2024 saw quite a few changes around here. My husband and I bought a house in December 2023, renovated the snot out of it in 6‑ish weeks, moved him in, saw the northern lights, finished up some other to-dos and moved me in, experienced a total solar eclipse, took engagement photos, took some trips, planned a wedding, got my CISA certification, got married, took our honeymoon in Scotland, hosted a party for all our friends and family to celebrate our nuptials, went to FinCon for the first time in years, started a podcast and squeezed a few more trips in (like the Taylor Swift Eras tour show in Indy!) before the end of the year. 

As you can imagine, a busy and active 2024 like we had led to a pretty significant rise in spending. As this is our first year of combining our finances, it seems a little weird to say “rise in spending” given that we don’t really have a baseline established yet. However, I think it’s safe to say we’re going to spend far less next year as we won’t be hiring a wedding photographer, hosting a big party for friends or doing any significant home remodeling (knock on wood). 

I stopped doing my monthly spending and net worth tracker posts a while back out of respect for my partner at the time since they felt very uneasy about putting that much information out there. Now that I’m not with them anymore and I’m married to someone who likes to talk about money almost as much as I do, I’m bringing back the transparency for a 2024 year-end post. I might do more check-ins throughout the year going forward — it will be very dependent on my brain juice and motivation and time available. All of which seem to be in rather short supply lately with *waves vaguely* all that going on. 

Some things to note before we get to all the juicy details: 

• My husband, Tim, is 8 years older than me so he is more established in life and his career. 
• He also went through a divorce a few years ago that had the usual level of impact on his finances (RIP, 2.5% mortgage)
• We have a household of 2.5 — his 13-year-old kiddo is at our house half the time so if any one category seems high for two adults, that is why. 
• We practice “anti-budgeting” in that we know how much money we have coming in and pay our bills and put money aside for different goals before we spend whatever is left. Some months this year it felt like there wasn’t always enough left and some months there was more than enough. Hint: July was the month we got married and that was a month that definitely cost a lot! 
• We are essentially CoastFI in that we have more than enough money saved for our retirement and don’t really need to save more.….. even though we are still doing it because old habits and tax breaks are hard to change!

Ok I think that does it for now! On to the numbers! 

Household Expenses

* Everything else includes gas, pets, clothing, utilities, child activities, phone, insurance, blog, housekeeping, taxes, legal and professional services, medical, gifts, tv & internet, house furnishings, water bill.….….…. etc. I’m bored just typing that out so just trust me when I say it’s reasonable and nothing that’s spectacularly interesting. 

I will say that I am very much looking forward to getting roughly $19,000 back in our budget in 2025 when we don’t have any rent or wedding expenses! 

Household Income

First, let’s take a moment to sit with that fact our household cleared $300k in our first year together. Honestly, I never thought I would be so lucky to work with such big numbers in our household budget. I am beyond grateful for all the hard work we put into making that happen this year. 

But.….… once you get into the dirty details and you pay all the taxes and deductions and all that good stuff, somehow $305k turns into $168k take home pay. That is still A LOT of money and I’m not complaining at all — I think Rachel from Friends said it best: 

Also of note in that table was our household putting $38k into our retirement accounts AND our employers giving us $25k in matching contributions! Add in the HSA and that’s $71k we set aside for our future selves! If you take out the employer matching and add up all the contributions and the gap in between our expenses and income, we’re looking at a savings rate of 21% for 2024! Not bad in a year with so many expenses and our first joint year. I think that will be higher in 2025 now that we have some joint household money management practice under our belts. 

Household Networth

Here I was thinking wow, $305k is a lot of income. Well.….. hold onto your butts because this household net worth number is way bigger and still causes me to double check my calculations at the end of every month. It’s crazy that we could not bring in any income and still see our net worth go up $50k in a month. Thank you, Mr. Market. Let’s hope the market continues the very impressive bull run it’s been on the last few years (but I kinda doubt it).

2024 reflects a lot of change in our net worth as we combined our finances. Unfortunately, it took a while to search the couch cushions to find all the accounts to put in our joint Monarch Money profile. So, 2024 isn’t really representative of our combined finances until pretty much like, September. Being the big money nerds we are, we’re looking forward to next December when we’ll have a whole year of clean data that we can use. Until then.…. this is what we have to work with.

What does $1.4 million represent to us? A good start, for now.

I recently bought a few Illinois Lottery tickets where the jackpot was $500k. It was crazy to realize if I’d won (which I definitely did not and don’t ask why I was buying $5 worth of tickets in the first place), our lives wouldn’t really change. It wouldn’t be enough after taxes to quit either of our jobs. It might let us replace our cars (which are fine) and maybe renovate the kitchen. 

If we extrapolate this year’s spending into the future, $1.4 million — with so much of it in tax-advantaged accounts — is not nearly enough to live off of for the rest of our lives. We don’t know what our relationship with paying career jobs will look like in the future, although I hope at least one of us can leave the grind and start living our best life without work sooner rather than later. I’ll probably write a whole post on that soon! 

Final Thoughts on our Year End Review

Ramit Sethi says on his podcast that he looks at someone’s conscious spending plan and he can tell their priorities. Based on our expense categories, you can tell we prioritize housing, bills, food, and travel. I don’t think Ramit would have any issues with our spending categories and while there is certainly fat we could trim off if we had to, I think it’s pretty darn reasonable — especially for two “spendypants” who already have retirement taken care of! 

Love,

How did your 2024 go? Sound off in the comments below!

I’ve been with my current employer for nearly 5 years now. For those of you keeping track at home, that 5 year milestone will tie my all-time record for consecutive years at one employer. Interestingly enough, both employers had a pension that vested at the 5 year mark — and it’s an all-or-nothing vest. I’m sure it has absolutely zero influence on my decision to stay so long. 

I’m getting off track. 

5 years at my current employer, two of which have been in my current role. I’ve battled and clawed my way into a pretty good spot at this job over the last two years and I’m not entirely sure what I want from life going forward. 

After some reflection, I think there are two paths I could take for my career. 

Path One: To Try

Like I said, I’ve been in this job for two years. I’ve gone from knowing a little bit about a little bit to knowing quite a bit about quite a bit. I’m now the third-most senior person on my team, so my manager is using my knowledge base to assist in training some of our newer members. (And when I say newer members, I mean there have been 5 people added after I joined in a combination of team expansion and position replacements). So I am leading projects, training new team members, and doing projects on my own. Not bad for coming in at the lower level of “I know what I am doing” two years ago. 

