When we first learned about financial independence, we started to analyze our spending. One of the first things that we realized was that we spent way too much on groceries.  

I eat gluten-free and have a variety of weird food allergies. We like to eat healthy, fresh foods, which also tend to cost a bit more. I would have assumed that we’d spend a little bit more on groceries than the average. 

Through some research, we realized that we spent more money on food than the USDA’s guidance for a (liberal spending) family of four.

We have taken steps to improve. We’ve focused on not wasting food, meal planning based on what we already have, and buying in bulk. We have reduced our food spending quite a bit, but we felt like it was still high. 

I wanted to save more money on groceries. I didn’t feel like we were getting the appropriate value for the money we were spending.

Someone mentioned that they save money by using a CSA (community-supported agriculture). What this means is that you buy a share in a farm and then you get a big box of produce each week for the summer and fall. 

When I was doing research into this, I stumbled across ugly produce delivery services. I found these services appealing for two reasons. First, these services ship the produce directly to your house. CSAs typically require you to pick it up from a central location. The ugly veggie services also provide the option of customizing the size of the box you want and the products inside. CSA shares provide a lot of food, and I wasn’t sure that we could use it all.

There are two options for ugly produce where we live: Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods. We decided to try them both, alternating weeks between the two. One week we’d get a Misfits Market box. The next week we’d receive an Imperfect Foods Box. 

We originally wrote this review in the fall of 2019 and chose our favorite at that point. In the summer of 2022, we initially updated this review after realizing that both services had made changes to their products and level of customization. 

But that was just the beginning. Since updating this review in 2022, there have been major changes and improvements to the ugly produce delivery service industry, most notably with the acquisition and merger of the two companies that we initially reviewed.

We’ll share our experience with using both companies historically, and as they rolled out the changes as a result of the acquisition.

What is Ugly Produce Delivery?

In the United States, approximately 40% of our food is wasted. It isn’t only consumers who are wasting food. Food is wasted for a variety of reasons and at different points along the supply chain. Farms, distributors, stores, and consumers are all guilty of too much food waste.

For the purposes of this post, let’s focus on the beginning of the supply chain – farms. Farms waste food for a variety of reasons:

• Hedging against Weather and Disease – Farms will often over-plant because they worry about bad weather or other potential harm to their crops. Because of this, they might have a surplus that there is no demand for.
• Buying Standards – As consumers in the United States, we have unrealistic cosmetic requirements for our produce. In a grocery store, we are likely to buy perfectly looking vegetables and fruits. This is problematic because this leads to edible but “ugly” crops being left in the fields or thrown into garbage cans.
• Market Conditions – Sometimes the crop’s price at the time does not warrant the cost of labor or transportation to bring it to market.
• Order Changes – Sometimes a company will make a large order and later cancel their order. This leaves farms scrambling to figure out if they can sell the product. 

The National Resource Defence Council makes a number of recommendations to help solve this problem. One of their main recommendations is to “expand secondary markets for items that do not meet the highest cosmetic standards.”

This is precisely what companies like Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods are doing. They are the secondary markets. They are buying the produce from farms when there is a surplus or when the produce doesn’t meet cosmetic requirements.

Instead of this produce going to waste, it gets sold at a discount to companies like Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods. These companies then ship the produce from their warehouse directly to customers. 

What are the Benefits of using a Secondary Market?

There are many benefits to buying your groceries through a company like Misfits Market or Imperfect Foods.

• Cost Savings: Produce through these services are often less expensive. When I first started using these services, I compared prices with my regular grocery store. The prices are typically 30-50% less, depending on the product. Because I’m not walking through the grocery store, I’m also not picking up random things I don’t need.
• Time Savings: These companies deliver right to your door. This cuts down on the need for going grocery shopping.
• Healthy Eating: Now that we use these services we eat more fresh fruits and vegetables than we used to. We eat fresh produce with every meal of the day and in between for snacks.
• More inventive meals: Since we now plan our meals around the produce that is available, we’ve been more creative with our meals. We’ve made many recipes I would have never even considered. These new recipes include spaghetti squash boats, cabbage and sausage skillet, and even a curtido (Salvadoran pickled cabbage to put on tacos).
• Good for the environment: Buying produce from these services helps to reduce food waste. These companies have also done due diligence to ensure that food pantries are not receiving fewer donations.

What are the Drawbacks?

If you use one of these services, there are certain drawbacks. You are no longer stopping at the grocery store to get exactly what you want or need. 

• Limited choices: While I feel like both services have a lot of options, you can only choose from what is currently available. There have been times where we’d love to get cauliflower, pineapple, or cilantro, but those simply aren’t available that week.
• Limited Delivery Frequency: Sometimes these products are shipped by FedEx, so they can arrive on any delivery day that you choose. Other times, a company might only deliver to your area once/week. 
• Product Quality is Sometimes Lower: There are occasions when I will receive a product that needs to be eaten within a couple of days. On rare occasions, some products will get smashed in transit. If something is already bad when it arrives, both companies are typically prompt at providing a refund.

How do Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods Compare?

About Imperfect Foods

Imperfect Foods was started in 2015. Prior to the acquisition and merger, they delivered to metropolitan areas in 32 states. They were popular because of their in-house delivery and growing assortment of private label products, even if it came with limited delivery windows (for example, they only delivered to my area on Tuesday afternoons).

They allowed customers to completely customize their boxes. You could choose from 4 different size boxes and organic or conventional. They would also add a set of items to your box. During a customization window, you could swap things out and add eggs, dairy, meat, or other pantry items if you’d like. 

About Misfits Market

Misfits Market was started in 2018. They are based in Philadelphia and New Jersey. 

Misfits Market initially made changes in 2021, and they now allow you to completely customize your box as well. Each week, they will let you know the window of time in which you can choose your items.

Misfits Market delivers to almost all zip codes in the lower 48 US states. In urban areas and larger suburbs, Misfits Market now uses the former Imperfect Foods delivery network. Through this network, you get your groceries delivered to your door from a dedicated Misfits Market delivery driver. If you live outside of one of their dedicated delivery zones, your box gets delivered to your doorstep by FedEx or another third party.

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Information about the Acquisition of Imperfect Foods by Misfits Market

The acquisition of Imperfect Foods by Misfits Market was first announced in September 2022. While both companies have shared updates along the way, it’s been a bit of a waiting game to see how this change would affect consumers.

When we first learned of the acquisition, it made sense to us because of the similarities between the two companies. Below is a list of the similarities that we initially shared in 2019.

How are they similar?

Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods have so many similarities. 

• Mission: Both companies have a mission to reduce food waste.
• Sourcing: They both source the produce that would not sell in stores for a variety of reasons, whether it be surplus or cosmetic requirements.
• Selection: Both companies now offer produce, pantry items, dairy, and meat.
• Customization: Both companies allow you to customize your entire order based on their available selection, and you do not need to meet a minimum threshold for produce.
• Price per Unit: Both companies now allow you see the cost of every item. This allows you to easily compare it to the prices in your local grocery store.
• Organic vs. Conventional: Both companies offer a variety of organic and non-organic products.
• Delivery: Both companies deliver the box right to your doorstep.
• Delivery Fee: They both charge a nominal delivery fee (Imperfect Foods waives the fee above $60). 

We were also very excited and hopeful that the acquisition would mean the best of both companies for the consumer.

So, how did the acquisition shake out for consumers? What does this mean for customers of both companies?

How does the Acquisition (and Merger) impact Customers?

Unlike other mergers or acquisitions, the acquisition has had minimal impact on customers so far. We’ve actually been really impressed with how seamless the transition has been.

We were able to continue using Imperfect Foods as we were until they made a few recent changes, including updating the app and shopping process so that it aligns with what Misfits Market does.  

I expect that they will eventually phase out the Imperfect Website and process, so if you decide to try out one of these services, I’d recommend signing up with Misfits Market, so that you process won’t change.

Best Ugly Produce Service: Misfits Market vs. Imperfect Foods

We have been long-time customers of both services. We’ve been using both for over 4 years, although our early preference (from 2019-2021) was Imperfect Foods, in large part due to the lack of customizations from Misfits Market.

But we then heard a lot about Misfits Market’s customization options. So, in the summer of 2022, we tried it again. At the time we had one key question to answer. Would Misfits Market’s new customization (and availability of non-organic produce) allow it to jump ahead of Imperfect Foods in our ranking?

Ultimately, we concluded that the decision between the two companies would have been based on what you value most (or where you live), and that Misfits Market closed almost all of the gap that we saw with Imperfect Foods (customization, transparency on pricing, adding non-organic produce, and adding refrigerated items). But we still saw Imperfect Foods as the better company to use because of the quality. It was rare that we received anything from Imperfect Foods that we could not eat.

Now that the companies have made significant progress to merge their companies, here’s what we think about the services.

We are enjoying the benefits of both Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods. We get access to the superior Misfits Market shopping app and have access to a wider variety of products. And, we still get our groceries delivered directly to our house by a Misfits Market delivery driver. And we’ve been happy to see that the level of quality from Imperfect Foods has carried over. We have not yet had to throw anything out because of the quality of food sent to us. It truly is the best of both worlds.

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It’s supposed to be the holy grail — the target that unlocks your freedom.

Over the past 15 years of being immersed in this space, I’ve met countless people who’ve proudly calculated and announced their FI number. I’ve read thousands of articles, listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts, and watched many people anchor their entire life plan to a single dollar amount.

And there’s a harsh truth almost no one has the guts to admit:

Your FI number is probably misleading you.

It’s something we all sort of sense, but rarely say out loud. Let’s explore why that is and consider how we might approach it differently.

The Problem with Your FI Number

Most people calculate their FI number using a simple formula:

Take your annual expenses and divide by your safe withdrawal rate (often 4%).

For example, if you spend $60,000 per year and use a 4% withdrawal rate, your FI number becomes $1.5 million.

This number quickly becomes your north star. It’s the destination you pour all your energy into reaching. For many, it becomes the sole focus for 10-20 years while aggressively building wealth.

But what if your FI number is more of a mirage than a milestone? Here are four reasons it might actually be leading you down the wrong path.

1. It Assumes Life Won’t Change

A single FI number assumes that your life — and your expenses — will stay the same forever.

This couldn’t be further from reality.

I’ve experienced this firsthand. Early on in our FI journey, my husband and I calculated our FI number based on our then-current spending. We thought we were being diligent and realistic.

Then life changed. Twice in huge ways.

After I went back to work part-time due to a mental health crisis, we inadvertently reduced our spending by $17,000 simply by eliminating toxic spending triggers.

Later, we moved to New Hampshire and purchased a home outright, eliminating our mortgage payment. Just one year prior, this move wasn’t even on our radar.

Our spending changed dramatically — and so did our “number.” A static target simply can’t capture the fluid, evolving nature of life.

2. It Encourages Deferring Life Until You Hit a Number

The second danger is even more insidious: it causes you to defer living your life until you hit your target.

It’s the classic, “Once I hit this number, then I’ll…” syndrome.

Without realizing it, a number that was supposed to symbolize hope and freedom becomes the very thing keeping you from living your life. It becomes an excuse to delay making meaningful lifestyle changes. Sometimes, it even becomes a crutch that lets you avoid difficult decisions.

Worse, it can lead you to strip away things that bring you joy — all in the name of speeding up your path to FI.

3. It Creates All-or-Nothing Thinking

Your FI number also reinforces the idea that financial independence is binary: you’re either financially independent or you’re not.

But life doesn’t work like that.

Imagine someone with a $2 million FI goal. After years of disciplined saving, they finally reach $2,012,000. Then the market drops by 1%, bringing their portfolio back to $1,992,000.

Are they suddenly not financially independent anymore? Did their life change overnight?

Of course not. Financial freedom exists on a spectrum. As your wealth grows, your options expand gradually — not in one dramatic flip of a switch.

It’s also worth noting that someone with $1.5 million likely has almost the same meaningful options as someone with $2 million.

4. It Turns Money Into the End Goal

Finally, hyperfixating on your FI number makes money the end goal. The entire journey becomes about chasing a net worth target, rather than building the life you actually want.

But the point of financial independence isn’t to be rich. It’s to be free.

Imagine how different your life might look if you spent as much time designing your ideal lifestyle as you did crunching spreadsheets.

So What Should You Do Instead?

If obsessing over a rigid FI number leads you astray, should you abandon it altogether?

Not necessarily. Your FI number can still be a helpful tool — if you reframe how you use it. Here are three ways to approach it differently.

1. Think in Ranges, Not a Single Number

Instead of aiming for a fixed target, try thinking in ranges.

For example:

• Calculate three different scenarios: your bare minimum FI number, your most likely case, and a stretch goal.
• Or use different safe withdrawal rates (say 4% and 5%) to establish a range.

If you plan to spend $60,000 annually, that gives you a range from $1.2 million to $1.5 million.

This subtle shift reduces pressure and acknowledges that life is dynamic. It keeps you from getting locked into a specific number, and invites you to explore what “enough” really means as you get closer.

2. Celebrate FI Milestones

Instead of fixating on full financial independence, celebrate milestones along the way.

Maybe it’s paying off debt, reaching Coast FI, building up FU money, or funding a mini-retirement.

When you embrace these milestones, your journey becomes a series of meaningful achievements — not a slog toward a distant goal.

Years ago, we decided to focus on making small, incremental changes so that reaching full FI would just feel like another day. It’s a mindset shift that’s brought so much more joy into our lives.

3. Use It as a Compass, Not a Destination

Finally, treat your FI number as a compass, not a finish line.

Let it guide your decisions. When opportunities come up, like taking a lower-paying but more fulfilling job, you can evaluate how that impacts your trajectory and whether the trade-offs are worth it.

This approach gives you flexibility to take detours, try new things, and still trust that you’re headed in the right direction.

Focus on Freedom Now

Instead of obsessing over a rigid FI target, focus on the freedom and flexibility you can create today.

Build a life that’s rich in experiences, relationships, and meaning, not just your investment accounts.

What about you? How do you think about your FI number? Have you ever felt stuck chasing it? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

The post The Truth About Your FI Number: It Might Be Holding You Back appeared first on The Fioneers.

