Fifth grade was a big year for me. It was the year that my age was finally in the double digits. It was also the first time that I realized that I liked girls. One girl in particular caught my interest and I wanted to show her how much I liked her. I had a great plan in place. During recess one day I would send my friends over to make fun of her while I watched from behind the corner of the building. She cried and I blew my chances of finding — what I thought would be — true love.
When I was in Middle School I was a shithead. On a near constant basis I had to prove to everyone that I was as cool as I thought I was. One day after lunch before the teacher walked into the classroom I walked up to her desk and threw her apple out the window. I did this to impress the wrong people (who thought it was hilarious). This was followed by a call home to my parents and a few lunch detentions with the aforementioned teacher.
Then during my Freshman year of college I decided to take Intermediate Calculus (before I had ever taken normal Calculus). The teacher melted my brain on a daily basis. And there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to keep me interested in integrals and prolate spheroids at 8 in the goddamn morning. Needless to say, I didn’t pass the class (the first or second time).
Finally, in 2013 I decided to start a blog about “Early Retirement”.
What do these four seemingly random windows into my life represent? Simply, they are 4 (of the countless) mistakes that I’ve made throughout the course of my life. I could have expressed my adoration better in elementary school, hung out with less devious friends in Middle School, dropped the insanely hard math classes in college, and properly classified MY goals before starting a blog.
Obviously there’s nothing I can do to change the past, and I wouldn’t change anything anyway, because it’s led to a life that I truly love. I have a great family. We just had our 3rd perfect baby girl less than 48 hours ago. And we have plans for our home and our life that most people would only dream about. (I’ve been spamming my Instagram feed with pictures of my kids. Since I know you’re interested, check out my Instagram HERE.)
I can change the future and there is one thing in particular that I am going to change starting today. I’ve been thinking about what my long-term goals for myself and this site are lately. I’m not sure that Early Retirement quite fits the description of my actual intentions. While I don’t plan on working in a cubicle for the rest of my life, I will most likely continue working long after this blog ceases to exist.
Over the past 4 years Mrs. M and I have been stashing our cash like nobody’s business. We eliminated over $60k in debt and have grown our Net Worth into the six-figure range. We’ve created a passive income stream through a rental property, and I’ve created a second source of income through Internet publishing.
At this point in time we have enough money saved up that we could walk away from work and travel the world for about 10-15 years. But, we aren’t going to give up our income to do this, because we want to make that type of lifestyle a more permanent option.
What I propose is the best of both worlds: Having enough Fuck You money to step away from working for the corporate shirts forever while creating fun, exciting careers that will continuously generate money for the rest of our lives.
I started blogging for a few different reasons. A few of these were that I wanted a place to talk about money (because no one in real life gives a shit), I needed an outlet for my creativity and I wanted to unify people towards a single cause (ie living better for less). But I didn’t realize that people would actually listen, and I honestly didn’t think anyone other than my immediate family would care.
I also didn’t realize that it would become a source of income. One that grows every single month. That’s more than I can say about my day job. The blog is a great way for larger publishers to find me as well. Recently I’ve been hired as a contributor to a start-up whose cause I am behind 100%. They’re called FeeX and their goal is to reduce or eliminate the hidden fees in your retirement accounts. Also, I have a call scheduled with an enormous web publisher later this week, so you may be seeing my writing all over the Internet. Hopefully this is just the beginning.
I’d like to become more transparent about my web publishing earnings as well. I think that this will encourage people who are trying to start side businesses like Etsy stores, freelance writing or self-hosted blogging.
My wife and I are contracted by our full-time employer for another couple of years. During this time we’ll continue to stash as much cash as possible to turn our 10-15 year’s worth of travel money into 20-25 year’s worth. I will also continue to build my income streams to make leaving our day jobs a much easier transition.
If we can save 20-25 year’s worth of spending, we can easily make that money last forever by supplementing it with part time income. Currently we live on 30% of our take home income. That means that we could survive easily without the other 70%. If we can build our income streams to match that 30% mark, then we won’t have to divest any of our investments whatsoever (until we’re ready to call it quits completely).
The main reason that I think that it was a mistake to classify this as an “Early Retirement” blog is that it inferred that once I was financially independent I would walk away from all job opportunities to maintain my status as “retired”. But, I want to work. I want to help people. And I want to allow myself to say “yes” when opportunities arise without feeling like I’m going against my belief system.
I just want to avoid corporate ladders, 9 to 5s and cubicles in general. I loathe cubicles. To maintain a cubicle-free lifestyle, I had to develop a system for recognizing and dealing with mistakes, so I wouldn’t accidentally end up in a cubefarm until my Social Security checks started arriving.
This is what I came up with (and subsequently live by):
- Realize that mistakes are inevitable, no matter who you are and how much planning is involved.
- Look to the past only for lessons learned (because you can’t change it), look to the future for opportunity (because you can control it).
- When you find yourself knee-deep in the middle of a mistake, adapt and overcome. Change your behavior to benefit your current situation and life goals.
- Don’t let others determine if you’re making a mistake or not, but open yourself up for criticism. Listen to people (sometimes they know better than you do).
- If it feels wrong, it probably is. See step 3.
Luckily, I don’t have to throw apples out of windows to impress people anymore, and my wife fell in love with me without me having to send people to make fun of her. But I feel like it’s my duty to adapt this site to mirror what I’m truly passionate about, and being retired without a cause truly doesn’t interest me anymore.
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