Hey all,
I’ve been a lurker on the forums and blog for a while, but I’ve been battling a huge dilemma, so I’ve finally made an account and decided to post to get some Mustachian opinions on the financial aspect of this decision. Sorry for the long post ahead!
I’m currently 24 living with my boyfriend, 25, and we both have been working engineering jobs since graduating less than two years ago. We’ve never really been spendy people and were always keen on saving money, but it wasn’t until about a year ago that we discovered the idea of FIRE, and since then, we’ve been working on reducing our burn rate and striving towards early retirement and financial independence. I currently make 60k annually, and my boyfriend is at around 110k including bonuses. My net worth is currently 100k (around 23k in savings, 4k in taxable, the rest in tax-advantaged/retirement accounts). His is around 200k (around 20k in savings, 90k in taxable, and the rest in tax-advantaged accounts). We are renters and are debt-free.
The problem: I’ve been extremely stressed and miserable with the jobs I’ve worked in. I’ve already had three very different engineering roles at three different companies in my extremely short career thus far, hoping each time I’ll find something better if I try out a different job, but I’m quickly devolving into a more and more stressed and depressed state. I decided to stomach through and pursue a traditional 9-5 engineering career because it would be stable, and my parents would not permit me to study anything outside of engineering during college. I have been getting some side projects started, but being worn down daily from the job and the 2-2.5 hour daily commute I feel is holding me back from giving my all into my side projects or trying side businesses. It doesn’t help that I’ve become a neurotic workaholic between spending 11 hours a day with my job + commute, using all evenings and weekends on my side projects, and then only getting 5 hours a day of sleep on weekdays.
After watching my mental and physical health decline, my boyfriend has been urging me to quit my job after we get married later this year and I get on his health insurance (we’re not very interested in a wedding, so minimal costs there). I’ve been desperately wanting to quit as well, but my risk-averse, Type A-personality self is direly warning me not to. The thought of quitting and losing the income is freaking me out, but at the same time, the thought of continuing to go this direction completely freaks me out too. The plan would be for me to take a few months off to recover and work on my health, then jump back into working on my side projects and trying out other hustles until I figure out where I want to take my career next (probably trying to work on my own business or doing some sort of self-employment). My boyfriend wants to start a side hustle down the line after he is finished with his online classes, so I would ideally be able to help out with his side business pursuits as well. Obviously, there are no guarantees with trying to start your own business or figuring out a self-employment gig, and I figure it may take a few years before I make any consistent, quantifiable income, so we would consider it a one-income household for a while.
Our combined monthly burn rate varies between $2,500 and $2,800 in a high cost of living area, but I’m guessing it would be on the lower end if I no longer work a normal day job, as I’ve been wanting to do more at-home cooking and work on trimming other parts of our spending. I know we’re probably going to be able to pay the bills just fine, and we wouldn’t be homeless anytime soon living on his income alone, but I know it’s going to put a huge drag on our savings rate with $60k less in income per year. We’re not anywhere near 4% rule levels/FI with a combined $300k in net worth. I feel like we’re making good progress at our current rate, so I originally was thinking I would stick out this 9-5 engineering thing for several years until we’re closer to FI. But I don’t know how much longer I can take it. At the same time, I’d feel like it’d be a huge cop-out after only working for two years and a huge financial mistake in our journey of working towards FIRE. In the case that something does happen to my boyfriend or his job, I know I may need to go back to a 9-5 job, but I fear that if I’m not in a regular job for years, I will no longer be very marketable, especially with only two years of work experience on my resume (across three different very short engineering gigs). Should I stick it out for a couple more years to build more savings and not screw up my career after only two years of work experience?
I know the Moustachian community is generally risk-averse, as am I, but I don’t know if I’m just needlessly freaking out about how this would affect our financial prospects and pursuit of FIRE. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!