I think there’s a mistaken assumption that to design the life you want, you have to take a bunch of extreme actions to transform your life overnight. When many people think of “lifestyle design,” they think you have to quit your job, start your own business, become a digital nomad, or do some equally out-there thing.  

While you could do any of these things, they are not required on this path to design the life you want. This was true for Casey, an Emergency Veterinarian who, just two years ago, was experiencing severe burnout.

Over the last two years, Casey has made many consistent, small changes, none of which include quitting her job or starting a business. These changes, which I’ll let you read in her own words, have added up to dramatic life changes.  

I hope Casey’s story inspires you to take action—no matter how small—to improve your life today. Let’s dive in.  

1. Tell me a little bit about you.

I am an avid outdoorswoman and adventurer! You can usually find me outside walking my dogs or hiking a local trail in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I like to think of myself as a multi-sport outdoorswoman (I can’t seem to stick with just one activity!). 

When not with the dogs, I love to ride my horse through the mountains and in the arena. My husband and I go rock climbing weekly. Recently, I have been learning how to scuba dive and am dipping my toe into whitewater kayaking. I love the flow state that these activities put me into, with the bonus of getting to enjoy nature.

I have a menagerie of animals on the little farm my husband and I call home. We have two of the best labrador retrievers in the world and four of the sweetest cats. We have two horses, two donkeys, two sheep, and a multitude of chickens. Our home is my happy place.

For work, I am an emergency veterinarian. It is a constantly changing, fast-paced job. Although it can be a very rewarding career, it is not without some significant challenges.

2. Two years ago, you were completely burned out from your job. Tell us about the changes you’ve made to enjoy your job (and life) again.

In 2022, I found myself feeling very burnt out. Being an emergency veterinarian means working long shifts (generally 12+ hours) in an intense environment. I am often dealing with emotional clients and very sick pets. Compassion fatigue, which is characterized by exhaustion and apathy from repeated exposure to stress and trauma, is prevalent in the field.

Additionally, support staff have low salaries and experience high rates of turnover. This translates to emergency hospitals being short-staffed, and there are more pets in need of care than we can realistically help. All of these things, plus high student loan burdens contribute to a high rate of suicide and burnout among veterinarians.

In addition to the issues that impact all emergency veterinarians, I was also working a variable schedule with little advanced planning. The day of the week and the timing of the shift varied; I would work a variety of day, swing, and night shifts. This meant that I was unable to make plans outside of work in advance due to this schedule. 

Moreover, during the pandemic, rather than slowing down, veterinary medicine was actually busier. More people adopted pets and had disposable income available to spend on them. The industry was backlogged and ERs were slammed. 

All this to say, I was exhausted. The day after a set of shifts, I would spend immobile on the couch, unable to gather the energy to go do the things that brought me joy. Hanging out with friends felt like a chore; I had used all my social capital during my work week. When it was time to go back to work, I would sit in the parking lot, trying to convince myself to go back inside the building. This wasn’t me.

I found the Fioneers and joined the Design a Life You Love program in early 2023. Through the program and the supportive community I built through it, I realized I needed to make some changes. 

Fortunately, I had a contract renewal coming up. Typically, when we talk about contract negotiations, I think of asking for a raise. This time, I decided to ask for something different.  

I asked for:

• A set schedule where I only work on weekdays, Tuesday through Friday. 
• More paid time off (PTO)
• The entire month of December off for a mini-sabbatical.  

I came prepared for the conversation. I requested a meeting with my boss, completed a self-evaluation and performance review, and listed out my requests. Most importantly, I advocated for myself.  

All of my requests were approved. This was amazing to me because just a few months prior I didn’t even realize I could ask for those things.  

3. How have these shifts impacted your happiness and quality of life?

These changes have impacted my life both logistically in the short term, but also in how I plan to approach work in the future. 

First, with a set schedule, I can actually plan my life. I know in advance when I can get together with friends or schedule a dentist appointment. There is such relief in having some stability to plan for the immediate future. Having the weekends free has allowed me to actually see my husband and plan trips with him. I miss far fewer birthdays and family events now.

With the extra PTO, I am working to intentionally use it. I have taken the time to map out the next year including vacations, weddings, etc. It’s been helpful to plan out and schedule how I am going to use all of my PTO. 

I still have to work through the scarcity mindset that comes with missing days of work. I know it’s a limiting belief that when I take time off, I am a less committed employee or that I am letting my colleagues down. I have to remind myself that I cannot pour from an empty cup. I need the time off to recharge and to be a human outside of my work. My work is part of who I am, not the whole. I want to fit work around my life- not the other way around!

And my month off – mini-sabbatical – was amazing. I took the time to slow down in my daily routine- spend an hour drinking coffee and cuddling with the dogs in the morning, work out each day, and try out some meditation. I planned a weekend trip with friends, scheduled board game nights, and actually enjoyed being social because I had the energy for it. 

I also made a dream vacation happen. With my husband, my brother, and his fiancee, we traveled to Argentina and went hiking in Patagonia! The adventure and the glacier-filled mountains rejuvenated me. I haven’t had that much time off work since summers in school. Even though I was doing lots of activities, I didn’t feel busy or overwhelmed. 

The time actually gave me the space to think and reflect. Who was I outside of work? What did I enjoy doing and who did I want to spend my days with? What were my values and what really mattered? These were all questions I had been tackling throughout the Design a Life You Love program, and I was ready to dive even deeper. I did a lot of journaling during that month.

Bigger picture, I now know I can ask for what I need at work. It doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing scenario. When I was feeling the height of burnout, I thought the only solution would be quitting or switching careers. This negotiation taught me that there can be a lot of middle ground. I now feel empowered to keep making adjustments at work, so I can continue working towards my ideal life.

4. How did these changes impact your financial goals or timelines?

These changes at work really didn’t affect my financial timeline. I’m still working a similar number of hours, but the schedule works for me. I am still on the path towards FI and gaining more financial freedom. 

At the same time, I know I want to enjoy my path towards financial independence, not suffer through it. Now that I know that I can ask for things, I am considering alternatives such as part-time work. If I pursue that, it will slow our financial accumulation, but that’s okay. The point for me is not to get there as fast as possible anyway.

5. What enabled you to make these changes?

Participating in Design a Life You Love was instrumental in helping me envision what I wanted and build the confidence to ask for these things. American society places a lot of emphasis on the hustle culture and holds productivity up as the gold standard. Until I met people who were doing things differently, I didn’t know that alternate paths existed. A community of like-minded people allowed me to work through my fears and limiting beliefs. And encouraged me to dream big.

Additionally, we did have some financial buffer, which gave me the courage to ask. If my boss had said no to all my requests, I knew I could walk away and do something different. I wasn’t FI and able to retire, but I had enough F-You Money that I felt I had some choice in the matter. 

6. Why and when do you think someone might consider making a similar change?

We get one wild, beautiful life to live. Anytime we find ourselves on a path that is not in alignment with our values, change is a valid option. Of note, the change doesn’t have to be life-altering. I didn’t quit my job, sell all my possessions, and move across the world. I just made incremental changes in my life to better align it with what I actually wanted and what I needed. 

I also planned for it. I talked it out with my Design a Life You Love cohort. I worked through fears. I made sure we were financially secure, and then I did my homework before my negotiation meeting. 

I encourage anyone who is feeling burnt out or even just like they want something different to start taking action, even if just one small step at a time.

7. What advice do you have for someone considering a similar decision?

The biggest piece of learning for me is that work doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Just because I was struggling, that didn’t mean I needed to quit my job. Often, we can ask for what we need and at least some change will come of it. 

My advice is to find a group of like-minded people and ask for help brainstorming. Likely they will see options you hadn’t even considered. In what ways can you make work work for you? Try to avoid an all-or-nothing mindset.

8. How will you continue to design your life moving forward?

I love the life design process because it is never-ending! The last year and a half has been significantly improved since negotiating my schedule and taking some time off. I have turned my focus to adding fun and play into my daily routine. Even if that means 5 minutes of playing fetch with the dogs before a shift, I now make play a priority. 

I have also experimented with trying one new activity each month (which led to trying out acupuncture, zip lining, submitting cookies at the county fair, several new restaurants and just a general attitude of saying yes more often).

Moving forward, there are several things I want to explore. I would love to take a longer chunk of time off to do more traveling. I am considering part-time work in the coming years. 

I also feel called to explore how to bring more women into the outdoor space. I’m not sure yet what this will look like and I am going to experiment with several options (maybe become a scuba instructor or whitewater kayak guide seasonally? Join an outdoor school?). One thing I did recently was start a Substack newsletter – Her Adventurous Life – to motivate and empower women to live adventurous lives – get outside, participate in the sciences, run a business, and just generally chase their dreams.  

The beautiful thing about life design is using small experiments to gather data to inform decisions moving forward. I am going to use this method to try some options and see what might be next.

9. If anyone wants to stay in touch and follow your journey, where can they find you?

I’d love to connect if you have questions about my journey or ideas about educating and empowering women in the outdoor industry! You can find or subscribe to my Substack Newsletter – Her Adventurous Life. 

I’ll also be speaking at the Fioneers’ 2025 Slow FI Retreat in Lake Tahoe. For everyone attending, I’m excited to see you there.  

Thank you so much, Casey, for sharing your story with us!  

Casey’s story reminds us that life isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Originally, Casey thought that she’d have to quit her job to get her life back and recover from burnout. Instead, she created a vision of what she wanted life to look like, built a community that provided her with new ideas and built the confidence to negotiate small shifts right away.  

These shifts – a set schedule, more time off, and a month-long mini-sabbatical – gave her the time and space to recover from burnout and to focus on what matters most to her. Because of it, she’s had the opportunity to explore her hobbies and passions, including scuba diving, whitewater kayaking, climbing, and traveling to Patagonia. Plus, she’s taking everything she’s learned to help inspire other adventurous women.  

I know I’m incredibly inspired to see how much Casey’s life has changed in just two years! Casey’s job is no longer the center of her universe. Instead, her job WORKS for her. I can’t wait to see what small shifts (and ultimately big changes) Casey makes in the next two years.  

If you are feeling like Casey did two years ago – burned out, unhappy with your career, but unsure of where to go from here, I’d encourage you to consider Design a Life You Love. It’s a dynamic, four-month group coaching program that combines expert support, proven strategies, and a community of dreamers, like Casey, to help you design your ideal life.  

In the program, you’ll:

• Discover what you want without wasting time 
• Dream big about what the future holds 
• Transition from wanting to make a change to actually doing it 
• Overcome barriers and limiting beliefs derailing your progress

The program runs in two cycles each year (February through June and September through January). Doors are currently open until February 3rd, 2025. But, if you are reading this after that date, you can sign up for the waitlist to be the first to hear when the next cohorts open.  

The post Recover From Burnout without Quitting Your Job appeared first on The Fioneers.

This often meant strategizing on how to spend less on everyday activities. But they were strategic in how they spent their time. My parents were never the ones who committed time to clipping coupons. Instead, they spent time buying items in bulk to save money.

Growing up, my family lived in Costco, a popular wholesaler. As a child, I would spend my weekends at baseball practice, hanging out with friends, and on a family trip to Costco. I learned quite a bit about buying food in bulk from my childhood and I lived off of $1.50 hot dogs from Costco. To this day, I still struggle to resist those hot dogs.

Because it’s what I’ve always known, it was not until recently that I came to appreciate the value of buying food in bulk. Over the past year, I’ve learned that buying food in bulk is not as popular as I once thought. There are many who claim that it’s not worth the time or make up other excuses to avoid it altogether.

This is surprising to me. Buying food in bulk is an essential part of optimizing our life. Buying the majority of our groceries in this way allows us to save money on food and does not require much time or energy. I find that it actually saves us time, so it’s a win-win. 

To help explain why this is such an important part of our journey and how to do it (because there are ways to do it incorrectly), I’ve decided to create this guide to buying food in bulk.

This guide will answer the two main questions around buying food in bulk:

1. Why should I buy food in bulk?
2. How do I buy food in bulk?

Why Should You Buy Food in Bulk?

There are many reasons to consider buying your groceries in bulk. I want to focus on four main reasons that keep us committed to this strategy.

1. Buying Food in Bulk Saves You Money

The primary reason that buying food in bulk is worth it is the cost savings. This isn’t a hypothetical situation. This is a fact.

Jess and I save approximately $2,050 per year. I estimated this by comparing prices between Costco and Amazon Fresh for 44 of our most popular food items.

Just from buying food in bulk. Buying groceries in bulk is quite simple and straightforward. We do apply some advanced strategies (more on that later), but this is not complicated.

Top 28 Food Items that Save Us the Most Money

To help illustrate how we save money in the most simple manner, I’ve provided a table of the items that save us at least $25/year or more.

Please note that these estimates are based on per unit savings and the frequency that we purchase those items, so this will vary from family to family based on different eating habits.

Economics of Buying in Bulk from Wholesalers

In case you think this is a scam, it’s not. This is a different business model.

Wholesale stores like Costco, BJ’s, and Sam’s Club are able to sell items at prices with a lower price per unit. Explaining the full business model of wholesalers is beyond the scope of this article.

It is worth highlighting a few reasons why these businesses are able to sell at a lower cost per unit, including:

• A mandatory paid membership to shop at the store. This provides an incentive to visit the store more often (to take advantage of your paid membership). It also provides the store with some revenue that is not dependent on sales or margins.
• Selling more volume (especially volume per storefront or square footage)
• Minimizing expenses by building warehouses with concrete floors
• Decreasing labor expenses by not shelving products and keeping items on pallets

2. Fewer Trips to the Stores Save You Time

Besides saving money, buying in bulk also saves you time. Jess and I go to Costco about once per month. This saves us a lot of time even with a farther distance to the store.

We also have it down to a science at this point. We know exactly which items we prefer to buy, so we don’t waste time wandering around.

It is hard to compete with online shopping in regards to the time spent shopping. It takes us more time to drive to the store and buy food than it would if we were to buy all our food online. But it doesn’t have to be an either-or. We decide to use both, and the time spent shopping at Costco is more than worth it for us.