Naturally, my thoughts are turning towards career progression. I asked my manager what getting a promotion would entail because, at this point, there is no formal career progression guide that has been put together for our team. Being a pioneer is super fun. You know if I’m asking, the 5 people (soon to be 6) behind me are going to start asking the same questions. 

A promotion would look like taking on projects of increasing complexity, serving as the lead for a joint-agency project, getting my work done in a timely fashion, and providing high-quality reports on the projects that don’t need much more than a review and one or two spots of fiddling. Basically, it comes down to the vibes of upper management. 

I’m a bit skeptical I’ll pass the vibe check since I’ve caused a slight ruckus in the past with my activities outside work (hint: it starts with b and ends with ‑ook). Even though I did nothing wrong, some people were under quite the wrong impression, which was quickly used against me the moment I ran into several sticky situations at the same time. Anyways, I’ll just leave it at, I’m not sure I’d get that promotion any time soon even after jumping through all the hoops. 

In addition, I also passed the CISA certification exam this summer. This was touted to me as the IT equivalent of becoming commissioned, which carries hefty weight on your resume in the right circles. There are people who report up to the same big boss as me who look at the financial side of things while my team looks at the IT side of things. That side of the house has a career progression guide, financial incentives if you pass your commissioning test on the first try, and a retention bonus of 5% your annual income if you stay 5 years after you commission. Not too shabby. It’s a shame I don’t have anything like it, because it introduces a lot more uncertainty into the process and doesn’t offer the same level of incentives to stay.

Which leads me to my second path.….

Path Two: Not to Try

If I decide not to try to jump through all of those hoops, path two looks like finding a new job at a new company. I’m not sure I really want to leave, but if my incentive is to maximize my income (and shiny new certificate), my easiest and best option is to leave. On their website, CISA states 22% received a pay boost after becoming certified. I guess I’m in the 88% majority that did not. But, more money is always welcome.¹

I’ve seen job listings out on LinkedIn for doing roughly the same things I’m doing now, but with a $30–40k per year raise and some are even completely remote. It feels foolish to not go after a raise when for so long the message from the world² has been to advance in your career and make more money as fast as you can. I’m also aware if I don’t leave that I will be leaving money on the table, since the best way to get a raise is to leave after spending 2 years at a job and no more than 5 years, of which I am coming up on as discussed earlier in the post. (Source)

However, we are at the point in our life and careers that I’m not sure money should be the deciding factor anymore. There are a lot of lenses to view life through, and money is just one of them. We earn a comfortable amount at the moment and don’t really *need* the money. It would go into medium-level savings goals like our new car fund, house improvement bucket or our taxable investment account for money to use while we wait to get into our retirement accounts. We already put a fair amount into those accounts, so the needle wouldn’t really change a whole lot. I like my current employer, my coworkers, and what I do. Is job hopping to a different company worth the risk of not having cool coworkers and a mission I feel good about supporting? Would I work longer hours that are potentially more stressful than my current job?

I’ve spoken to a few mentors about the situation and pretty much everyone agrees it’s basically 6 of one and a half-dozen of the other. What would you do in my situation?

As always, thanks for reading!

Love,

1. I disagree with The Notorious B.I.G — mo’ money doesn’t always mean mo’ problems ︎
2. Ok fine, mostly the hustlers in the FI community, not the world at large ︎

If you feel out of the loop, check out this post on all things getting engaged and buying our house!

Renovations

We bought a beautiful 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom split level house in December. It was theoretically move-in ready, but we decided to undertake a few cosmetic upgrades before we moved in — most of the loud, dusty, inconvenient ones. Before we moved in, my fiancé and I did the following to the house: 

• Scraped all the popcorn texture off the ceilings (~2,000 sq ft)
• Mudded the ceilings
• Sanded the ceilings
• Mudded another layer on the ceilings
• Sanded the ceilings
• Painted the ceilings
• Swapped 5 light fixtures
• Painted all the walls
• Ripped up the carpet on the upper level in the bedrooms and the stairs
• Laid new hardwood flooring upstairs
• Put new risers and treads on the stairs
• Hired a plumber to install a gas line to the patio for the grill

There’s probably more, but my brain didn’t really have the capacity to absorb all the finer details of everything we did. It’s a dusty blur of exhaustion in my mind! Rough estimate is about $12,000 between the materials and tools, and we did it all ourselves with the exception of the gas line to the patio. My fiancé is very handy and I am no slouch myself in that department, so with the occasional help from family and friends we knocked it all out in just a few short months. I’m so happy with the results! Nasty beige carpet, boring white walls, and outdated popcorn ceilings are gone in favor of soft white walls in the main living areas, fresh and bright ceilings, new flooring, and wall colors that match our personalities in our bedrooms. We love it!

Wove, True Wove

Wedding planning is going well, which is excellent news since we only have 5 weeks left until we get married! We did make it easy on ourselves by deciding to do a “micro-wedding” in our backyard with only our family in attendance instead of a big fancy wedding. My fiancé has already done the big fancy wedding thing before and I have no interest in it, so it was a natural choice for us both. We decided to do the following instead: 

• We live on 1.25 acres with a big backyard, gazebo, and fire pit that makes it a natural fit for our wedding. Plus, the venue is reasonably priced at $free.99
• My dress is actually a formal event gown that only cost $230 (with an extra $400 in alterations). I went for a timeless, yet relaxed, vibe for my dress. 
• We like simple and we like tasty, so our caterer is Chipotle. No need to spend $50 a plate when we can spend $500 total to feed everyone. Since there are no restrictions at our venue, we can feel free to borrow coolers and fill them up with drinks from a trip to Sam’s Club/Costco. Bonus: no need to pay a bartender either!
• I balk at the idea of spending a ton of money on flowers that are just going to die shortly after using them, so our florals are of the glass and Lego variety. I found a local glass artist who makes beautiful glass roses and spent about $300 on glass roses for my bouquet that will last forever and remind us of our day anytime we see them. Our centerpieces will be Lego Botanical sets that will be finished by our families while they wait for us to take pictures. Don’t worry — they’re very excited about putting the Lego flowers together!
• I asked my fiancé what color our table runners should be. He said a backyard wedding with Chipotle for dinner didn’t really need coordinating linens, which I thought made a lot of sense. Instead, I found someone on Etsy who does personalized table cover coloring sheets which is honestly much more us than trying to be trendy with navy blue burlap table runners. Once again, our family is stoked we’ll give them the chance to color their tablecloths! 
• We aren’t really going to do any dancing. We might do one dance at the end of the night in the middle of our patio, but our families aren’t really dancers and this eliminates the need to hire a DJ. 
• Once it gets dark enough, we’re going to light a fire and make some s’mores! I love s’mores and it will be a fun activity for everyone to do. We’re also not doing a traditional cake (since I am gluten-intolerant) so the s’mores will complement the homemade gf brownies we’ll have for dessert. 

