining insight along the way.

Come join us on our journey to FI by 35!