On average, we collectively spend about 4 total hours per month buying food in bulk, including the driving time and unloading the car. Based on our estimate above of how much money we save per year, that equates to an hourly rate of $42.71.

3. Buying in Bulk is Takes Less Mental Energy

Shopping for food in bulk takes less mental energy. It simplifies the shopping experience as well as the meal planning process.

This is how we use to do our meal planning:

1. Identify which recipes that they would like to make this week
2. Create a list of ingredients for all these recipes
3. Compare that to the food that they have in their house
4. Create a shopping list for anything that they do not have

When you buy food in bulk, you reverse this order. You start with something completely different:

1. Identify the core ingredients or food items with which to make meals
2. Buy these items in bulk and keep them in stock. (Don’t waste any mental energy on steps 1 or 2)
3. Identify what you would like to make using a mixture of core ingredients that you already have
4. Buy odds and ends for any special recipes from your local grocery store

You have fewer ingredients to worry about. As a result, you spend less mental energy on grocery shopping and meal planning.

4. Buying Food in Bulk is Good for the Environment

Last, but not least, buying the majority of our food in bulk also reduces the amount of waste.

Buying bulk food means that you are using fewer items to either recycle or throw away. For example, we could buy a smaller plastic bottle of ketchup each month at our local grocery store.

Instead, we are using a larger plastic bottle of ketchup that lasts several months. Not only is it less material to recycle, but it’s also more efficient to produce and package.

How to Buy Food in Bulk

You may think that buying items in bulk is pretty straight-forward, but not all items are worth buying. You have to know:

1. Where to shop
2. How both to assess a deal
3. Which techniques to apply to make it efficient and effective

Where to Shop: Costco vs Sam’s Club vs BJ’s

The first decision that you have to make is at which wholesaler you would like to shop. There are three big names that many people recognize.

This includes Costco, Sam’s Club (a subsidiary of Walmart), and BJ’s.
I’ve compared the three companies in the table below:

As you can see, all three have many features in common. They all have very similar hours, similar membership fees, rebates, and departments (optical, pharmacy, tires, etc.). The main items that are different are:

1. Return policy – Costco and Sam’s Club have a much better return policy than BJ’s
2. Travel – While this may not be a critical item, Costco and BJ’s offers travel benefits. Sam’s Club suspended theirs in 2017.
3. The number of stores/distance to stores: Costco has the most stores nationwide with ~740. Sam’s Club is second with ~660. BJ’s doesn’t even come close with 210.
4. Sales: Costco is by far the largest of the three with $142B in sales in 2018.

Costco edges out its competitors based on three reasons: its return policy, the benefits that it offers its members, and the number of stores.

You should do your own homework, paying close attention to store locations near you. Proximity to the store can sway the balance in a large way, at least as it relates to life optimization (both time and money).

For example, when I search for stores near me for all three wholesalers, I’m able to determine:

• Costco is the closest of the three at 5.8 miles from my house
• BJ’s is next closest at 6.3 miles
• The closest Sam’s Club store is 32 miles away

It’s important to note that Costco does NOT compensate me for my opinion here. As with all the opinions expressed on The Fioneers, they are genuine opinions of the authors. We refuse to accept any compensation to adjust our opinions.

How to Find a Good Deal on Food

If you teach a person to fish…

Learning how to assess a good deal is the most fundamental skill when it comes to buying items in bulk. While we save a lot of money by buying food in bulk, we also skip over items.

Not all products sold at Costco (or at any wholesaler) are a good deal.

The most important part of assessing a good deal is to look at the unit cost. The actual unit will vary depending on the type of food item. This may include a pound, quart, ounce, or some other increment if the product is not sold by weight.

It’s quite easy to calculate the unit price. Divide the sale price by the number of units in the item that you are purchasing.

For example, if a 4-pound bag of frozen organic pineapples costs $9.69, the unit price would be $2.42 per pound.

Wholesalers understand this value so they make it easier on you. They will often include the unit price on the sticker price, as you can see in the picture above.

To determine if this is a good price for the item, you then have to compare this to an alternative store. I prefer to compare it to Amazon Fresh, which is what we use for our supplemental groceries.

Using the Amazon app, I can pull up frozen organic pineapple. The first item that I see listed is $3.32 for a 12 oz (or ¾ of a pound), which is $4.43 per pound.

As you can see, the frozen pineapple from Costco is a much better price, at almost half of the unit cost from Amazon.

If you have smoothies every day for breakfast (as we do), it would be safe to assume that you’d go through at least 1 bag of pineapple per month. By making this one decision to buy frozen pineapples at Costco, you’ve already saved $24.12 per year.

And that’s one random item from our shopping list.

That’s it. Pretty straight forward, and simple.

The best part is that you don’t have to do this comparison every time. Once you know something is a good deal, you can add it to your list of regular items. We’ll talk more about this in our next section.

Expert Tips for Buying Food in Bulk

Now that you have the fundamentals down, it’s time to talk through my tips for buying food in bulk. This list will help you balance both saving money while also making it as easy as possible.

1. Don’t buy food that will go bad before you eat it

The first question (after comparing prices) that you need to ask yourself is if you will eat all this before it goes bad. If it’s a frozen item or something that you can freeze to help preserve it, it’s less of a concern.

You don’t want to buy something because it’s a good deal IF you are not going to eat it. For example, pasta sauce costs approximately $0.05 per ounce at Costco compared to $0.07 per ounce at Amazon.

If we don’t eat pasta regularly, this sauce won’t last and it won’t make the small savings worth it.

2. Create a list of items to buy at the wholesaler

You may be thinking that this is a lot of work to do the math for every single item. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

I only look at the comparisons when there’s a new food item that I’m considering purchasing.

Once I vet it, I add it to my digital list of foods to buy at Costco.

To be specific, I prefer to use the “Reminders” app on my iPhone. This allows me to preserve the list of items as well as to use it for our shopping list, by toggling the items as complete or not.

This list becomes the approved items. I don’t have to re-evaluate them ever again unless I want to do so.

A side benefit of this is that I then have an inventory list that I can review once a month before we make a trip to Costco.

For those readers who don’t have an iPhone, Android phones may have a similar list app. Ideally, you would have a couple of core features, including:

• Ability to toggle items on/off, or check them off (or mark as complete). This is helpful when you use it as a shopping list. As you put items in your cart, it removes it from your screen.
• Ability to see completed/checked off items. When you do remove them from the shopping list, you don’t want to lose the list of items that you buy in bulk.

I click “show completed” at the bottom of the screen and it shows me all the items that I’ve purchased at Costco before. This helps to make sure we don’t forget to check the inventory of one particular item.

3. Never run out of the essentials

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to forget to buy something. We used to do this before creating such an efficient shopping list/inventory system.

Buying a full shopping cart full of food can do this to you. Forgetting one of your essentials, like meat or frozen food, will force you to buy the item from your local grocery store at a premium.

Don’t beat yourself up over this, but try to minimize these occurrences as it eats into your savings.

4. Balance how frequently you visit the wholesaler

Because our Costco store is about 6 miles away from our house (which, believe it or not, is a lot of city driving), we try to limit the trips that we make. The fewer trips that we can make, the less time and money we are spending on travel costs, the more money we can save.

Part of the value of buying in bulk (beyond a lower price per unit) is being able to go a longer time between trips to the store. You are stocking up on a lot of food to last you a while.

You’ll need fresh produce between Costco runs, but this approach will allow you to go several weeks if not months between visits.

Our sweet spot is around 4-6 weeks between trips. Find out what works best for you.

5. Buy a Chest Freezer to Store More Food

One of the BEST tips that we have in this article is to buy a chest freezer. This was a game-changer for us.

We like to have smoothies for breakfast almost every day. This requires a large volume of frozen berries, which take up a lot of freezer space.

We bought a 7.0 cubic foot chest freezer from Costco last August for $139.99. That investment has more than paid for itself by allowing us to extend the time between trips to Costco.

The best part is that we store perishable food in the freezer to give us more time to eat food after buying it. Our popular items in the freezer include:

• bread
• frozen pizza
• frozen strawberries
• frozen blueberries
• meat,
• and a few others.

6. Combine Purchases with Credit Card Rewards

While all executive members receive a 2% rebate, it’s also smart to use credit card rewards to boost your return. Costco now accepts VISA credit cards at their stores.

Our approach to using credit cards to buy things at Costco follows these guidelines

1. If we are purchasing a major appliance or electronic device, use the Costco Citi Card. This adds an extended warranty and is worth having an extended warranty. For example, we recently bought a new TV and this extended the standard warranty from 3 to 5 years.
2. If not that, then we default to the credit card with a sign-up bonus that we are trying to hit.
3. If neither of the two above, default back to the Costco Citi Card. This gives you 2% back on all purchases from Costco.

We might be able to optimize this approach. But again, our intent is to balance returns with the limited time and energy put into buying in bulk.

Are You Ready to Buy Food in Bulk?

Getting started with buying food in bulk is easy. It does have some barriers to entry and this guide would be incomplete without addressing them. In order to buy food in bulk and take advantage of these strategies:

1. You must own or have access to a car. This could be as simple as borrowing a friend’s car once a month or using a Zipcar if you do not own one.
2. You should not be living paycheck to paycheck. Buying food in bulk is paying a lot of food upfront for items that you may not eat for 4-8 weeks (some even longer). It’s not a lot of money, but you should not be strapped for cash. I recommend having an emergency fund of some sorts before doing this.
3. You should not live in a tiny home. While it’s possible to live in a tiny home and buy food in bulk, I can’t recommend it. We don’t have a food pantry and we get by. Most of our food fits in our chest freezer, 2-3 kitchen cabinets, and a small overflow in our spare bedroom. It takes space to store this food. You don’t need a 1,000 square foot mansion like we have, but you should have storage space.
4. As I’ve mentioned, you need approximately 2-3 hours of time per month to make this happen. You might be able to spend less time if you live near a wholesale store, but otherwise, this is a good starting point. If you don’t have this much free time (I’m not sure who that would be), then buying food in bulk is not going to be an option.

While purchasing groceries in bulk is not available to everyone, most people in the United States will be able to do this.

It’s easy to get started, there are simple guidelines to follow, and best of all – it saves you money.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Buying Food in Bulk appeared first on The Fioneers.

I’m excited to bring you a Slow FI Interview with Liana, the blogger behind DINKs on a Bus, whose Slow FI journey has focused on making work WORK for her. 

To do this Liana has done a variety of things including:

• Quitting a highly prestigious job that wasn’t working for her
• Changing careers 
• Deciding to stay in an individual contributor role rather than pursuing management
• Setting clear boundaries 

Liana is a great example of the fact that you don’t have to become an entrepreneur to design your life. I’ve been so lucky to have a front-row seat to Liana’s progress since working with her as a client earlier this year.  

Let’s get into the interview.  

1. Tell me a little bit about you. 

Hi everyone! My name is Liana, and I live in Vermont with my husband. We are a DINK (double income, no kids) household. We absolutely love spending time with kids (and finally have our first niece!), but we have chosen not to have children of our own. When we’re not working, we love camping, hiking, canoeing, and (more recently) playing pickleball. 

I have my Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and I love that I have a job where I get to use my science background. Over time, I have learned that there’s so much more to my life than what I do to make money. 

I have always been frugal and a saver. When I learned about financial independence, I loved the idea of being financially free. At the same time, the “retire early” part of the FIRE movement never really resonated with me. I never pictured myself not working. 

I spent my early adulthood on the hamster wheel, chasing after the next big thing (the degree, the promotion, the raise, etc.). I thought I had “the dream” when I finally landed a professorship in Vermont, the place I most wanted to be in the world. 

This is what I had been working toward since college. But, for many reasons, I realized that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I loved teaching, but there were so many other factors that weighed on me, like…

• Being disrespected by older and male colleagues
• Being constantly asked to go above and beyond to help students outside normal working hours
• The pressures of academia to “publish or perish”. 

Ultimately, I decided that it wasn’t worth it. There had to be another way I could live my life, make money, and stay in Vermont.

Around this time, I had knee surgery, and I used my medical leave to do some detective work. I got online to see what else was out there that I could do with my degree. I discovered freelance scientific writing and editing, and I started to do that work on the side.  

After seeing that I could make this work (and since my work in academia wasn’t getting better), I decided to quit my professor job. As much as I enjoyed freelancing because of the time freedom, I was still young and worried about money and stability. So, when one of my freelance clients offered me a full-time job as an editor, I took it (even though it was a huge pay cut). I wanted stability, benefits, and a steady paycheck.  

The pay cut was worth it. Even though I made less money, I also ended up working many fewer hours than I’d ever worked in my life. I could meet my editing quota for the day and turn my brain off when I wasn’t working. It was life-changing and one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

By drastically reducing the time I spent working (and thinking about work), the more time I had to focus on myself. I realized that I had so many other passions outside of my job.  And, I wanted to spend more time on these activities! I started to see that maybe I didn’t want the career I’d been chasing after all. Then, I started to think of a job as a way to make money to support the life I wanted.  

Soon after this transition, I discovered Slow FI after hearing Jess on a podcast. I was completely hooked by this new idea, this alternative, in the FIRE movement. It resonated with the new direction I saw my life going, and I’ve been designing my life ever since.  

2. You recently changed jobs, partially with an eye toward building a Slow(er) FI lifestyle in the long term. Can you tell us more about this?  

When I left academia, not only did I take a big pay cut, but I also shifted my mindset. I no longer wanted my identity to be so tied to my work. Instead, I wanted my work to fund the lifestyle I wanted. Because of this, I decided to focus on increasing my salary in a new field.  

I discovered the field of medical writing, an industry I already had all the credentials to make my way into. It took me a while to land a job in this field, but I’ve been able to work my way up the salary band ever since.  

However, I quickly found myself inching back toward the feeling of being on the hamster wheel. I was good at my job, I had a lot of success, and I had great people skills. So, my peers and managers immediately encouraged me to climb the ladder and work my way up. At first, this seemed like a no-brainer. 