In short, we’re making the wedding into something we like, and discarding pretty much every other aspect of what a traditional wedding entails. All told, our budget is about $10,000 which is downright reasonable for a wedding these days. Our (my) one big splurge is on photography. Having high-quality photos taken by talented professionals was a non-negotiable for me. We found a great couple at a local bridal show/expo who will be shooting our wedding for $5,000. That’s two shooters for 8 hours, processing, and an album, which honestly isn’t bad. They already did our engagement photos and I LOVED the results, so I’m super excited about having high-quality pictures of our big day  

Going Viral 

I did a few interviews with Business Insider at the end of last year and the beginning of 2024 which apparently sparked a huge avalanche of coverage worldwide. In early February I was featured in an article on Fortune, which then got picked up by The Toronto Sun, the Daily Mail, LaVanguardia, somewhere in Eastern Europe, somewhere in Australia, and a few publications in South America which then spurred Univision to pick up my story. That’s Canada, the UK, Spain, Eastern Europe, Australia, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico for those keeping track. It was absolutely wild to get so many DM’s from people in other languages and rely on Google Translate to respond. (My absolute favorite message was someone who wanted me to invest in their banana farm in Mexico!) 

As my story was spreading across the globe, it started to garner the attention of a different kind of media — TV producers. I had a few producers reach out to me about coming on their shows (big names in American daytime TV show world) but nothing ever panned out. Which was disappointing, because it would’ve been a huge step up in marketing my book proposal. 

The Book Proposal!

I finished the first draft of my book proposal and query letter in February to try and capitalize on being a “viral sensation”. I started off small with two agents. One agent was excited and gave it some serious thought before very nicely turning me down. The other agent was a cold query and my query died a quiet death in the slush pile.

I’ve gotten some more feedback on my book proposal and will be enhancing it for a second round of querying later this year. With everything else going on in life, I’m just too busy to take it on right now. I’ll be making time and space for the book proposal after we host our big reception party in September for all our friends and family who we couldn’t accommodate at the wedding. 

~

All in all, it has been a wonderful year so far, jam packed with activities and events. I’m still interested in writing about life on this blog, but you can understand why updates are more sporadic these days. I have a lot of thoughts about combining two incomes into one household and planning for the future with all sorts of new variables!

As always, thanks for reading! 

Love, 

When I say that November 2023 was one of the most overwhelmingly positive and busy months of my life, I am not exaggerating in the slightest. 

I can’t write two separate posts on these events and drag it out like a “good” blogger would probably do because they are so intertwined with each other that I have to tell both stories at once. 

The Origins

My fiance (still cannot wrap my head around that word!) and I met in August 2022 and started officially dating in September 2022. We went to Gulf Shores with most of his family after Christmas 2022, went on an amazing all-inclusive vacation to Mexico in February 2023, experienced EconoMe together in March 2023, took a trip to Nashville for Spring Break in April 2023, had our lives changed at the Taylor Swift Eras Tour show in Kansas City July 2023, visited friends in Longmont CO, celebrated our first anniversary, and visited friends in the Carolinas in September 2023. 

Somewhere along the way, we fell madly, deeply, and ridiculously in love. 

Now, he’s been married before and long-time readers will know I’ve not been married before. As the year went on, we discussed what we wanted our relationship to look like in the future and our individual stances on marriage. I have some deep-seated relationship anxiety and feel that a ring and piece of paper from the state makes a psychological difference. He had his own hangups around marriage (which in respect to him I won’t be putting here on the internet, although I have no such qualms when it comes to my inner psyche, so you’re welcome, I guess?), so we took our time to really hear what the other was saying and what would be the best approach for both of us. 

“Took your time? Gwen, you guys dated for just over a year and haven’t even known each other for two years yet! That’s so fast!!” 

Long story short, we’re aware. The old trope of “when you know, you know” is certainly true here. At 33 and 41, we have a much better understanding of who we are, what we want in a partner, and what we need to have a healthy relationship than if we were say, in our early 20s. 

A Realization

Sometime in late September/early October, I realized I needed to let my landlord know if I was going to renew my lease when it was up at the end of January. My lease states I need to give 60 days’ notice if I’m going to move out so she has time to get it ready and list it before my lease is up. So, this was the trigger for a few talks on what we wanted to do housing-wise for 2024. Currently, we’ve been splitting our time between his place and my place which are 30 minutes away from each other. We didn’t particularly want to do that for another year, since it required us to maintain 2 households and pay for duplicates of basically everything.

His kiddo is currently in middle school, so we decided it was best if I moved to them. I can’t fit my stuff in their apartment, and there aren’t many 3‑bedroom rentals in town. That left either renting or buying a house. Renting a house in his town is EXPENSIVE as the school district is really good, so that left buying a house. 

Buying a House

What a time to buy a house. Crazy how just a few years makes such a difference between buying a house in 2021 and now. Interest rates have increased from 3% then to in the 7% range now, which means my purchasing power has decreased. 

After we decided buying was the way to go, we started keeping an eye on Zillow for properties to show up. I’m not even joking when I say inventory is low. We waited 10 WHOLE DAYS for one property to be listed, and it wasn’t even one that fit our criteria. 

We wanted a house that had 3 bedrooms, an ensuite primary bathroom, a full bathroom for his kiddo, and preferably a half bath for guest usage. We also wanted walkable to the center of town, a 2 car attached garage, somewhere to work on projects, and ease of access to the network of multi-use trails that crisscross town. We attended a few open houses, got a realtor, got preapproved, viewed a few houses the day they came on the market, and finally found one we liked enough to put an offer on. It was a super cute house built in the 1950s with a detached 2‑car garage and workshop. 

