This blog has been a long time coming, as has been my journey to chasing financial independence, or Chasing FI as I have decided to title this blog. I’m writing this with the hopes that my children will read this someday and maybe some of what I have to say will stick in their head.
To date, I have tried desperately to teach my kids about personal finance, but it just isn’t taking. As of today, they are more interested in spending money on video games and name brand clothes than saving for the future.
I can’t really blame them. My wife and I have not been the best examples of how to live a frugal life. And although we have earned a good living by most standards, we are behind where we should be at this stage of life
Chasing Financial Independence isn’t Easy
I’ve been tracking our net worth on a monthly basis since June of 2019. And during the past almost 5 years, our net worth has almost quadrupled, which is good. But it is still nowhere near where is should or could be.
A variety of factors and choices have held us back. And while I don’t necessarily regret many of those choices, there are others that I do regret. For example, we spent tens of thousands of dollars per year sending our three kids to private school. Could we afford this?
No.
Do I regret it?
No.
We also chose to move abroad for almost 2 years (and put our kids in an American school abroad as well). Moving to another continent and back cost us almost 6 figures. Money we could sorely afford to spend. Again, we could not afford this choice, but do I regret it?
No.
All that being said, we are now back in the United States, and find ourselves in a situation where we cannot afford to purchase a house in the school district where we want to send our kids.
So we are renting. I’m fine with this. My wife is not.
The bottom line is that we have lived beyond our means for far too long, and I’m sorry to say this this choice will ultimately cost my wife and I our marriage.
To my three kids that are reading this right now, I am sorry. I never wanted to get a divorce. I want you to know that your Mom and I did everything we could to try to make things work. Ultimately, it just wasn’t meant to be.
Your Mom and I have vastly different approaches to money and personal finance. That is to say, I am a planner, and your Mom is only thinking one month at a time.
I don’t want to live that way anymore.
I would rather sacrifice today to live a life of freedom later.
By my calculations, if I am able to save 50% of my income, I should be able to retire within 10 years.
What is so frustrating to me is that if your Mom and had been more frugal years ago, we could have already reached this milestone.
But the past is the past and now we have to live with our choices.
Thankfully, I’ve learned about something called “FI”, which means “financial independence”. Some people talk about the “FIRE movement”, which means “financially independent, retire early”. I don’t know if retiring at age 60 is really considered “early”, but I know many people who are in a far worse financial situation than your Mom and I am.
When your Mom and I separate, we will have to divide up our assets and sell our house (we kept our house from before moving abroad, but couldn’t live there because it was rented out and was in a different school district). We will both receive approximately 50% of the combined nest egg. I will receive slightly more, only because my student loans are essentially paid off (I only have 10 months of payments left), while your Mom still has loans to pay back. My loans were forgiven during the Biden administration (I’ve been dutifully paying $700+ per month on those loans for the past 20+ years), while your Mom’s have not yet been forgiven. (I’m hopeful that they will be).
I don’t want to talk specific numbers in this blog, but rather I will share with you percentages. (i.e. I invested 25% of our income this month. or our investment portfolio has increased by 10%, etc.) I will also let you know that I have reached x% of my FI number.
So that is one of the first posts I will make, how to decide on that elusive “FI” number.
Hence the name of this blog – ChasingFI.
This blog will be all about my journey to reach FI and ideally retire in the next 5 years if possible, 10 years max.
Once all of your children have gone off to college, I would like to spend my time traveling the world and visiting far away lands, while blogging, vlogging and talking about my journey.
The inspiration for this blog comes from the book “A Simple Path to Wealth” by JL Collins (affiliate link).
Tomorrow is the first of the month, so my first task of the day will be to take stock of where we are financially, and update my financial snapshots. I will create a quick post to share what I’ve learned during the past month.