Luckily, I took an internal leadership course and made some valuable self-discoveries. I learned what it would take to be a manager. I knew I could do it, but I didn’t want it. I enjoyed working as an individual contributor, and I was good at it. I also didn’t want the manager’s schedule with so many meetings and added responsibility.  

Lastly, as I continued on my slow FI journey, I realized that eventually, I wanted to downshift to part-time work when I had saved enough, and I figured this would be easier as a specialist rather than a manager. I could also even freelance if it came to that. 

In the meantime, I have switched companies a few times, looking for higher salaries while maintaining a specialist role. I thought I had finally found the perfect situation – a job I liked that I could go down to part-time when I was ready. But, they weren’t happy with my desire to stay in a specialist role. Soon, other red flags started popping up, like going back on a salary increase that had been promised.  

When that happened, I started to look elsewhere to see if I could find a company that had a dedicated track for people like me (who wanted to remain specialists). After several months, I finally found a company like this! I made sure to ask all the questions in my interview to ensure it wasn’t too good to be true, and after four months at this new company, I can say I’m happy with the move!

3. In the meantime, before you are ready to go part-time, how are you making work work for you?  

Besides learning that I wanted to stay in a specialist (non-management) role, I have also taken steps to not let work rule my life. I dealt with so much anxiety over the years while getting my Ph.D. and working in academia. When I left academia, my anxiety improved significantly. I have made it a priority for myself to not get back to that place, and that has taken some real adjustments in my day-to-day work life. 

Specifically, I needed to set clear boundaries.  

For example, I used to have Slack (a work-based messenger app) on my phone because I had work friends and used it as a way to chat with them as well. I’ll never forget the night I was messaging a friend before bed and saw a work-related message that I needed to attend to (although it wasn’t so urgent that I needed to do it right then). But, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I needed to do. I ended up getting up in the middle of the night, turning on my computer, and fixing the problem right away. The next morning, I took Slack off my phone, asked my work friends for their cell phone numbers, and never looked back. 

My favorite story about setting boundaries happened with a previous manager. We were trying to find a time to do my annual review. She had been dragging her feet, and every week at our scheduled 1-on-1, she’d tell me we’d do it soon. One Friday afternoon, promptly at 5 p.m., she messaged me on Teams to see if I was still working and if we could go through my annual review. I literally laughed out loud at my screen. 

I told her no. I simply said I had plans, and we would have to do it another time. Nothing catastrophic happened. I stood my ground, Had I said yes, I would have been setting the precedent that she could ask me for anything at 5 p.m. on a Friday, and I would say yes. I’ve learned that no one is going to look out for you but you. You need to set the boundaries for yourself.

Boundary setting has gotten easier over time as I practice and gain more confidence in my career and FI plan. 

I also make it difficult for work to get ahold of me outside of working hours (and really half the battle for me is not feeling guilty about setting these boundaries). I don’t put my work email on my phone. I do have Microsoft Teams on my phone, but I do not have notifications set up. I show myself as offline when I’m not working, away when I’m at lunch, and I shut down my computer every night. 

I work remotely, and having a dedicated room to work in is key for me to check out mentally from work every day.

4. What mindset shifts helped you make this transition from being very career-focused to now being less so? 

Hearing a podcast on imposter syndrome around the time when I was starting my new career was life-changing for me. I realized that so much of the anxiety I had experienced at work was a result of my mindset. 

On the podcast, they talked about confidence being like a muscle you have to strengthen over time. Previously, I constantly felt anxious about work, guilty that I wasn’t doing enough, or like I didn’t know what I was doing. 

One important thing was realizing that everyone feels this way at one point or another. I may not always feel like I know what I’m doing, that I’m good enough, or that I deserve to be in the job I’m in, but I can talk myself down. The longer I’m in my industry, and the more confident I become, the easier it becomes because I see that everyone struggles with this too. 

It was incredibly helpful to hear from an older colleague with more experience that I really respect that he also struggles with these same thoughts. He doubts himself every day, and he trusts me and my abilities. Imposter syndrome may never go away, and I can learn to live with and manage these thoughts.  

I also have gotten a lot of practice having to fend off snide comments about my boundaries, but it gets easier and easier over time. It helps that due to pursuing FI, I don’t need to worry about losing my job or not getting the promotion. I know I’ll be fine financially. 

Lastly, I’ve found that having concrete goals and values at the top of my mind, around not only money but also things important to me outside of work, really helps with my mindset. 

5. How has this impacted your quality of life? 

The biggest impact by far has been on my anxiety. I really didn’t even know how bad my anxiety had gotten until it got better. I thought it was completely normal, as a high-achieving Ph.D. with a professor job, to throw up before presentations, gag every morning brushing my teeth, or live in a constant state of busyness and high alert. 

My anxiety mostly manifested in my GI tract. I would call out sick, thinking I had a stomach bug. My doctors would prescribe heartburn medications. It’s only now, after getting to know my own body (and thanks to many therapists), that I know that much of the physical manifestations I was dealing with were related to my anxiety. It was something I lived with and didn’t think I had any control over. 

Now, I don’t have any of those problems. I don’t remember the last time I gagged brushing my teeth in the morning. I no longer dread Mondays. I’m not checked out on Sunday nights because I can’t think of anything besides work. 

I’m no longer lost in my own head. Friends and family don’t tell me I seem “lost in outer space.” I feel like myself in a way I didn’t feel before. 

All of this was a result of being less career-focused, leaving work behind at the end of the day, and having goals and passions outside of work. This has all been life-changing for me. And, my friends and family notice the difference. 

6. How have these decisions impacted your financial goals or timelines? 

Striving to increase my salary in a role that I enjoy has no doubt sped up my timeline to FIRE. If I had chosen to take a managerial path, I could have grown my salary even faster, but the trade-off would not have been worth it to me. 

My current goal is to downshift either to part-time or to freelance work when I reach half of my FI number. This, of course, will increase my timeline to reach traditional FI, but that doesn’t matter to me. My goal is to craft a life I don’t want to retire from. I like what I do; I just don’t want to do it full-time. I have lots of other passions I want to pursue. For me, the increased timeline is worth it.

7. What enabled you to make these changes (what financial or social context helped)?

I am a white woman from a middle-class family, so I started from a place of privilege. My parents were able to cover some of my college tuition, so I only came out of college with about $25,000 in loans. It could have been so much worse. I was able to defer payments during graduate school, and then I paid off the balance within 5 years of graduation.  

Because I’ve always been a saver, I had some F-you Money, and I was able to leave my job in academia without having something else lined up.  

At the time, I was also dating my (now) husband. He let me move in with him while I figured out what to do next. I could have made that transition on my own, but his support made it a lot less stressful. Though he’s not interested in FI, he supports my pursuits and isn’t worried about me downshifting or making less money (when I’m ready).  

I also have an accountability partner, who has been super helpful as a mirror for me when I’ve made some of these big life decisions. It’s also so important to have a community when you’re doing things the “nontraditional” way.  

8. Were there things in your life you adapted so you could continue to work toward your goals?

What comes to mind is figuring out what I uniquely want.  

I always knew I was a bit different when it came to what I wanted in life, but it took me a while to be confident in articulating to myself and others. People tend to not understand when something goes against the status quo, and I’ve had to learn how to not let other people’s doubts cause doubts in myself. 

For example, I don’t want kids of my own. It can be difficult to own that, and then I also have to deal with the pressure I get from others and the resulting guilt I feel. I’ve realized that in figuring out what I uniquely want, I need to both determine what I want and stand up for it when needed (to family and friends). 

As another example, I prefer staycations over vacations that involve international travel (or really any travel via airplane). I love exploring new places close to home, and I also love saving money! But when I see others’ travel photos on social media, I sometimes deal with envious feelings. When I question those feelings, I remind myself of what I want and that I am working toward my own goals.

Knowing what I want allows me to forge my own path, and it has helped tremendously on my slow FI journey. 

I don’t feel the need to keep up with the Jones’. I don’t even need to give them a second thought because I have my own goals that I’m working toward and my own values that I’m trying to live out.  

Getting clear on what I really want reduces distractions and quiets my ego. It helps me avoid the comparison trap. It also gives me sanity on frustrating days at work when I want nothing more than to quit. Having clear goals helps me take things in stride. I can take work less seriously and leave work at work at the end of the day. 

9. How are you continuing to design your life moving forward?  

For me, it’s all about experimentation, which I had already been doing a bit on my own and then learned about even more during my time in the Design A Life You Love group coaching program. 

It doesn’t matter how small the experiment is, every single one is crucial when it comes to my lifestyle design. Design a Life You Love helped me come up with even more ideas for experimentation, showed me that the sky’s the limit (no idea is too small or too pie-in-the-sky to become an experiment), and gave me the tools for how to reflect and move forward with each experiment.

When I think about my desire to get my Ph.D. and to be a professor, it’s no wonder those things didn’t work out. I wanted them because I thought they would look good. I wanted to make my loved ones proud. But, I didn’t actually want it, and I never experimented with it. Turns out, I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would.  

This is why experimentation is so important to my life. I have things that are calling to me, that spark my interest, so I have to explore it further. 

I keep a Financial Freedom List, which is a list of things I want to do or explore as I gain more financial freedom. Continuing to revisit that list periodically helps me think of additional experiments. Some may need to wait until I downshift and have more time, but I can get started on some of them now.  

For example, I want to explore becoming a death doula, but I have no idea if I’d actually enjoy it. So, I will start small and experiment. I researched and found out that I can sign up to be a hospice volunteer and see where that goes.

I’d also love to explore being a volleyball coach. I can start by volunteering to assist a team once a month. 

To me, life is all about experiments, and using what time you have wisely and creatively. I can set goals, try things out, reflect, and course correct if needed.

While I’m still working full-time, I’m getting creative with my time to fit in the things that bring me joy. These may be in smaller doses than when I eventually work part-time, but it’s worth exploring my ideas now. 

I choose to get up at 5 a.m. because I’m a morning person. This gives me 4 full hours before my 9-to-5 starts to do things for me. I may not be able to go on a long hike in the middle of the week, but I can take daily walks in my neighborhood. I would like to spend more time on my blog, but I can still write for 30 minutes every day and publish one post each week.  

I now realize that I have (and can create if I’m intentional) more opportunities and time than I thought was possible while working a 9-to-5.  

10. Why and when do you think someone might consider doing something similar (scaling back or making small quits at work)? 

So much of the content I absorbed early on in my FIRE journey was put out there by folks who hated their jobs and were grinding away so they didn’t have to do that job anymore. 

If you’re like me, and you actually relatively enjoy what you do but just don’t want to do it full-time, then you might consider scaling back your work. 

If you can’t or aren’t ready to cut your hours back, perhaps setting better boundaries at work and/or being more intentional about your time outside of work will be enough for you right now. 

11. What advice do you have for someone considering a similar decision?

If you’re considering scaling back or setting better boundaries at work, first of all, be ready for the guilt and self-doubt that might pop up. I hope they don’t, but they did (and still do!) for me. 

If they do, know that they are completely normal. If you’re like me, everyone at work is trying to climb the ladder, impress bosses, and work overtime to prove themselves. Take pride in the work that you do and that you are doing it on your terms, so you can go out and spend the rest of your time doing things that make you happy. 

Second, stand your ground. Setting boundaries is not easy. Unfortunately, once they are set, it’s not a one-and-done type of thing. Especially in the workplace, you may have to constantly remind people of your boundaries. Setting your Teams status is easy enough and gives everyone a constant reminder of when you are logging on and off. But, something like communicating to your manager that you don’t want to follow in their footsteps is a whole other ballgame. In my previous job, I had to remind my manager several times that I didn’t want the “typical” promotion. Is it uncomfortable? Yes. Every time. But, it gets easier. You get better at setting the boundary. And at least for me, it’s been so worth it to stand my ground to better enjoy my 9-to-5 while I’m in it.

I’ve also seen that when I set boundaries, it gives permission to others to do the same. What if you could help other people by setting better boundaries at work? Wouldn’t that be worth it?  

Third, don’t expect to find the dream situation where you can put yourself on cruise control and coast forever, or until you’re ready to downshift. I was convinced my last job was going to be the place I could stay forever, and eventually go part-time. But, things can always change. You get a new manager, get put on a new team, have to change projects, and things might not be the same. When that happens, don’t get down. Instead, take charge. Reflect on how things are going, and if you feel a change needs to be made, do another experiment to figure out what’s next!

Thank you so much, Liana, for sharing your story with us!  

As I mentioned above, Liana is such a great example of the fact that you don’t have to become an entrepreneur to design your life.

In Liana’s case, she quit a highly prestigious job that was making her miserable. She, then, figured out how to use her skills in a new career field that would require less time and mental and emotional energy. To manage her anxiety, she learned to set clear boundaries around her work (and has made tremendous progress in feeling less guilty about that). She also chose not to become a manager. This decision helps protect her time and energy right now, and, it will set the stage for a transition to part-time work when she’s ready.  

All of these things (a better job, setting boundaries, and staying in an individual contributor role) could give you more time and energy to invest in your health, relationships, and passions. And, it’ll give you more time to experiment with the ideas you have for what you’d love to do in the future. 

Drop a comment below and let us know if you heard something in this interview that you can take and apply in your life.  

Thank you again, Liana, for sharing your story with us!  

If you’d like to continue following Liana’s journey, you can find her in the following places:

• Blog: Dinks on a Bus
• Instagram: @dinksonabus

The post Make Work WORK for You appeared first on The Fioneers.

I met Raina at Camp FI earlier this year. When she introduced herself to the group, the first thing she said was that she was interested in Coast FI. 

Since she led with this, I knew I needed to seek her out to learn more. As I got to know her, I learned that she was currently doing part-time contract work doing research and data analysis in the public health space. Plus, she had recently planned a month-long trip to Colombia to learn Spanish.  

I was incredibly curious to hear how she had created this life for herself. As I learned more, I knew I needed to feature her story in a Slow FI Interview. 

I hope you are as inspired as I am by Raina. Let’s get into the interview.   