When we got home from the showing, my fiance was feeling a lot of anxiety on my behalf that I was willing to buy a house with a guy I wasn’t married to (again). Even though everything turned out fine in the end! He knew I was getting some feedback from family and friends on that, so he thought he might head that off and make this time different by proposing. 

It was perfection. Of course, I started crying and immediately said yes! 

That was November 1st! The listing agent pulled some shady behaviors (that even made our super lovely and wonderful realtor pissed off) so we ended up having the secondary offer on that house. 

You know what you get when you finish in second place on a house? Not a damn thing. But heyyyy we didn’t care, we were riding the high of getting engaged! 

The Deets

Long story somewhat shorter, 2 weeks later a house came on the market that checked all our boxes. We went to see it, loved it immediately, put an offer in, and had it accepted the next day! The list price was $310k but we wanted the sellers to accept our offer instead of having to fight others after the upcoming open house. Thus, we offered $322,500, 1% earnest money, and no repairs under $10,000. The appraisal came back at $324k. The inspection found nothing wrong beyond adding a few more smoke detectors, mitigating some radon in the basement, and one threshold that needs to be replaced. 

The house is 2 levels laid out next to each other for a total of 4 floors. I am deliberately avoiding using the word “split-level” as I don’t like split-level houses and it’s not really a split-level. That style suggests an entry where you immediately have to go up or down, whereas our house does not have that. It does, however, have 3 bedrooms, an ensuite on the primary bathroom, a full bath for the kiddo, a half bath for guests, an attached two-car garage, an unfinished basement perfect for my stained glass work and a workshop for him, a really amazing ginormous gazebo in the backyard, and it’s next door to the bike trail. 

It was originally built in 1992 and hasn’t been updated much since then, so we have some minor cosmetic updates to do before we move in May 2024. That’s when our leases are up, after I worked with my landlord to have mine extended. (Which was mutually beneficial since she can get higher rents in May and more people are looking then as opposed to January.)

We closed on the house in the middle of December and are so excited to be able to live together!

So, to recap.…

In two weeks, I got engaged, ran a project at work solo for the first time, and bought a house. Like I said at the beginning, overwhelming and amazing in the best way possible! Stay tuned for more on getting engaged and the wedding planning process!

Love,

As always, thanks for reading! Has anything you want to celebrate happened lately? Sound off in the comments below! 

On to the updates!

Anniversaries

This September saw my partner and I celebrate one year together! 12 months together and I still want to see him all the time. If not for that pesky thing called capitalism that makes us spend most of our days apart at our respective jobs, we could make that happen. Good thing we have weekends, paid time off, and the occasional sick day to see each other

This October marked one year in my ‘new’ job at work! While I lowkey resent being forced to work to earn a living, I actually really like this job. I get to do interesting things, work with super smart and fun people, and even travel a bit. I’ve seen some beautiful places, eaten surprisingly tasty meals, and earned a lot of points with Hilton hotels and Southwest Airlines. I was able to use some of those points to subsidize completing an item on my mom’s bucket list by taking her to NYC this spring, so they’re going to good use!

Also in October, I observed the 33rd anniversary of my birth! So far, 33 doesn’t feel much different than 32, although I might have a few more grey hairs, a few extra pounds, and a lot more wisdom to share with my younger coworkers and friends. 32 was a very good year to me, and I hope 33 treats me equally well! Could someone remind me to update all my social media accounts with my new age? I always forget until March-ish haha

Business Insider Article

A friend tagged me in a post by a journalist looking for people to interview who experienced challenges after ditching the 9–5. Since I experienced a lot of challenges after leaving the corporate world for the first time, I was interviewed and featured in an article! Note, this is behind a paywall, although if you look at it on mobile and put your phone into airplane mode fast enough, you should be able to see it. Alternatively, I think you could also disable Javascript in your browser and not have to deal with the paywall.

Link to the article: All smoke and no FIRE: Early retirees open up about the struggles of ditching their paychecks in exchange for freedom and the new ways they’re generating extra income

Business Insider Article

No, this isn’t a glitch. You’re not crazy. There are two sections with the same title.

I was in TWO Business Insider articles!

When I was interviewed for the first article, I was asked if there was anything else that might be relevant that we hadn’t covered. I mentioned I was writing a book for supersavers and how I recovered from being one, which definitely piqued her interest.

Wait a minute, Gwen, you can’t just say you’re writing a book and then keep going like that isn’t huge news! To which I say, it’s my blog and I can do what I want, but keep reading for more details on the book after I finish talking about the article.

The second article was a very fair and balanced look at why I stopped hardcore pursuing early retirement. In a nutshell, saving as much as I was back in 2014–2016 was unsustainable and I burnt out on the hustle culture side of things. It is absolutely possible to achieve retirement in your 30s, but I did not have the right kinds of tools in my arsenal. I was single, not earning FAANG salary levels, and my side hustles didn’t hit the kind of critical mass needed to supplement my W2 income. Once I realized and accepted that, the deprivation and stress no longer seemed worth it.

Link to the article with the same caveats as above: A 32-year-old set aside 78% of her income for 5 years and saved $200,000. She explains why she abandoned the FIRE movement and decreased her savings rate to 10%.

I have many thoughts on this and there’s a fair amount of nuance that’s hard to capture in one article. Once I started trying to articulate what I had experienced, thought, and felt, I realized it wouldn’t be one post or even a series of posts on the blog. It was best suited for a book.

THE BOOK!

As a former gifted kid with perfectionist tendencies, a deep-seated craving for praise/attention, and an overwhelming desire to prove myself, I threw myself into learning to write well. Having a sister who has a BA in English also contributed to me learning how to express the written English language well. I ended up scoring a 32 out of 36 in English and Writing on the ACT, starting this blog where I write for fun, and taking a job that requires an extensive written report at the end of every project. Many people have told me I should write a book, but I never felt I had something worth writing about until something clicked earlier this year. 

My friends Carl and Mindy from 1500 Days appeared on the I Will Teach You to Be Rich podcast by Ramit Sethi. They had saved over 4 million dollars and had no idea how to start spending it. While I was listening to the podcast in my car on the way to work one day, I was yelling at the speakers about how I could help them because I had learned how to spend my money. I had so many ideas! I literally stopped in the middle of the episode and called Mindy because I was that full of inspiration. 

I highly encourage you to watch the episode on Youtube if you can. It is fascinating to watch Ramit interact with them and their responses to his questions. 

