I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog that my discovery of FIRE was life changing. In short order after The Discovery, we did the following, among many other things: (1) lowered our annual expenses to the tune of several thousands of dollars per year with just a little tweaking and few material effects; (2) stopped simply saving money started aggressively investing; (3) jacked up annual retirement account contributions/lowered our annual income taxes; (4) paid off the balance of our car loan; (5) refocused our priorities.
The Four Stooges Stages
That was what I’ll call stage 1 or, if you will, the low-hanging-fruit-stage. It was deeply satisfying and had me looking for other areas to train my focus on.
Stage 2 is a bit more advanced. We’ll call it the papaya-kumquat-mango within-reach fruit stage so as to keep the fruit metaphor going. Some actions we took here were to refinance our 30-year fixed mortgage to a 15-year fixed mortgage, cease funding the 529 accounts for Thing 1, the Elder and Thing 2, The Younger, and to start travel hacking.
Stage 3 — the durian-lychee-bitter melon need-a-ladder-to-get-the-fruit stage — involved things not as easily (or at least quickly) done. Here, we moved from the Midwest to the Mountain West. This was in large part a move focused on making me (and, I hoped) all my family members happy. But I also thought it would result in a lower cost of living (COL) (i.e., geoarbitrage). While the happiness box is checked in ink for me and Thing 2, The Younger (The Missus and Thing 1 have check marks in light pencil at this point), the lower COL hasn’t been as significant as I’d hoped and is compromised by lower incomes in our new city. We also are home renters, not homeowners in our new city, and this has saved us loads of money on annual home-related expenses, with no real side-effects.
Stage 4 — the mangosteen-rambutan-jujube tree-canopy-fruit stage — involves the hardest actions to take/things to accomplish. While our yearly expenses are down significantly since I discovered FIRE, they’re about one-third higher than I’d like them to be. There are reasons for this, which I won’t go into here. But as Thing 1, The Elder and Thing 2, The Younger get older, the expenses will drop. We also are pursuing side-gigs and alternative revenue streams to increase the income side of the ledger. This takes some thought and work, of course.
Life, Compounded
Regardless of our success in stage 4 and as to other actions we might take that’d otherwise fall under earlier stages, the aggregate effect of our changes has had compounding positive effects: (1) a significant decrease in annual expenses, which drastically lowers our FIRE number and simultaneously allows us to put the increased spread between income and expenses to work (so long as the markets cooperate, and who knows when this historic ride will end . . . and a new ride will begin); (2) a move closer to some of the world’s best bits of nature; (3) confidence in the way forward and a generally positive outlook; and (4) a simpler and, in many ways, more enjoyable life.
Translation: quantifiable lower expenses, a somewhat predictable FIRE date much closer than it’d otherwise have been, and unquantifiable positive life transformations. Oh, and fruit. Lots of fruit.
And now for some wisdom from the person who inspired the title of this blog post.