1. Tell me a little bit about you. 

Hi, my name is Raina, and I am a New Orleans native, currently residing in Georgia. The things I enjoy most are spending quality time with loved ones, traveling, dancing, doing yoga, being outdoors, listening to music, and learning new things.

I currently work remotely as a consultant, which is a product of a seed that was planted about a decade ago, by a former mentor of mine. He told me that I could one day be an independent contractor/consultant (running my own business). I really looked up to him, so I believed him and today here I am. 

When I started working in my current field about 7 years ago, I told another mentor of mine that I wanted to become an independent contractor/consultant after 3-5 years of working in my new field. He told me that it took him 20+ years to get to that point and I should expect the same. I kept the faith, and after 3.5 years of working in my new field, I started working as an independent consultant.

You may be wondering, how exactly did I get this consulting role?

 It actually worked out in a very unexpected way! 

It started with me applying for a W-2 position. I was interviewed and eventually offered the role. But, after learning that the salary was a lot lower than what I was willing to accept, I discussed my goals, travel plans, and salary requirements with the organization. After a bit of back and forth, we found that it was mutually beneficial for me to work with them as a consultant instead of an employee. 

Essentially, it started with me being authentic about my desire to work with them and them being authentic about what they needed. Together, we were able to find something that worked for us both. To date, I have been consulting with this organization for almost 4 years. This time also includes an 8-month break I took during the pandemic. 

2. What deliberate decision did you make to slow down and improve your life?

Even working as a consultant, I experienced burnout. I felt like I wasn’t fully there at work. Since I always aim to give my best efforts, I felt like it was time to take a step back to reset and recharge.  

It had also gotten to the point where I was so burned out at work that I had very little to give during quality time with loved ones.  

Plus, there was a long list of things I wanted to do (or try) that I had been putting off for years.  

So, I decided to quit working for a period of time. Originally, I didn’t know how long I would take off, but I had over two years of expenses saved. 

3. How did the decision to take time off impact your quality of life? And, what happened next?  

After taking a break, my quality of life improved significantly. I realized that it was okay, and I didn’t need to push myself so hard. The world did not, in fact, end because I stepped back to take a breather.  

During that time, I was able to spend a lot of quality time with my family and friends. I also managed to check a few things off my to-do list. 

But, I soon realized that I missed working and having some sort of routine. 

Even though I could have taken two years off, I ended up taking only 8 months off.  

Soon after I started thinking about going back to work part-time, I was contacted by my previous organization about coming back as a part-time consultant.  

Just like that, after 8 months off, I went back to work refreshed and ready to get back into the swing of things.  

With my new work schedule, I can work whenever and wherever I want. Since I like having a routine, I prefer to stick to a consistent schedule. Now, I have the benefits of both a routine and the added flexibility of part-time work.  

Even while working part-time, I have been able to make progress toward so many of the goals I neglected while working full-time (and not working at all), including:

• Volunteering on a farm 
• Traveling to Colombia to learn and practice Spanish 
• Working on my blog (and relaunching it) 
• Spending more quality time with family and friends (and having the flexibility to help them and travel to see them) 

Plus, I can do all of this and pay attention to my natural rhythm. I get to stay up late and wake up late. 

4. In your opinion, what things in your life contribute most to your happiness and contentment? 

First and foremost, I see myself as a hopeful person, which I think I get from my mom. I have an immense amount of gratitude for the smallest things other people often take for granted. 

With that being said, I think there are two main things that contribute to my happiness:

1. Being able to do the things I enjoy (including spending time with the people I love and care about) 
2. Having a sense of Freedom 

In order to do the things I really enjoy, I needed to turn inward and reflect on what I really wanted. I’ve been different from other people my whole life (and sensed that I wanted different things), but I was also a people pleaser. In the past, I did things because other people wanted or expected me to.  

Now that I’m older, I care less about what others think. I focus on what I want because it’s my life to live. I can also be more authentic when I live my own life.

A few books and resources helped me to get to this point, including Your Money or Your Life, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, The Millionaire Next Door, anything from Richard Rohr and Eckhart Tolle, and Jamily Souffrant’s Podcast – Journey to Launch.  

Having a sense of freedom means a lot of things to me: 

• Freedom to take time off of work (fortunately, I can take time off and still cover my expenses, a blessing I don’t take for granted) 
• Freedom to work as a woman (I know that in some places around the world, women aren’t able to work or earn money like men) 
• Freedom to say No to the things I don’t want to do 
• Freedom to say Yes to the things I want 
• Freedom to move to another state or country if I want to 

One thing that helped me recognize the freedoms I have was to delve into exactly what my enough point was, an important concept in Your Money or Your Life.

I asked myself these questions:

• How much was enough for me? 
• And, if I reached this enough point, what was it inside of me that made me feel like I needed more? 
• How could I turn that switch off? 

One way that’s helped me turn the switch off and feel like I have more abundance, is to not only save toward my wants and goals but to also spend the money in those savings buckets. When I was saving and not spending, I always felt like I didn’t have enough. When I learned to spend the money and enjoy the fruits of my labor, I realized that was key to helping me feel like I had enough.  

As you’ll see below, I haven’t reached FI (nor even Coast FI yet), but I still feel like I have enough at this moment.  

Reaching this point has given me the freedom to say “yes” to the things I want more of (quality time with friends and family, travel, new experiences, yoga classes, concerts, Spanish classes, giving to people and causes I care about, etc.). It also gave me the freedom to say “no” to the things I didn’t want (working to the point of burnout, waking up early, spending on things I did not want or enjoy, buying a house, etc.).  

Ultimately, I think my happiness and contentment are a result of both external circumstances and an internal state of mind. I now realize that I have a lot of freedoms, and I need to use those freedoms in life-giving ways.  

I am grateful for all of these freedoms. This gratitude leads to happiness and contentment.  

5. How did taking a break from work and going back part-time impact your financial goals or timelines? 

Once I started working part-time, I plugged numbers into a compound interest calculator. From this, I realized that I could save and invest a set amount for 4-5 more years. At that point, I’d reach Coast FI and could let my money coast for 9-10 more years and reach full FI by the time I was 49.  

I also did an alternative scenario, where I increased the contribution to my retirement by $1,200 each month. I found that it would only shave off 2-3 years of time. Since I enjoy working and my work is very flexible, I decided to spend this additional $1,200 on things that give me life energy today rather than retiring earlier.  

I decided to spend the extra money on:

• Shopping/Entertainment 
• Yoga (or other workout) classes 
• Lessons (guitar, swimming, sailing, and Spanish) 
• Vacation
• Self-Care 

At this rate, I’ll reach Coast FI in 4-5 years. At that point, the amount of money I’m currently investing will be freed up. Then, I’ll be able to choose to continue investing, work less, or spend more. I don’t know what I will decide when I get to that point, but I have time.  

I’m making the most out of my time right now, so I don’t think I’ll miss the 2-3 years of retiring sooner.   

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6. What enabled you to make this decision?

Figuring out what enough means for me and doing the calculations helped a lot. I can sometimes create problems in my mind with no solutions. But, once I put them down on paper and look at the numbers, I realize how irrational the problems I created in my mind really are.  

Also, I’ve realized how much I enjoy and thrive in a life that has some routine built in. Routine isn’t the enemy of freedom. It, in fact, helps me work toward my goals. This realization allows me to be comfortable with working longer.  

Lastly, I think about how much my ancestors would have loved to live a life like this. Who am I to work so hard when there is simply no need for me to do so? I have worked very hard throughout my life (and have no regrets about it). I have laid the foundation and have reached the point of enough. I don’t need to keep pushing for more money I don’t need. 

7. How did your pursuit of FI help or hinder this decision?

The pursuit of FI helped my decision. Because of FI, I got to a point where I was financially secure. I understood my spending, and more importantly, my values and what was important to me. From this, I realized that I enjoy flexibility and freedom. Without FI, I don’t think I would have gotten as creative about taking time off or having a flexible schedule.

Plus, the FI community helped me realize that I wasn’t alone. I knew I wanted to take time off and travel, but I thought I was the only one. When I met others with the same goals, I realized it wasn’t a pipe dream. It was actually attainable.  

8.  Were there things in your life you adapted to make it work better so you could continue to work toward your goals?

One thing I did was downsize my life a bit. I am currently living with my family in Georgia. I am paying rent, but it is a lot less than I would pay if I had my own apartment (like I did while I was working full-time). I make enough that I could get an apartment, but it makes sense for me to stay with my family since I travel so much. This year, I have already traveled for 15 weeks.  

The other thing I needed to do was to get clear and realistic about how much I wanted and needed to save (without over-saving). For my other goals, it’s been important to get into a routine that allows enough space and time to work toward them. 

9.  Why and when do you think someone might consider “downshifting?”

I would encourage people to downshift for a few reasons:

• If you are feeling burned out 
• If there’s something you’ve been wanting to pursue but haven’t because you don’t have the time, mental space, or energy 
• If you are feeling overwhelmed or have lost your sense of direction. Sometimes when there is so much going on, we are overstimulated and can’t hone in on what drives us.  

If any of these things are true for you, you could consider downshifting when you get to a place of financial stability. You want to have an emergency fund plus some additional savings that would cover your expenses during your time off so that this time of downshifting isn’t stressful. 

10.  What advice do you have for someone considering a similar decision?

Do it! Take the leap!  

First, make sure you have a plan in place to give you some peace of mind. I’m a Taurus, so I like plans. I think it’s helpful to have a bit of a plan in place so you can check your progress. But, also remember, it’s okay to shift away from your plans. Listen to yourself.  

Also, take time to turn inward and reflect on what you’d like to do or explore. When I took time off, I was finally able to explore things I’d been thinking about for years. I found that I enjoyed some of the things and didn’t enjoy others. 

Testing things out gives you a nice taste of what the post-FI life you imagine feels like before you get there. It wouldn’t be good to work so hard for so many years to get to the end and realize you don’t even enjoy the thing you dreamed about.  

Also, if you downshift to explore your ideas, you may find you want to continue working or start pursuing something you are passionate about. You may also find creative ways to incorporate the things you enjoy into your life after you upshift work again. 

Thank you, Raina, for sharing your story with us! 

There are so many insights from this interview.  

Raina shares a blueprint for how she set up this part-time, contractor role. First, she was open and authentic in the interview and offer process with her current employer about her goals and what she wanted. This is a good reminder that there are some employers who understand (and even embrace) the fact that we are people with lives and goals outside of work. When they couldn’t meet her salary requirements, this was an opportunity for her to negotiate a contractor role. This saves the company money because they don’t have to cover benefits or taxes, and Raina gets more freedom.  

I’d also like to note that it’s amazing how many opportunities for part-time and/or contract work arise when the company is faced with offering that or getting nothing at all. This certainly worked for Raina. 

This happened for one of my clients who recently quit his job to take a year-long sabbatical. Upon quitting, his company asked if he’d consider working as a contractor, doing only as much work as he wanted to on his own schedule. He’s now working about 10 hours/week for them and can dial it up or down at any time.  

Next, I also want to note that Raina is a great example of the fact that you don’t have to already be Coast FI to scale back to part-time work. If you can still generate enough income to continue saving and investing, you can scale back earlier and still reach Coast FI and full FI. Raina did the calculations and realized that she could reach Coast FI in 4-to-5 years. Then, she could coast to Full FI From there. She could push and reach FI a couple of years faster, but she’s enjoying her life now. There’s no rush.  

Lastly, I want to leave you with Raina’s inspiring words about freedom. 

“I now realize that I have a lot of freedoms, and I need to use those freedoms in life-giving ways.” 

Are you using the freedoms that you have in life-giving ways?  

If you’d like to follow Raina’s journey, you can find her in the following places:

• Blog: Her Granddaughter
• Email: Hergranddaughter (at) gmail (dot) com 

The post Working as a Part-Time Contractor Before Coast FI appeared first on The Fioneers.

Is your company incentivizing you to stay (in a job you don’t really like) with a stock vesting and bonus schedule that makes it difficult to leave?

If so, you are not alone. We got a lot of questions from readers about the golden handcuffs.

We respond to every question we receive. Since we receive so many questions about breaking free from the golden handcuffs, I decided to write a post about the topic.

I’m going to do this in a case study style, by sharing one person’s story. If you can see yourself in this story, I hope you find the ideas and considerations helpful.

Here is the case study question we received.

“I am married with 3 kids. My husband stays at home with the kids, and we have reached Coast FI. I usually enjoy working but have found myself in a function that I don’t particularly enjoy.

I’ve also reached a higher leadership role and have the golden handcuffs.

If I stay until May 2024, I will get ~$115K in stock transferred to me along with a ~$50K bonus.

I have 3 kids, and I’d like to pay for college (assuming they want to go). The $165K that I’d receive next year could round out the rest of the kids’ college savings. It seems like easy money to stick around even though I don’t particularly like the work.

Each year after that I’ll likely have ~$75K in stock transferred along with a $50K bonus. At some point, I’ll just have to walk away from it.

My retirement is funded. Staying one more year would top up the kid’s college funds. Staying two more years would allow us to pay off our house, which is our only debt.

The work isn’t terrible but not something I’m passionate about either. I typically have enjoyed working though, and I don’t enjoy this. I’m passionate about using money to create my dream life and hope to do something different in the future.

I’m also in the process of getting my MBA. I’m not sure what I particularly plan to do with the degree, but I got a full scholarship and figured it could provide me with some opportunities for the future.

What would you recommend?”

Are there aspects of this story that sound like you? If so, keep reading!

Case Summary and Assumptions

All I know about this person is what she shared by email. To make it easier, I’m going to refer to her as Jennifer.

First, I know that I need to make a few assumptions and draw some conclusions based on what she shared.

Jennifer shared that she and her husband “have reached Coast FI” and that their “retirement is funded.” Based on these statements, I am going to assume that they have surpassed their Coast FI number. This means that they don’t need to add another dollar to their retirement accounts. But, they do need to cover the cost of their everyday expenses and non-retirement financial goals between now and retirement.

Jennifer is also working in a job she doesn’t enjoy. It’s not terrible, but it’s certainly not great. She wants to use her money to create her dream life, but it seems like she doesn’t yet know what that would look like.