So, I realized I had something valuable worth writing about that I believe people genuinely need. In this FIRE community, yes, but also outside of it. It’s funny to talk to people about the concept of struggling to spend money. Usually the problem is struggling to have money to spend! With all the issues in our culture and economy, having too much money and not knowing how to spend it seems ridiculous, but as we see with Carl and Mindy, it’s a real problem. 

I documented a lot of my experiences when I was saving a ton of money on this blog, but I didn’t document a lot of the actions I took to spend money when I decided to stop pursuing early retirement. In the book, I’ll walk you through the different experiments I conducted with my spending, how I felt about it, the outcome of the experiments, and what behaviors changed through the lens of each category of my budget. 

If this at all sounds interesting to you, please fill out the form below! If I can show an agent/publishing house there is already interest before I pitch them, I will have a higher chance of actually making it happen. 

November 2023 update: I started writing this post in October and even more updates conspired against me to delay publishing this post, so stay tuned for even more exciting news to come!

As always, thanks for reading!
Love, 

I first met JL Collins at the 2015 Ecuadorian Chautauqua. I’d been reading his blog jlcollinsnh.com basically since I’d discovered FIRE. The blog was originally started to document his advice to his daughter, Jessica, who is just a few years younger than I am. Thus, the content of the blog was particularly relevant to me.

Getting to discuss all things FIRE with him towards the beginning of my journey was so incredibly helpful and validating that I was on the right path. He didn’t create the path, but he did help find the best path for me. Now, JL is only one person and can’t have 1‑on-1’s with everyone in the world, so he turned all those words of wisdom into his first book, The Simple Path to Wealth. By following JL’s advice, I am well on my path to wealth. 

I’m not only one, either. Since the book came out in 2016, people have let him know through conversations and emails how much impact his advice has had. He thought those stories might be useful to other people on the financial independence journey, so he put out an official call for stories, picked the best examples, and turned those into his latest book, Pathfinders: Extraordinary Stories of People Like You on the Quest For Financial Independence. 

I was lucky enough to sit down with JL the day it launched and talk about the book with him. I’ve highlighted some of that interview and included my thoughts on the book below.

I hope you enjoy! 

Gwen: With all the stories in the news on how most people can’t come up with $400 for an emergency, consumer debt is reaching new highs, car loans are at their highest-ever levels, and so on, are you still bullish on the idea of Financial Independence and Retiring early?

JL: Absolutely. First of all, in this current day and age, unfortunately, the media is a constant drumbeat of negativity around these economic kinds of things. It’s just not true. There’s grains of truth to it, which is what they build it around but the world is a much, much better place and filled with far more opportunity than you would ever gather if you just listen to the input from social media and media in general.

In Pathfinders, there are stories from all over the world. There’s a story in here from Ukraine. A guy in Ukraine who is on The Simple Path to Wealth, was on it before the invasion, before his country was attacked, and is still on it, and you know — he’s living in a war. There’s a story in there from a guy who’s in Russia, who is also following the simple path and he’s in a country that’s become an international pariah and has all kinds of sanctions that are crushing it.

So when I read news reports about how terrible things are for Americans, it’s like, get a grip! One of my my fears is that people listen to that nonsense and then they throw up their hands and despair and say well, I’m not gonna try. I’ve said in other interviews and I’ll say to you, that if you read Pathfinders you will never again be honestly able to say this can’t be done because you’re going to read a hundred stories of people who are doing it.

Gwen: Do you think people will choose to do it after reading Pathfinders and other people’s stories?

JL: Not everybody. In fact, I think, actually, very few people are ever going to choose to spend a significant amount of their money buying their freedom. Most people are going to say they want to buy a fancy car or a bigger house, or they don’t have enough money to be able to choose freedom and live the lifestyle that they want.

Gwen: So what would it take, then? 

JL: So, if you’re going to become financially independent, you have to structure your life in a way that you are not spending everything you earn. It doesn’t matter how much you’re earning, it’s a matter of choosing what you want to spend your money on. We all have a finite amount of money that’s coming in and we all get to choose what we do with it. The people that you’re going to read about in Pathfinders, and a lot of people in the FIRE community, chose to say you know what, the most important thing I can spend my money on is investments because that’s how I buy my freedom, and that means by definition I’m not gonna be able to spend that money on other stuff.

Gwen: How did you decide to pursue what would eventually become this path to financial independence? 

JL: I started in the wildness, so to speak, in the 1970’s and had to figure it out on my own. It wasn’t a great environment to be starting out in with what would be called Stagflation. It took me two years to find a job that paid $10,000 the first year. I arbitrarily decided to save half as I knew people living off of $5,000 a year. 

(Note from Gwen: $10,000 in 1974 is the equivalent of $62,000 in 2023)

As my income grew, I still saved half and that gave me the freedom and peace of mind I needed. It’s a personal choice to make your savings rate whatever you want it to be. Just understand that the higher it is, the sooner you’ll reach financial independence. The lower it is, the longer it will take, and good luck if you ever lose your ability to trade your labor and time for money, which of course happened to my father. That creates a desperate situation, and seeing what happened to my father left me certain that I never wanted to be vulnerable. 

Gwen: Let’s talk about this more. Having been to a lot of events like Camp FI, FinCon, EconoMe and Chautauquas, I’ve met a lot of people on the path to FIRE who have experienced some sort of financial trauma in their life that primes them, or makes them more receptive, to the stability and certainty that having a large financial cushion provides. I grew up poor and hated not having any money, so when I found out about the FIRE movement that told me exactly what I could do to have money and never worry about being poor again, I jumped at it (and maybe went a little overboard at first).  How do you think you were affected?

JL: My dad was a pretty successful business guy and we had a pretty comfortable life, but he was a cigarette smoker and cigarettes erode your health relentlessly over time. He wasn’t a saver and investor and we lived a good life. But as the cigarettes debilitated him, his ability to work disappeared and his ability to earn income disappeared. And if we hadn’t gone through those hard times which were very difficult for the family, I probably wouldn’t have the same frame of reference that I now.

I’ve almost come to think, if you’re born into comfortable circumstances, it’s almost an obstacle to becoming financially independent. And there are a couple of stories in Pathfinders from people who have kind of what the critics think of the stereotypical FIRE story. They’re highly educated, highly compensated, they work in Silicon Valley and then move back to the Midwest where they’re from. And those are great stories, too. But it does seem that to really be effective with money and to really have the motivation, to take time to learn about it, there’s commonly some sort of financial trouble or trauma rather, in the background. And that’s certainly my case. It sounds like it’s your case.

