I’m a 5#-year-old, married, father of two living in a Mountain West city, having moved from a Midwest city in 2018. My teenage kids—Thing 1 (The Elder) and Thing 2 (The Younger)—are such wonderful people that I don’t even have to forgive people who know them when they say to me “Wait. Those kids are yours?!” because such an exclamation is to be expected. The Missus is a far-too-patient-with-me miracle of the human race. She makes up for my incalculable number of failings to such a great degree that, in the aggregate, our family probably is on the positive side of the ledger of things that reasonable people would consider good vs. mmmmm, not so good.
I work in the legal field. My net positive contribution to society is questionable. At best. The wife is in the do-gooding profession. She excels in that. The kids are in the still-learning industry. But I like their prospects for making the world a better place. The Cat is an unabashed and unapologetic freeloader who has done nothing to advance humanity. Or felinity. But Things One and Two argue that his contributions to the household’s overall happiness are considerable.
I discovered and have been pursuing FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) since 2016. More accurately, I’ve been pursuing FI; I haven’t much use for RE. I discovered the concept after reading an article about Mr. Money Mustache (MMM). Then I read all of MMM’s blog posts, which turned me on to hundreds of other FIRE blogs. From that wormhole I am yet to emerge.
While I’d for a long time been interested in personal finance—and was a regular reader of many mainstream publications—and improving our own personal finances, my discovery of FIRE was life-changing. In terms of our place on the FIRE journey, we’re at the FIRE stage, and I plan to FIRE at the end of 2021. The Missus will continue allowing us to take advantage of her employer-subsidized health insurance working until she comes to her senses for the foreseeable future. I am not a religious person, but we are beyond blessed.
And so, here we are.