Lastly, her company is incentivizing her to stay in her current role. If she stays until May of 2024, she will receive $165K in stock options and bonus payout (in addition to her regular salary). Each year after that, she’d likely receive an additional $125K in stock and bonus.

Unlock the Golden Handcuffs – Recommendations and Considerations.

It can be incredibly difficult to walk away from a financial upside like this. To be clear, I am not advocating that she do this. What I want to share is a series of thoughts and questions that could help Jennifer (and you) think through the trade-offs.

Jennifer is not stuck. She holds the key to the golden handcuffs. She has a choice to wear them as a bracelet for as long as she wants, but she can take them off whenever she wants.

Recommendation #1 – Consider the Opportunity Cost

To be clear, it is completely valid to stay with a job for a period of time that gets you past some sort of “cliff” where you’ll get extra benefits. In fact, Corey stayed at his job for a few extra months before quitting, so that he’d receive his bonus. This bonus is helping to cover his year off.

It sounds like Jennifer has some specific financial goals that she’d like to achieve with the money that she’d receive for staying. These goals include:

• Funding her kids’ college
• Paying off her mortgage

Both of these are valid goals.

But, the main question I’d ask Jennifer is, “What is the opportunity cost if you stay?”

I’d want to know if the job is impacting her mental or physical health. Is it impacting her relationships?

And, is there something that she’d rather be doing with her time? It sounds like she doesn’t enjoy the work. Is there anything that she feels like she’s missing out on because of work?

Lastly, I’d ask, “Is fully paying for the kids’ college and paying off your mortgage in the next two years worth these opportunity costs?”

It might be, but she won’t know until she asks.

Recommendation #2 – Explore What You’d Like to Do Instead

It’s really difficult to make a change when we’re solely focused on what we want to move away from. Without a clear vision of what we want to do instead, it’s easy to stay stuck.

Luckily, you don’t have to completely upend your life and job to start exploring what you’d like to do instead. In fact, I don’t recommend this (unless something is so bad that you need to get out immediately for your mental health and well-being).

In Jennifer’s case, I’d ask the following questions:

• Do you have ideas for what you’d like to do instead?
• Do you have time to start experimenting with these ideas?

Experimenting with ideas will make the path forward a lot clearer. It’s hard to take action when you only have a push. When you also have a pull, it becomes a lot easier.

To learn more about experimentation, I’d encourage you to check out this blog post or watch the video below.

For example, Corey originally wanted to keep working in a traditional job until we reached $1M of invested assets. Spoiler alert: We didn’t get there before he quit. The biggest thing that helped him quit before we got to this milestone was that he had already experimented with a new lifestyle.

In 2021, we experimented with vanlife by renting a campervan. From that experiment, we decided to buy and build our own campervan. This vision for a location-independent lifestyle along with a desire to have more time to dive into his hobbies and interests – pulled him to quit.

He wasn’t enjoying his job, but I’m not sure the push factors alone would have given him the confidence he needed to leave.

Most people say that their current work situation doesn’t provide them with the time they need to explore new options.

If this is the case for Jennifer (or you), I’d recommend starting small. Over time, you could start scaling back work (or simply scaling back the mental energy you put into work). This will give you more time and energy to dream and experiment.

Here are a few recommendations I have to help you start scaling back:

• Set boundaries around the time you spend working (or thinking about work).
• Take ALL your vacation time.
• Use your vacation time to take 1 day/week off for a month or two.
• Negotiate a non-traditional schedule, like working four 10-hour days.
• Scale back and work part-time (3 or 4 days/week).
• Request a sabbatical or a period of unpaid time off.

Scaling back the time and/or mental energy that you spend on the work you don’t enjoy will provide space. This space can help you figure out what you really want and create a vision for what you want to move toward.

With that vision, it’ll be easier to take out the key and remove the golden handcuffs. As a bonus, this vision will make the transition a whole lot smoother too.

Recommendation #3 – Consider What is Truly ENOUGH

Companies have an incentive to get good employees to stay with them for as long as possible. Bonuses and vesting cliffs are tools that they use to control employees and make them feel stuck.

Knowing how much is truly enough allows us to build financial freedom and confidence in ourselves to unlock the golden handcuffs.

Since Jennifer has reached Coast FI, all she needs to do now is cover her actual expenses and save for non-retirement financial goals.

The first question, I’d ask her is, “How much of a priority for her is it to fund her kids’ college and pay off her mortgage in the next TWO years?”

The answer to this question would likely depend on a few things:

• Does she want to completely scale back after leaving this role and only cover her actual expenses forever? OR
• Could she make enough money in the future (doing work she enjoys) that she’d have a surplus that would allow her to save for these other goals?

From my limited knowledge of Jennifer, it sounds like she’s a pretty ambitious person. She’s reached the upper levels of management in her company and is currently getting her MBA (with a full scholarship!).

Based on this, it seems pretty unlikely that once Jennifer finds work she loves, she’ll struggle to cover her expenses and save in the long term. But, if Jennifer has the desire to scale back completely and only cover her actual expenses she may want to work in her current job for a bit longer.

One final question I’d ask Jennifer is this, “Once you make it through the two years and pay off the mortgage, would you come up with another reason you should stay?”

This is classic one-more-year syndrome brought on by golden handcuffs, which is exactly what your company wants.

Figure Out the Right Balance

To make a decision like this, it’s all about finding the right balance, between:

• Your goals (financial and otherwise)
• What enough means for you and your family
• Any push and pull factors

We could have stayed working full-time and in traditional jobs for longer. But, at a certain point, the trade-offs were no longer worth it. We both had things that were pushing us away from the roles that we were in. We also had a vision for the life we wanted pulling us toward it.

We have reached Coast FI and trust that the work that we will do in the future will meet our needs and allow us to work toward our goals.

Will the work necessarily look like what we’re doing right now? Who knows? But, we also trust in our ability to be resourceful.

I’d encourage Jennifer (and you) to reflect on the trade-offs and decide which ones are worth it to you. Lastly, I also want to remind you that you can choose to make a change simply because you want to. You hold the key to the golden handcuffs. You do not need something external to push you to make a change.

The post Break Free From the Golden Handcuffs: A Case Study appeared first on The Fioneers.

I met Ingrid this spring when we were traveling through Albuquerque, New Mexico in our campervan. We met up for a fun evening with the Choose FI ABQ Crew.  

Ingrid retired early about eight years ago. As we got chatting, she said, “I wish there had been more info about Slow FI when I was coming up.”  

Of course, I wanted to learn more, and that conversation turned into this interview.  

Periodically, I feature people in the Slow FI interview series who have retired early. I love hearing their learnings and sharing their wisdom about what they’d do differently.  

Let’s jump into the interview! 

1. Tell me about you. 

I’m a 51-year-old FIREd human. I quit software engineering at 43 to devote myself to language learning, travel, writing, and photography.

I love to combine language study with travel. My FIRE goal has been to learn a new language and get to at least a conversational level every two years.

My first project was getting my rusty Spanish to fluency. Next were Portuguese and French. My current project is Italian.

In non-pandemic times, I travel about four months a year, usually on language-study-related trips. I also blog about languages and travel.

When not on the road, I live in the American Southwest. I love the relaxed pace, Hispanic influence, and low cost of living.

2. Why did you decide to pursue financial independence in the first place? 

Growing up, I was fascinated by language learning, travel, and writing. As a teen, I went to Mexico and Switzerland on language exchanges. After college, I spent three years working in London, using my earnings to backpack through Asia and the Middle East.

After returning to the US at 25, I settled into a professional job and adult life. But, full-time work in a cubicle felt stifling. I was always researching alternatives. I considered teaching English overseas and massage therapy.

At 27, I started a master’s in computer science for more earning power and job flexibility. I attended a bridge program for people without a computer science undergraduate degree at a University of Texas campus. Back then (around the year 2000), UT graduate tuition was only a few hundred dollars a semester.

Around the same time, I discovered the FIRE movement with online forums and books like Your Money Or Your Life. I began saving towards FIRE in 2003 after starting work as a software engineer.

My last job was with a large tech firm that was supportive of women and generous with its employees. But I hated the stress and Dilbert-like absurdity of many of my projects.

I always maxed out vacation days and took unpaid time off when possible to travel and learn languages. But it never felt like enough. This is what motivated me most to pursue FIRE.  

Furthermore, pursuing this lifestyle did not feel completely countercultural in my family. My parents are German immigrants to the US, and they taught me the value of saving and investing early on. 

I grew up in a Texas upper-middle-class neighborhood where it was the norm to live way beyond your means. My parents didn’t. It wasn’t always easy being the only kid on the block with a patched-up clunker as the family car! Now, I admire my parents’ frugality.

My parents also passed on to me a respect for work-life balance. Germans have a strong work ethic, but they also take time off very seriously. Because of that, it seems like Germany enjoys a better quality of life than the US, despite higher taxes and lower salaries for skilled jobs.

My parents thought American corporate culture was crazy. So, they chose jobs like a university professor and a part-time programmer, that allowed for big chunks of time off. During my childhood, we spent summers with family in Europe or tent camping in the US and Canada.

My parents prioritized frugal experiences over material possessions. They were always generous, though, with charitable giving, tips, and helping family members in need.

Because of my minimalist upbringing, saving for FIRE never felt like a sacrifice. Several family members are also Vanguard diehards, and we often geek out talking about financial topics. I feel lucky to have so much support and understanding from my family.

Lastly, I also believe that my personality played a role in motivating me to pursue FIRE. As a Myers-Briggs INTJ, I dislike rules and artificial limitations. Being introverted also means I thrive alone away from the social environment of an office.

I need a lot of space and autonomy. INTJs resent having their time and effort controlled by others. I’m so much happier working on self-directed projects like language learning and blogging! 

3. How did you approach your FI journey? 

I had always been an aggressive saver. Once I started my software engineering career, my earnings grew quickly. At its peak, I was saving 50% of my gross income. Reaching FIRE took 13 years.

My investment strategy was nothing groundbreaking. I had low-cost index funds with Vanguard and Fidelity. Since women in my family often live into their 90s, I was looking at a potential 50-60-year retirement. A 4% withdrawal rate felt too aggressive to me for that duration, so I targeted a net worth that supported a 2-3% withdrawal rate. I’ve stuck to that.

Now, my finances are on autopilot. Before FIRE, I checked my net worth obsessively. These days, I just log on once a quarter to record dividend distributions. I also rebalance annually if needed during my Roth conversions around January 1st.

4. When did you reach FI? Tell us more about your transition to your full FIRE lifestyle.  

My goal was to retire at 45, but due to strong stock market returns I was able to quit at 43, two years ahead of schedule. I left my job at the end of January 2016. Since company bonuses were paid out in January, I could still max out my 401(k) and IRA contributions for the year.

To prepare for FIRE, I tracked expenses for eight years. I paid off my house. Even though I had a low-interest mortgage, it felt important for me to be debt-free when I left work. I also wanted to minimize annual expenses.

I had a unique opportunity to test-drive early retirement before quitting. In my last year of work, I joined an experimental group at my tech company that allowed salaried employees to work as freelancers.

I worked half-time on a three-month-on, three-month-off schedule. I escaped the dysfunctional projects I was on previously and pursued open-source web development, something that had always intrigued me but I had never had the chance to pursue at work.

I used the three-month stints off to travel to Europe and Asia. The time off was blissful. My half-time position was better than any job I had ever had. 

But, I soon discovered my new projects had their fair share of dysfunction as well. Because I was already FI (and knew I didn’t have to be there), I found it increasingly difficult to return to work after each three-month stretch of freedom.

During my last three-month-off stint, I started my travel blog, resurrected my rusty Spanish, and planned a study trip to Mexico. The transition was fairly seamless. 

I’m happiest when busy and productive, and blogging and language learning provided an instant routine to step into. Soon after my last work day, I departed for seven weeks of Spanish study in Mexico and never looked back.

I also tried to change things gradually after reaching FIRE. I’m grateful I was able to do it that way as it greatly decreased stress levels. I changed as few other variables as possible. For example, I stayed in my current house and got COBRA so my health plan didn’t change.

I also want to acknowledge the role privilege and luck played in reaching FI. If my German parents had not emigrated to the US, I doubt FIRE would even have been on my radar. 

If I hadn’t grown up in such a frugal household, and if my family hadn’t encouraged me to pursue a lucrative but stereotypically male profession, achieving FIRE would have been much harder. And I was fortunate that my parents paid for my undergraduate degree, allowing me to start adult life without debt.

5. What does your FI lifestyle look like? Were there things you didn’t expect?  

Now that pandemic travel restrictions are over, I’m traveling about a third of the time again. I take about three international and three domestic trips a year.

At home, I do two to eight hours a day of language learning. Much of that though is passive consumption: YouTube, podcasts, or books in the target language. Trip planning also consumes many hours. I exercise at least an hour a day.

Blogging is another passion project, although I’ve cut back on it lately. Blogging as a side hustle can easily mushroom into a full-time job. I started the site in 2016 to document my travels, but writing trip reports became tedious. So, I pivoted to focus on language learning.

My blog mission is to inspire curiosity and joy in learning about language and culture by sharing my own experiences of language study and frugal travel. I also aim to promote under-recognized indie content creators like language podcasters and YouTubers.

The blog is a rewarding creative outlet for my writing and photography. I even monetized it in 2018 with ad and affiliate revenue. Most of all, though, it makes my day hearing from a reader that my story inspired them in some way.

I was surprised by how quickly I lost interest in financial topics after reaching FIRE. I took a long break from the FIRE community but recently became involved again. I most enjoy discussions about finding purpose and community.

I don’t really talk about being FIREd publicly on my blog, but I love the idea of inspiring others to FIRE, especially other single women. I don’t hear too many single women voices in the FIRE community. That’s why I do interviews like this one!

6. What important things did you learn along your path to FI and after retiring early? 

Don’t Defer Your Dreams Until FIRE

From childhood, I dreamed of being a writer. While I was working, it was easy to defer my goal with excuses like lack of time and mental bandwidth.