Gwen: Definitely.

JL: And as you say, you go to these events and you talk to people, and it’s very common. I tell this story in Pathfinders. In couples, there’s usually one person who’s really into this stuff, and then there’s the spouse, who just gets dragged along to these events. There was a dragged-along spouse, a woman named Kathy. I remember she and I were chatting one day and she grew up in a wealthy family, and she said what we did was spend money. And not spending money just feels like deprivation to me. And this, again was somebody we’re not talking about spending money for food and basic clothing, but shopping as a form of entertainment or recreation.

But it was an epiphany for me because it gave me a chance to reframe how I thought about it. So for the first time, as I was talking to her, I said, Well, Kathy, think about it this way. If you buy investments, you are spending your money. You’re just buying something different instead of buying cars or houses or clothes or whatever, you’re buying your freedom.

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Gwen’s thoughts

When I was first getting into FIRE, I really liked finding and reading all the blogs that were out there from people on the path to FIRE. They gave me glimpses into the personal lives of others, and allowed me to expand my frame of reference on what was possible. I was influenced by and took ideas from many different voices on the internet. 

Pathfinders is like an abbreviated version of all those blogs back then. The book has 100 stories from 100 different people in all stages of life with 100 competing priorities, goals, and backgrounds. What I find interesting is that all the stories are from people who found The Simple Path to Wealth and implemented it into their lives. It’s a small glimpse into what’s possible when you find FIRE and how it can change your life. 

In my conversation with JL, I found it fascinating that he is still so bullish on FIRE being a possibility even in today’s economic environment. I don’t entirely agree with him that it’s all about choosing to spend less than you make, as I feel there are a lot of people who can’t make better choices due to the ones they’ve previously made. However, that being said, even implementing small changes and altering some behaviors will add up over the long run and put people into a better situation, even if early retirement is off the table. 

Another snippet of the conversation I found interesting was the impact of financial trauma in the past among so many on the path to financial independence. Being without, or going from have to have not, is a very powerful demonstration of how hard life can be if you don’t have sufficient capital to meet your debt obligations. As JL quotes in the book from Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, “If you figure out money, life is incredibly easy. If you don’t, life is insanely hard.” 

My hope is that reading my blog, JL’s blog, and JL’s book will help propel you onto the path of an incredibly easy life!

Love,

Have you read Pathfinders yet? Let me know what you think in the comments below!

My 25-and-still-gung-ho-about-FIRE-self would have thought this would be a slower pace than projected; However, taking just over 10 years of working with a salary that recently crossed six figures is not too shabby at all. I benefited at the beginning from a robust bull market and continued to invest in my accounts even when the market was down. Slow and steady wins the race!

According to my spreadsheet, here is when I hit some major milestones (for the first time): 

$100k: July 2016
$200k: February 2018
$300k: May 2021
$400k: May 2023

So, the first $100k was basically all savings and took me roughly 3 years. The second $100k took just under 2 years, the next $100k just over 3, and this $100k 2 years almost exactly. I feel like that’s not the usual timeline, but things got a little crazy in there with me trying out the whole No W2 thing and multiple bear markets. 

I’m not planning on leaving the workforce for a while now, so I have plenty of time for this nest egg to continue to compound and grow. 

When I hit $100k, the makeup of my net worth looked like this: 

That’s 5% cash, 9% for the value of my car at the time, and 86% investments. Now it looks like this: 

Turns out my ability to make graphics has improved as well in the ensuing 7 years!

This is the part of the post where I would normally talk about how close I am to my FIRE goal. If I were still aiming for $635k by 35, I’d be nearly two-thirds of the way to the goal. However, my goals in life have changed (as previously mentioned) and $635k would no longer be sufficient for the kind of lifestyle that lets me be my best self. I know, though, that if something were to happen to me that would impede my ability to work, I would at least be able to supplement whatever disability pay I’d get. And honestly, that provides a fair amount of comfort. 

Also changing the calculus is my relationship status. Things tend to fluctuate in my life depending on who or if I am dating anyone. Previously, I’ve made room in the plans for the future to include, but not limited to, kids, a house in the suburbs, living in the middle of the woods, and taking care of elderly parents. I have zero ideas what my life will look like in even the next few years, so the best thing for me to do is continue to save some money for retirement (10% to my 401k), put some money aside for future large expenses (maybe buying a new place to live, a new car, a big party, etc) and just generally taking care of myself and living a good life. 

I’ll also be looking forward to continue seeing my net worth go up and see how long it takes me to hit the fabled $500,000 mark. Onwards and upwards we go! 

As always, thanks for reading! Have you hit any milestones lately? 

Love, 

No Car Note

As Dee‑1 says.…

Cause I ain’t got no car note
I ain’t got no car note
I ain’t got no car note
No note No note No note

(Check out the whole song “No Car Note”! It’s great!)

I paid off my car loan early! I bought my car in September 2020 for $14,817. My loan for the car from my local credit union was for 36 months at 2.94%. Not too shabby! I paid the loan off early in a mere 25 months. I would’ve preferred sooner (obviously) but my financial situation shifted a bit after I bought the car when I went through the breakup and honestly I’m just really happy I was able to pay it off early like I wanted to. Before I got my new job and the raise that went with it, having an extra $410 in my monthly budget was very helpful. Now that I have a bit more breathing room, I pay myself that $400 each month into an account for my next car. Whenever that is, hopefully very far into the future! 

No More Wide Open Spaces

When I was younger, I definitely related to the Chicks’ song “Wide Open Spaces”. I needed those wide open spaces with room to make my big mistakes. I needed new faces and to learn how the rest of the world worked. While I haven’t seen it all, I’ve seen a fair amount from someone who grew up in the middle of a cornfield. I’ve moved 12 times in the last decade or so and I’m getting to the point where I don’t want to live that life anymore. 

I’m proud to announce I just re-signed my first 12 month lease! That’s right, at age 32, I finally won’t have to update my friend’s address books for Christmas cards. I’ve extended leases before, but never for the full 12 months. One year I went month to month since I knew my job was going to move me within 6 months. Another time I signed an 18 month lease up front and then had to extend it a month or two while I waited for news on my next new job. (That was some bullshit — they charged me like an extra 5–600 a month to do that. Big apartment complexes using rent fixing software SUCK). Other times I’ve lived with friends/loved ones and didn’t have a lease to break when I moved. 

So, the fact that I’ve been paying for my own housing for the last 12 years and just now reupped a regular 12 month lease is HUGE! I love my fancy condo in downtown St Louis and honestly have a pretty great deal. I signed for $1750 with a $50/mo increase each year I renew. I thought that was a bit bogus at the time, but after seeing so many posts in the local subreddit about landlords raising rents 3–400 a month, I consider myself blessed to know my current and future housing expenses. Three and a half consecutive years in one metropolitian area is also a record for me. I love living in St Louis and have zero intention of leaving in the future. It feels.…. nice to put down roots and be able to appreciate change in a city. Before, I was the one changing. Now, the city is changing around me and I’m a big fan. New restaurants, new sports teams (Ka-Kaaw!), new places for fun and recreation (Armory, Foundry, Puttshack) .… I’m here for it!

Speaking of roots.…..

After the breakup in late 2021, I wasn’t really looking for a new partner in 2022. I dipped my toe back into the world of online dating, quickly remembered how awful those streets were and just as quickly jumped back out of the active dating pool. I mostly focused on my job, exploring my new found freedom, and hanging out with cool people. I didn’t have many friends my age in St Louis yet, so I was doing a lot with the local young professionals Meetup.com group. (Sidenote: it hurts when I’m one of the oldest in the group for young people!!) A bunch of group admins got together and planned a giant game of pickup kickball at one of St Louis’ beautiful parks.

While at this kickball game having fun, one of my team members caught my eye and we clicked. The fun continued after the game at the local brewery so we swapped numbers and went our own separate ways. 

As luck would have it, my kickball teammate felt the same way about our interactions during the game and asked me out. The rest, is history! We’ve been officially dating just over 6 months now and having a super fun time together. While he’s not in the FIRE community, he is savvy with his finances and respects all that I’ve done with mine. We’ve done some traveling together already (family trip for a week at the Gulf Shores, a vacation to Cancun, and EconoMe in Cincinnati) and haven’t killed each other, so I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious. 

One Last Move!

The last move to happen recently with my money was a recent liquidity injection of cold, hard cash from the proceeds of the sale of my portion of the house I bought with my now-ex boyfriend. No, I don’t regret doing so and yes, I will be far less likely to repeat that particular scenario in the future. I moved out of the house in January 2022, but we couldn’t start the paperwork with the mortgage company until the loan was a year old. So, we started the paperwork process in March 2022 and waited. Waited some more. Filled out a pile of paperwork and waited some more. Finally, in September 2022, we got the final papers we needed, got them signed and notarized, and mailed them back. (why are we still doing this on paper!?)

My ex is very detail oriented and in looking over the paperwork one last time, noted there was an error on one of the pages. The mortgage company sent us a whole new ream of papers to sign, so we redid the whole sign and notarize dance and it was only *then* that I got my check for my portion of the equity in the house. The mortgage company may or may not be completely done with the process now — we’re not sure since we haven’t heard anything from them in quite a while. My ex and I recently closed our joint account we had opened for bills and joint expenses, so the loose ends that remain to be tied up are few and far between at this point. Woohoo! 

So, as you can see, life has been happening the last few months and I’m grateful to be in such a good spot. What major moves with your money have happened recently? 

As always, thanks for reading!

Love, 

It was time to get serious for Round Two. 

Well.….…. it was time to get serious after the whole plan got interrupted by your favorite bold and feisty  blogger becoming a comatose, feverish mess for a week after succumbing to Covid. (I’m fine now but I did not have the energy to make food, let alone argue with people on the phone. Not to mention I kept coughing like a 30-year smoker.)

After I recovered from Covid, I resumed my efforts. I was not going to be defeated by this rollover process. I got two emails from the benefits center that my documents had been received. This was incredibly stressful since I sent 3 envelopes, but the last confirmation email arrived the following day, so while the anxiety was fierce, it was short-lived. Thankfully. 

Round Two for Prime

Prime, if you recall, is the main 401(k) account from the first company to employ me. I sent in the paper check, the form from the benefits center, and the plan information that included the Letter of Determination (LoD) from the IRS that it came from a qualified plan. The form was good, the check was incorrectly addressed, and they missed the LoD statement in the stack of paperwork. I used the chat function to talk to an employee at the benefits center and copied the transcript into a Word doc so I had a record of what was said. That came very in handy. So, I was able to get them to accept the LoD but the check was still incorrectly made out. They had rejected the check and were going to send it back to me in the mail with me none the wiser if I hadn’t followed up. The confirmation emails I got said to allow two business days for processing so after each batch of mail was accepted, I had to call in two days later to see what exciting and wonderful things I had to do next. 

To do for round 3: get a new check filled out correctly and mail it in.

Round Two for Triangle

The check for Triangle was sent directly from Vanguard to the benefits center so that was one less stressor on me. I was told the 1099‑R would be adequate information for them, but they told me the wrong information. It was not enough for the LoD, but it was enough to count as my distribution statement.

More on that later.

The problem with this one was the money was rolled over into an IRA, so it wasn’t technically an employer retirement account anymore and I didn’t have access to the LoD anymore. An hour on hold with Vanguard just to talk to someone led to two transfers with the requisite identity verification questions and multiple holds as they tried to find the LoD from the original plan. Miraculously, they were able to find it for me AND it was sent to my message center online the next day. No mail! Woo! So the next day I downloaded the pdf statement. 

I was all set to print it out and mail it, but then I discovered the benefits center had a very cleverly hidden online document upload link. I uploaded the LoD and, no joke, it was accepted with the money deposited into my current 401(k) account a few days later. IT WAS A MIRACLE. 

Round 3 to do: Nothing! 

Round Two for Southdown

This was brutal, y’all. This account was missing both the letter of determination and the distribution statement; the check was actually addressed correctly so that wasn’t an issue. Once again, I had to call back the original investment company and get them to send the documents to me. They agreed to send the letter of determination straight to my benefits center address instead of using me as the middle (wo)man. The distribution statement took a little longer for them to find and send to me in the mail. 

BUT. A stroke of luck! I found the original documents, took a picture, and uploaded it to the wonderful people at the benefits center. It was accepted before I got the packet in the mail! 