After FIRE, guess what? While I blogged, I still procrastinated on literary writing. My new, even flimsier, excuse was that my travel schedule wasn’t compatible with writing classes.

In hindsight, procrastination came from perfectionism and fear. I was afraid of failing and destroying my dream.

When pandemic travel restrictions struck, my excuses finally dried up. I signed up for online workshops and devoted myself to the craft of writing. Classes and coaching provided much-needed structure. Over the course of three years, my work won a few prizes and was published in a literary journal.

While the successes were gratifying, the audience for literary writing is limited. To my surprise, I found that blogging was actually a more effective and rewarding way to reach others. But tackling my neglected goal gave me a sense of peace. If the pandemic hadn’t happened, I’d still be procrastinating.

Aspiring creatives often suffer from self-sabotage. The Mad Fientist’s struggle with chronic procrastination on his dream of making music resonated with me a lot!

If you’re putting off your dreams, know that FIRE isn’t a magic bullet. Almost all the activities that fill my life now — language learning, travel, exercise — I was already doing to some extent while working. So don’t wait until FIRE to honor your creative impulses. INTJs are especially prone to neglecting their needs.

Shifting from Saving to Spending

Like many FIRE folks, I’ve found it hard to change gears from obsessive saving to spending mode. As with postponing our dreams, sometimes we’re a little too good at delayed gratification.

It’s been a gradual process of letting go of the need to optimize. But being a satisficer rather than a maximizer is better for our mental health.

And as a solo woman traveler, I no longer compromise spending on safety. I avoid night buses and take taxis if public transport is risky.

My desire for comfort and privacy has increased too. I rent my own small apartment now when I travel. I pay for Global Entry and am less willing to suffer multiple stops when flying.

And I no longer avoid visiting expensive places. If I dream of studying French in Paris, I do it.

The book Die with Zero helped reinforce my changing attitude toward spending. It emphasizes front-loading expenditures in retirement while you’re still young enough to benefit. The FIRE community has hosted many interesting discussions on this subject lately like this Choose FI podcast on Spending for Happiness.

I’m prioritizing memorable experiences now while relatively young and healthy. You never know when health issues might arise for me or a family member, or another pandemic could strike.

Travel With a Purpose

After FIRE, the typical sightseeing trip quickly began to feel superficial and unsatisfying. And moving around every few days was exhausting.

Now, I prefer slow travel, basing myself in a city for a month or more and taking day and weekend trips into the surrounding area. I also plan trips around a language course, conference, or visit to family and friends.

7. You’ve shared with me that you wish information about Slow FI was available when you were pursuing FI. Is there anything you regret about taking such a fast journey to FI? 

Ten or twenty years ago, the FIRE movement was still tiny. The concepts of Slow FI and Coast FI didn’t exist. My role models online all followed the traditional death march to FI, so I did too.

While it worked out for me, at the very least, I should have changed jobs. I was numbed out and on autopilot. Depression and anxiety played a role too in feeling stuck.

Jordan Grumet has a fascinating discussion about regret in his book Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. He notes that while it’s difficult to second-guess such a complex decision, most notably, we could die while grinding it out in an unfulfilling job.

Grumet also observes that Gen X prefers muscling it out to FI, while millennials and Gen Z want a more balanced path. As a Gen Xer, I can identify!

Whatever your generation, today there are so many more FIRE resources. If I were on the path to FIRE today, I’d take advantage of the many online communities and in-person meetups and conferences.

I did life coaching before quitting my job, but there were no coaches in the FIRE movement back then. Now, I’d seek out the support of a coach to get a fresh perspective and explore alternatives to years of enduring a job I hated.

8. If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently on your journey to FI? 

I probably would have left the security of a steady paycheck early on and become a freelance web developer. I was always fascinated by web development, took classes in my free time, and attended freelancer meetups. Personality-wise, I had way more in common with indie developers than my corporate colleagues.

However, at the unhappiest point of my job, I also had tremendous momentum going towards FIRE. My net worth was ballooning, RSUs were vesting, and the light at the end of the tunnel was in sight. So I gritted my teeth and stuck it out. If I had gone freelance earlier it could have delayed my FIRE date, but provided more of the freedom and flexibility I craved.

Since FIREing, I’ve met many people with creative solutions for juggling paid work with writing, travel, and language study. There are so many more options than I previously thought.

Thank you, Ingrid, for sharing your story with us! I always appreciate hearing the stories of early retirees. We can learn so much from the paths they took and the advice they have.  

What struck me most about Ingrid’s story is that when she looks back, she sees how many more options there were besides grinding it out and “enduring a job that she hated.”

She could have changed jobs, gone freelance, or become self-employed. These decisions may have lengthened her path to FIRE, but maybe not. Or, perhaps a lengthened timeline wouldn’t have mattered if she was enjoying her life and work more.  

Ingrid offers many important pieces of advice. Here are two that resonated with me most.  

First, she encourages people to look for community and take advantage of the variety of resources available. Now that she’s embedded in a community of people who are focused on travel and language learning, she’s met people with so many creative solutions that allow them to juggle paid work with their other interests. 

I’ve experienced first-hand how valuable it was to meet others doing the things I enjoy, and how it’s opened up my eyes to the options that I would have never thought possible. You may find the same thing to be true! 

Second, Ingrid urges us to not defer our dreams. She had a dream of doing literary writing and kept putting it off, while she was working and after FIRE, for one reason or another. Usually, money is not the reason we don’t pursue our goals. Sometimes, time is not even the primary barrier. We often use time and money as an excuse to not work through the mental barriers that are holding us back.

The things that Ingrid has in her life after FIRE were the same things that were there before she reached FIRE, though they were there in smaller quantities. 

You don’t have to wait until you reach some sort of financial milestone to start designing your life and pursue the things that you are interested in. In fact, if money were no longer a barrier, there’s a good chance you’d find some other reason to put it off. Don’t! Start taking small steps to work through the mental barriers and move toward your dreams now.  

If you’d like to learn more about Ingrid and follow her journey, you can find her in the following places:

• Blog: Second-Half Travels 
• Instagram: @secondhalftravels

The post Don’t Defer Your Dreams Until FIRE appeared first on The Fioneers.

I’ve been an entrepreneur with a variable income for three years now. In some months, I make 5 figures in revenue. In other months, I make as little as $500. It can be difficult to manage your money as an entrepreneur with a variable income.

For the first two years as an entrepreneur, it wasn’t so difficult. My spouse, Corey was continuing to work full-time at a traditional job. His income was consistent and cushioned the impacts of my variable income.

But, things changed earlier this year. Corey quit his job in February. We are now relying on the variable income from the business cushioned by our cash reserves.

We’ve received a lot of questions about how we’ve made this transition. What are the nuts and bolts of our money management? Do we pay ourselves a salary? And, the question we’ve been asked most often is what are we doing for health insurance?

We’ve been managing our money as entrepreneurs for 5 months. Now, I’m ready to share more about how we are managing our money as entrepreneurs.

Our Money Management Strategy Supports Our Goals

Before I get into the strategy, I want to be clear that this money management strategy is unique to us and supports our goals. You may find helpful things that can apply in your own situation. Take it, and leave the rest.

For this year, our goal is simply to cover our expenses. We’ll do this through a combination of Corey’s earned income from the first two months of the year and income from our business. By our business, I’m talking about the courses, coaching, and retreats I run through the Fioneers.

We also built a cash runway, in addition to our emergency fund, that could help us cover any shortfalls.

For this year, this money management strategy allows:

• Us to travel in our campervan for 5-6 months this year
• Corey to take 6-9 months to focus on recovering from burnout and exploring new activities without the pressure of earning income
• Me to focus on maintaining (or slowly growing) the business, but doing it in less time since we are traveling more.
• Us to have minimal money stress even with a variable income.

How We Manage Our Money as Entrepreneurs

There are 4 key topics that I want to cover in this section:

• Emergency Savings and F-You Fund
• Business Income
• Savings and investments
• Health Insurance

Emergency Savings and F-You Money

As a general rule of thumb, people say it’s good to have 3-6 months’ worth of expenses as an emergency fund. I think of everything above that as my F-You Money.

F-You Money is liquid assets that you can use to get out of a bad situation or take advantage of an opportunity. For us, it’s the cash runway that provides time to build up a new income stream.

As entrepreneurs with a variable income, it’s important to keep a healthy cash runway. Right now, we have about 2 years worth of expenses available to us.

Given that we can cover most of our expenses from business income, this runway could last us a lot longer than two years. It also allows our investments to continue growing in the background.

In preparation for Corey quitting his job, we bulked up our cash runway. For the second half of 2022 and the first couple of months of 2023, we reduced Corey’s 401k contributions to only meet the match. This allowed us to send more of the money to our cash reserves.

Business Income

After working with a CPA earlier this year, we’ve learned that paying ourselves a salary helps us reduce our tax bill. It also helps to reduce the impact that the variability in revenue has on our daily lives.

We’ve chosen to pay ourselves the minimum wage ($15/hour) for our state based on the approximate number of hours we each work per week.

I know this seems low. We are okay with this because we also know that all the profits of the business are ours. We can take a disbursement from the business if we want or need to.

At this point, we are happy to keep a larger balance in the business account. These capital reserves give us the confidence that we’ll be able to cover our expenses and salaries, even if there’s a downturn in the business.

As we build our revenue and long-term confidence in our business, we could choose to increase our salaries later.

Savings and Investments

For 2023, we are not planning to save or invest. We do hope to increase our income in the future to the point where we could save or invest 20% of our income for retirement or other goals.

We are confident in this approach because we have achieved Coast FI. Being Coast FI means that if we never invested another dollar, our money would grow and allow us to fully retire, in our case, in our mid-50s.

Being Coast FI gives us the confidence to have a year (or a few years) where we simply cover our expenses or even use money from our cash runway.

Even if it takes us 2-3 years to get to a place where we can save and invest again, we still feel confident in our plans.

Because we do not plan to use our investments anytime soon, we have chosen a portfolio with 100% stock exposure. This will give us the greatest chance that our money will grow in the long term.

Health Insurance

We chose to buy our own health insurance through the Massachusetts Health Connector, our state’s equivalent to the Healthcare.gov marketplace.

Because I have a history of a variety of health problems, we were not comfortable using a health-sharing ministry or a high-deductible health plan.

We chose a Silver Tier plan that provides excellent coverage. Within this plan, we each have a $2,000 deductible and a $9,000 out-of-pocket maximum.

When we were originally considering leaving traditional employment, we put a $20,000 placeholder in our budget for health insurance. So many people had lamented the high cost of health insurance, and we weren’t sure what to expect.

Once we figured out the cost, we were pleasantly surprised. We only pay $800/month for both our medical and dental insurance. Paying $10,000 annually for health insurance is still quite high, and I wish we didn’t have to pay it. But, we see it as the price that we must pay for freedom from traditional employment (at least here in the USA).

Because we are self-employed, the cost of our health insurance is a business expense and tax deductible.

How We Are Managing Our Money Mindset

As entrepreneurs, it’s also important to manage our money mindset. It can be easy to fall into a scarcity mindset when you can only rely on yourself to generate the income needed. Here are a few strategies we’ve used to manage our money mindset, reduce pressure, and build our confidence.

Paying Ourselves from Last Year’s Profits

By having a large cash runway, I can do a little mental gymnastics and imagine that I’m covering this year’s expenses from last year’s profits. Then, I can tell myself that all the money I make this year can go toward funding next year’s life.

I don’t know why this mental framework is so helpful for me. But, it is. It takes away so much pressure from generating income. I know that I don’t actually need it right now. When the pressure is off, I also enjoy working in my business a lot more (and very likely make more money than if I were putting a lot of pressure on myself).

Tracking Our Net Worth

We’ve been tracking our net worth for many years. It’s a helpful visual to see that over time our wealth (and subsequently our freedom) has increased.

I recently took a look at our net worth and compared it to 5 months ago when Corey quit his job. Theoretically, I knew it would be higher. But, seeing the evidence that it continues to grow even when we are down to one income helps to build a lot of confidence.

Creating and Sharing Income Projections

It’s been very helpful to create income projections. This helps me to know how much I expect to make this year. I like to create different scenarios also. On the high side, I make note of what I would make if everything worked out exactly as I wanted it to. On the low side, I project what I’d make if things didn’t go as expected.

I obviously want the higher projection to come to fruition. Creating the lower projection helps take the pressure off. I can look at the low end and ask myself, “Will we be okay if this happened?” The answer is always yes, which builds my confidence.

Having these projections available helps Corey and me to be on the same page. Because he has an understanding of the likely income we’ll generate, he doesn’t need to feel the pressure to find work or start making money immediately.

Recognizing All the Ways We Could Make Money

When I start worrying about money, one thing that’s always helpful is to come up with a list of all the different ways that we could make money. We know that we aren’t limited to our current income streams.

Here are a few ideas on our list:

• Build up and monetize our YouTube Channel
• Rent out our house while we travel
• Rent out our campervan when we are home
• Gig work
• Create new products or services to sell
• Selling items in our house (we’ve been doing this recently as we’ve been decluttering)
• Find temporary, contract, or freelance work

Our minds can easily go to the worst-case scenario. It’s helpful to realize that there are so many options available to us before we would get to that point.

Doubling Down on Intentional Spending

When experiencing a scarcity mindset, the tendency can sometimes be to not buy anything, even if it will dramatically improve our quality of life.

Instead, we are doubling down on intentional spending. In the words of Ramit, our goal is to “spend extravagantly on the things we value and mercilessly cut costs on the things we don’t.”

We’ve made a few big purchases recently that will add tremendous value to our lives. We’ve made a few upgrades to the van, including adding a window, a storage box, and bike mounts, and mounting our Starlink to the roof.

We also recently purchased e-bikes. After renting e-bikes in the Grand Canyon earlier this year, we realized how much we enjoyed exploring this way. While we enjoy biking long distances when it’s flat, we enjoy it a lot less when there are a lot of hills to climb. So, we decided to invest in e-bikes.

At the same time, we are mercilessly cutting costs on the things we don’t value. We’ve cut our spending on restaurants, take-out, convenience, clothing, and “general merchandise”.