Round 3 to do: Nothing!

Round Three for Prime

I called Fidelity back once again and went over the issue with them. They canceled the first check and issued a new check that was correctly addressed. You know how there’s a saying that says “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”? Well, this was accurate because the check was nearly addressed correctly. But not quite. So I got that addressed, they mailed the check to me, I sent it on to the benefits center and it was accepted. FINALLY.

Round 3 to do: Nothing!

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, even though it was the world’s biggest pain in the ass process, I’m grateful I went through all the hassle. Having one account to check each month for my updates is WONDERFUL. Things are so much easier when I don’t have to check three different accounts and add them all up for one cell in the spreadsheet. It might seem like relatively minor improvements, but any hurdle I can remove is beneficial to my silly brain that likes to convince me there are too many steps.

The other major benefit came when I interviewed for the new job at my current employer. Part of the screening requirements for the new job involved checking into my finances to make sure there are no conflicts of interest that would interfere with my ability to be an impartial judge at client sites. Instead of having to list out all those former 401k accounts, I didn’t have to list any at all since they were able to see what my employer-sponsored retirement accounts looked like. That simplified the interview HR did with me, so all this effort wasn’t wasted after all! 

That being said, I do not want to go through the rollover process again anytime soon! If I’ll need to do that in the future, I hope the process has evolved to take advantage of technological advancements like intra-company fund transfers. While I’m at it, I’d also like to wish for a purple pony! Ha!

A different friend suggested the reason I stayed for so long was due to all the upheaval and uncertainty in the other facets of my life. While that was certainly part of it, the people I worked with and the job duties were a much bigger reason why I stayed. I genuinely enjoy being around the vast majority of my coworkers on a day-to-day basis. The responsibilities of the position played well to my strengths and the challenges posed kept me engaged. 

There were a few things that bothered me about the job. And, now that I think about it, those things weren’t even really about the job itself. I started the job in December of 2019 with a salary of $76,000. Currently, I make $80,400. An extra $4k in pay a year is nothing to sneeze at, and I’m grateful I got raises, but my salary was not keeping up with inflation. There was also absolutely zero room to negotiate for a higher raise, which led to a little resentment. 

In addition to paltry raises each year, there was also no immediate career progression plan. I came in on one rung of the ladder and there I would stay unless I took on a lot of work and proved my worthiness to move up in advance.

I knew I didn’t want to leave the company this time. I’m not vested in the 401(k) or pension, and I think my company is a great employer that is doing very valuable work in the US. I talked to a few different people in my division about what I might do. Most of them were able to commiserate with me but didn’t really have any advice to offer. One of the managers not only offered me some advice but told me about an upcoming opening on his team and encouraged me to apply for it. 

So, I did. 

And I got the job! 

It was my first time interviewing for an internal position, so I didn’t quite know what to expect. One of my friends at work is a senior manager, so they gave me the list of questions commonly used in internal interviews, did a mock interview with me, and helped me hone my answers. I don’t think I would’ve been anywhere near as prepared without that experience, so I’m incredibly grateful they took time out of their busy schedule to help me when they didn’t have to. I definitely owe them dinner or drinks sometime to express my appreciation. 

There are a ton of things to look forward to with this new job! I’ll be going from the IT Support world to the mysterious and complicated world of IT Security. My job will be to travel to clients in our district and evaluate their IT environments for excess risks. So, I’ll get to travel to new places within the Midwest, talk to new people about IT, and write reports. All things I like to do, and I’m good at doing all of those things!

The job listing stated the position would be a level 5 job, but candidates with less experience or who were missing qualifications could be offered a lower level position. Since I don’t have much IT Security experience and I don’t have a CISA or CISSP certification, I didn’t qualify for the level 5 position. However, I do have a decade of IT experience and a lesser certification so they offered the position to me as a level 4. I’m currently a level 3, so this is a rung up the ladder and pay scale for me. My current pay scale tops out at $113k while my new pay scale tops out at $152k. That’s a lot more room to move up! There is an established career progression path for this new job. If I pass the certification exam for the CISA and/or CISSP certification, I will move up into the level 5 position which means my pay ceiling will be even higher!

I was expecting to try to negotiate with HR for a 10–15% raise for a salary over $90k. I was very pleasantly surprised to be offered $106,500 instead! I didn’t expect to be earning six figures anytime soon, so I played it cool and immediately gave my verbal acceptance. I’ll have a few posts coming up on the new salary and the potential for all the things I can do with an extra $26,500 a year in income when I get a few paychecks under my belt and can wrap my brain around my new income level. If anyone has any advice for higher-income earners, I’m all ears! 

Since I’ll be traveling part of the time, I’ll have a new schedule. Currently I’m in the office 2 days a week. My new job only requires me to be onsite 4 days a month! And, if I’m traveling to a client, those days count as onsite. It could be a while before I’m needed at the office, which is precisely why I’m also losing my desk. Considering I don’t need to keep miscellaneous IT equipment on hand for people at my desk anymore, I’m not too upset at losing a spot of my own when I’m rarely going to be there. It does mean I need to figure out what to do with all my desk decorations, though! When I’m on the road, I’ll be getting per diem to cover my food expenses. It’s not going to be glamorous business travel like you see in some jobs. I’ll usually be driving in the company car with my coworkers to the site de jour, which are more often than not smaller towns. This means we’re going to be staying in basic hotels, not the Four Seasons, so I’m not sure how much I can take advantage of the travel with credit cards and memberships. I’m a tiny bit concerned about traveling while gluten intolerant, so I expect to travel with some food of my own in case I can’t find a safe restaurant to eat at. Finally, we’ll be on a 9/80 schedule. This means I’ll complete 80 hours of work in 9 work days instead of 10, so I’ll get every other Friday off! I’m stoked at an extra 24 days off to do things like run errands and schedule doctor appointments during the work day. And, of course, 3‑day weekends are easier to get some travel in over the regular short weekends. 

I’m grateful I live in such a wonderful building that has such a strong community in it. I would not be able to take on a job with travel requirements and have a cat without having neighbors who are not only willing to look after Bartholomew, but are eager to do so. They love him just as much as I do, so I feel confident about leaving my fur child in their competent hands. 

There are so many things to look forward to with the new job! I’m stoked to get started! 

As always, thanks for reading! Please drop any advice for me in the comments on being a high-income earner if you have it!