Transitioning from Accumulation to Enjoyment

We’ve heard from so many people that it’s difficult to make the transition from saving a significant portion of your income to enjoying your freedom.

This has been a challenge for us too, which is why we’ve chosen an incremental approach.

Until 2020, we focused on increasing our savings rate. We topped out saving about 60% of our income.

In 2021 and 2022, we reduced our savings rate by quite a bit. We kept our income roughly the same, but we spent a lot more money. We bought and built out our campervan over those two years, which brought our savings rate down to about 20%.

Now in 2023, we’re scaling down even more. We don’t have as many large purchases as in the last two years, so we’re scaling back by reducing our income. We have no expectations to save or invest this year.

We may save money in future years, but we won’t ever need to save 50% of our income ever again.

This incremental approach will help us when we eventually transition to the decumulation phase and actually start living off our nest egg.

We’re already building the “muscles” needed to enjoy the freedom that we have rather than feeling like we constantly need more.

The post How We Are Managing Our Money as Entrepreneurs appeared first on The Fioneers.

I wrote a blog post in early 2022 about how to travel as much as you want without retiring early. Most people assume that you need to retire early or be self-employed to do this, and I wanted to bust that myth.  

I got to learn a bit about Megan’s story when she commented on the post. She shared that she and her husband had been taking 6 weeks off every winter for the last 20 years.  

When I heard that I knew I needed to learn more!

• How did they actually do this? 
• Were they self-employed the entire time? Or did they have to negotiate the time off with their employers?  
• If they were employed in traditional jobs, how did they convince their employers to let them do this every year?  

So, I followed up with Megan by email to learn more. We also had the opportunity to meet up with her as we were passing through Portland, Oregon earlier this year on our van trip. 

Through emails and conversations, I learned that they are now self-employed. But, earlier in their careers, they needed to negotiate time off with employers. I also learned that Megan’s been able to make even more significant changes in the last few years which has allowed them to take a sabbatical and travel even more.  

I knew I needed to get Megan on for a Slow FI interview. I hope you are as inspired by Megan’s story as I am! 

1. Tell me a little bit about you. 

I grew up in a row home in Philadelphia in a neighborhood surrounded by many members of my large family. My grandparents, great-grandparents, great-aunt, and aunt and uncle were all within a few blocks of walking distance from our house. 

After college, I lived in San Francisco for a few years and in Memphis, TN for a short stint. Then, I found my way to an ecovillage in rural Missouri because I was interested in learning more about gardening and intentional communities.

I didn’t know this decision would have a profound impact on my life. The 1 ½ years I lived at the ecovillage were some of the most intense of my life, in a good way. I was exposed to so many of the things that went on to shape my life over the last two decades. I met and fell in love with my husband, learned how to grow food, and experimented with living in small spaces (we lived in a 90 square ft cabin for a year). I went from not knowing how to cook to preparing from scratch, vegan meals for as many as 50 people.

Eventually, my husband and I moved to Madison, WI. We both embarked on new careers, mine as a garden educator and his as an arborist. We bought a house, started businesses, and have built a life and community there for the last 20 years.

2. One thing that piqued my interest when I heard your story was that you’ve taken extended time off every year as world travelers, even when you worked in traditional jobs. Can you tell us more about this?  

From a very young age, I was always interested in having a diverse array of experiences. There has never felt like enough time to learn and experience everything I would like to in this life. Over the first few years of our relationship, my husband and I realized that we were on the same page. For both of us, freedom to experience the world mattered way more to both of us than titles or fancy things.

The second year we lived in Madison, we both negotiated with our employers for six weeks off in December and January. We traveled to Costa Rica and Nicaragua and had so much fun that we vowed to make it an annual tradition. 

Almost every year since then (2004) we’ve left the frigid Midwest for warmer climates for an average of six weeks. For about half of those years, we were employed by either nonprofits or small businesses, so we had to work it out with our employers to take unpaid time off. 

The outdoor and seasonal nature of our jobs made this a bit easier. I worked more hours during the gardening season and less time in the winter, so I was able to negotiate unpaid time off and I made up those hours when I returned. The winter weather would also slow down the pace of work at my husband’s job during the deep winter months, so the owner was open to him taking time off as well. 

As each winter arrived, we began to establish the expectation with our employers that we’d be taking off for six weeks. As we both transitioned into being self-employed after about nine years of working for other people, we had more control over our schedules, and my husband had a business partner to rely on to keep things running in his absence.

3. How did taking an extended time off to travel the world each year impact your quality of life? 

Over the last twenty years, we’ve spent winter months in Central America, Mexico, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Arizona, Ghana, Chile, New Zealand, and Thailand. 

Taking an extended vacation each year has allowed us to connect with one another without all of the busyness of daily life and work. We also got to shake up our routines and escape the long Wisconsin winter. 

A six-week vacation is the sweet spot for me! After about week three, I feel so disconnected (in a good way!) from my life at home that it’s hard to remember it. This larger vacation of six weeks has always been a true reset.

We have also been able to travel at a much slower pace than we would if we had only visited those places for a week’s vacation. We’ve studied at language schools, lived with local families, volunteered with nonprofits, worked on farms, and spent many hours on buses, boats, and public transportation. Much of our traveling has featured deep and meaningful experiences. And, at the end of six weeks, we’re often ready to return home and have a new appreciation for where we live.

4. In 2018, you saw a significant transition in your life. What happened? And, what has life been like since then?  

To share a bit of context, my husband and I have both also been business owners for many of the last 15 years. My husband owned a tree care company for seven years, I’ve owned an online gardening education business for 10 years, and an operations business for 2 ½. 

In 2018, my husband decided to exit the tree care business he started with a partner because the stress was negatively affecting his health and quality of life. I was also feeling burned out around this time. 

We decided that this change in my husband’s work life provided the perfect opening to take a year off. 

In the fall of 2018, we purged our house of many unwanted items, purchased a teardrop trailer, and listed our house for rent fully furnished (plants included!) on Craigslist. 

In January, we left for a year on the road, during which we visited 25 national parks, many more national forests and monuments, lots of friends and family, and completed over 150 hikes. At the end of the year, my husband declared it the best year of his life.

We made it back to Madison just in time for Covid to take the world by storm and hunkered down at home through 2020 and into 2021. We did continue our winter trips but kept them domestic – mountain biking in Arkansas and hiking in Tucson. 

During our winter trip in early 2022, we made the decision that we were ready to hit the road again, but this time in a different style than living in a tiny trailer. We spent the spring purging more possessions from our lives and rented our house to some coworkers of my husband’s. We left Madison again in June 2022. 

This time around, our plan has been to stay in each location we visit longer, primarily focusing on locations where we have family and friends, and for me to work remotely while my husband takes a career break after 18 years as an arborist to focus on what he wants to do next. 

5. How have these decisions to travel long-term impacted your quality of life? 

During our sabbatical in 2019, I realized what an incredibly positive impact hiking and being outside in nature had on my mental and emotional health. That’s why, since we left the Midwest a year ago, we’ve focused on spending time in places with easy access to hiking trails – Colorado, Tucson, and the Pacific Northwest. 

I take Fridays off from working and we’ve named it Friday Funday. Most of the time we go on a long hike, sometimes with friends who also have that day off. This allows me to unwind and center myself after the work week. Most of the other time off we schedule is spent with friends and family, exploring nature, and ideally doing those two things together.

I think, especially at this moment, we’re doing exactly what we want to be doing in life, which gives us a great sense of happiness and contentment. 

Things are not perfect and moving locations fairly often can be stressful, but we’ve chosen this life, and that feels empowering.

Many of our life decisions have been focused on providing ourselves with the freedom we desire to live the life we want, which includes not working full time, taking extended time off, and having the money to travel and experience the world. 

6. How have these decisions to orient your life around adventure and being a world traveler impacted your financial goals or timelines? 

We didn’t know anything about FIRE when we were younger. We didn’t make a lot of money, although we did save for retirement as much as we could, which often wasn’t much. 

When my husband had his own tree care company our income increased quite a bit for a few years. Instead of enlarging our life to fit our new financial picture, we chose to make lots of catch-up contributions to our retirement accounts and pay down our mortgage. 

I feel that we’re in a much more secure financial situation at this point. We’re not really tracking our FIRE numbers nor are we planning for or talking about early retirement. We’ve decided to focus on sabbaticals, career breaks, and less than full-time work at this point in our lives.

7. What enabled you to focus on adventure and travel?

I think one of the most important decisions we made a long time ago was to always live beneath our means. For our first three years living in Madison, we didn’t own a car and primarily commuted by bike. Eventually, when we wanted to own a car we bought a used one to share. When we bought our first house we purchased an affordable unit in a cohousing community. When we sold that house seven years later and looked for another house, we intentionally stayed in the first-time home buyer price range to keep our monthly mortgage low. 

We’ve deliberately created a life that can be funded by only one of us working full-time or both of us working less than full-time. We’ve never cared much about big fancy houses, luxury cars, or other things like that. 

Being in our late 40s and early 50s has also changed our perspective on life quite a bit. We’ve each lost a parent in the last 18 months and are watching older friends age and have health challenges. 

Being firmly planted in middle age prompted us to ask ourselves, “What do we want the next 10 years to look like?” This is what led us to the decision to leave our home in Wisconsin for a few years and have fun living in different places. Now, we get to pursue the outdoor activities we love while we’re fit and healthy.

Further, I fully acknowledge that being white and from a middle-class background strongly influenced where I find myself today. My parents were both college-educated, expected me to attend college, and helped me pay for some of it. Both my husband’s and my parents gifted us money to purchase a home, which was a direct result of them being able to build up generational wealth by owning their homes. Our parents and siblings are all financially secure and don’t require any financial support from us. 

While we did choose to make very mindful decisions about our finances, such as not acquiring large amounts of debt and living beneath our means, a smooth path was paved for us without us having to do anything extraordinary because of our race and class privilege.

8. Were there things in your life you adapted so you could continue to work toward your goals?

Since freedom has always been so important to me, I always wanted to own a business. In 2012 I started The Creative Vegetable Gardener, a gardening education business. It has taken many forms over the last 10 years and, honestly, never quite turned into what I had wanted it to be. 

In 2020, after my year-long sabbatical where I didn’t work, I realized I was ready to find something new to do for employment. I toyed with the idea of looking for a more traditional job, but after working with a career coach for 6 months, I decided to start another business. Being self-employed serves me and the way I want to live my life right now.

I launched a project management business in the fall of 2020. My business has gone through some iterations as I’ve honed in on what kind of clients I want to work with and what my zone of genius is. I’m now an Operations Expert who helps entrepreneurs build the back end of their businesses. 

Currently, I’m a fractional Director of Operations for two clients and I also offer consulting, strategic planning, and hiring packages. I work virtually, so my office comes with me as we move locations. 

I’ve accomplished my goal to build a business that would support us so my husband could take a career break for a while. The Creative Vegetable Gardener now offers a side income to supplement the ops business.

9. How did your pursuit of FI help or hinder your decision to design your life around adventure and experiences?

My brother sent me The Fioneers website a couple of years ago and wrote, “These guys sound like you and Mark.” 

While I’ve read about FIRE for many years and was intrigued by it, it felt like it was mostly geared towards engineers and other high earners, which we’re not. Coast FI is far more appealing because I’m more interested in lifestyle design and simple living. 

Being motivated by a particular number doesn’t feel healthy for me. Instead, I prefer to focus on the present while saving and investing smartly for the future. Because life is unpredictable, I do want to be prepared for a day when I might need to retire due to health issues or other circumstances, but until then I’ll be creating a life I love.

10. Why and when do you think someone might consider “downshifting?”

One of the most important questions we’ve asked ourselves lately is, “What do we want the next 10 years to look like?” For us, this roughly means the decade of our 50’s. (Yikes, how did that happen?!) When we sat down and discussed it at length, we decided we wanted it to look different than the last 20 years. That means we needed to shake things up.

There are so many scenarios that might lead someone to downshift. I think that if your answer to that question is similar to ours, then it might be time to consider what downshifting could look like for you.

11. What advice do you have for someone considering a similar decision?

My advice is to believe that what you dream of could be possible. If you would have told me in 2004, when we took that first extended winter trip, that we would continue to travel every winter for the next 18 years, I would have laughed. But, somehow, we arranged our lives so that it was possible. 

I think that taking incremental steps toward your desired life can be meaningful. We didn’t go from working full-time to taking a year-long trip in a trailer. Similar to Jess and Corey, we rented a trailer on a trip to the Pacific Northwest and loved it. The next spring we bought a trailer and used it for the summer. Then we took a 10-day trip. Eventually, we decided to take a year off and live in it. 

Everything is a series of steps. Things don’t have to all happen at once. Practice moving towards the life you wish you had and take it one small, brave move at a time. These steps help you start proving to yourself that you can do it and you become braver and braver, taking bigger and bigger steps over time.

Thank you, Megan, for sharing your story with us! 

I absolutely love how Megan and her husband, Mark, have oriented their lives (and by extension, their work) around having the freedom to experience the world (not fancy titles or luxury items).  

They were never focused on early retirement, but they’ve always lived below their means.

This has allowed them to focus on life along the way. They started off by taking 6 weeks off each year to travel and, then, figured out a way to do that every year for the last 20 years! In 2019, they each took a year-long sabbatical to travel the USA in a teardrop trailer. 

Even though Megan and Mark arguably have had a pretty amazing life so far, they still sat down and asked themselves, “What do we want the next 10 years to look like?”

Even when you are living an unconventional life, it’s still important to re-assess your life and if there’s anything else you want to see change. Then, you can make small, incremental changes to help move you in a new direction.  

Megan did exactly this. She now runs her own location-independent business that allows them to live and explore different places around the US. This year they spent the winter in Tucson and the summer in Portland.  

I absolutely loved when Megan said, “We’re doing exactly what we want to be doing in life.” She doesn’t need to aim for early retirement because she’s designed a life she doesn’t want to retire from.  

If you’d like to connect with Megan, you can find her in the following places:

• The Creative Vegetable Gardener
• Megan’s Operations Business

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