It's been a year, in fact it's been One More Year, so I thought I'd give an update due to (lack of) popular demand.
I'm not really asking any questions this time, just providing a bit of anecdata about one person's experience at the crux of FIRE/OMY.
You Had Me at Hello YNAB
I initially decided I would work through Feb'21, for One More Government I'd said, and for some quarterly stock vesting.
While doing that, I decided we really should get more formal about our spending plan, and signed us up for YNAB. This ended up being hugely beneficial for us. It didn't actually change the amount we spend so much, but it provided a plan, an opportunity for conversation, and engagement with the numbers for DW. Previously I just ran the books in my head, and DW would ask if we could do/afford various things. This wasn't a great dynamic b/c it placed me as the gatekeeper, and didn't allow her to understand the process or contribute to it as much. Now we've come up with a budget together. We have end-of-month check-ins. She has a better sense of what things cost, and regularly proposes tweaks to the categorizations/allotments. In fact, she's so into it that she practically runs it all now. She categorizes all the incoming expenses, and allocates the next month's funds. She's even set up a separate budget for her personal accounts & spending/saving goals. I'm so happy to be doing this as a team now, it provides such huge peace of mind to know we're working in the same direction and can have easier/deeper conversations about our regular financial priorities.
Show Me The Money!
Among the financial conversations we were having, I happened to mention the ~$100k in bonus/stock I'd likely receive in September if I kept working. Of course this wasn't the first time we'd talked of such things, but with her new financial prowess, it was the first time that the numbers meant something concrete to her. "That's a whole year's worth of spending!" In a few short months she'd gone from learning budgeting basics to intuiting the dilemma of OMY. "Wouldn't it make sense to work 6 more month for that boost?", she'd ask. Suddenly my new target date pushed out to the bonus-pay-date in September. I didn't mind too much, as I wanted to get several more months of budgeting/planning under our belts before I took the big leap.
Maverick Won't Engage
It was difficult to stay engaged at work. New projects that I didn't expect to be around to finish. Employee evaluations for the last time. Working from home likely helped to hide how uninvested I was at work. I did do what I could to ensure that my team members were set to operate day-to-date in my coming absence, without actually explaining that it was coming up. It got especially difficult the last 2 months after evaluations were done, and I was just cruising to the bonus pay-date. I started making unsustainable (if I were someone who wanted to maintain a career) choices; I shaved time from the start and end of each day, slept more/better at night, walked the dogs between meetings, didn't respond to annoying people/mails who should be able to answer their own questions and/or do their own work, reclaimed my weekends as my own. As much as I was putting myself ahead of work priorities, it somehow made the remaining time still doing work feel more acutely tedious. No, I'm not really complaining about my choice to work less, just trying to relate how things felt. I'd unthinkingly expected work to remain full-speed-ahead until it suddenly stopped, and this just-going-through-(most-of)-the-motions way of working was a bit unsettling in some ways, after 20 years of trying to do all the things all the time.
I Wish I Knew How to Quit You
Finally the day came, and I sent a "surprise" morning meeting request to my boss.
He asked why I wanted to quit/retire, and my reasons were (a) not wanting to be a lead and deal with people any longer (this was more exhaustion than it was due to any acutely negative experience), (b) not agreeing with the organizations focus/direction and thus not wanting to work on features towards the org's goals, (c) not wanting to return to the office, and (d) wanting more time for myself.
He proposed that rather than quitting, we change my role to achieve those goals. He offered (a) giving up my lead position, to (b) focus on quality/debugging/support rather than feature-work, while (c) working permanently from home for (d) 3 days a week. He had the authority to make the first three happen on his own, but we'd need to get HR approval to drop to 3 days a week.
Do I want to keep working? What I really want right now is a break, so I'm taking a vacation. When I try to think ahead to what my life would be, say, a year from now ... I kind of think that I wouldn't mind part-time employment? I have experience and expertise in this specific software product, and I like puzzles and solving problems. If I can apply my skills to problems that real users are having, rather than building things that (I feel) people don't want ... it seems like I could enjoy doing that 3 days a week. It all depends on how well the org can truly/culturally accept me as a part-time contributor, without making extra asks of my time, or exceeding my willingness to give-a-fuck about their priorities. And I can increase my charitable giving (which I've already done via doubling payroll-based deductions that get matched by the company and via appreciated stock transfers to our Donor Advised Fund), which feels good.
So in the month since that discussion we set up a succession plan for my team, ramped up the new lead, handed off my duties, and now I'm on a few weeks vacation. I'll end up working only ~4 out of the 10 weeks until the new year. During that time I'll put together my 3-day/week proposal to HR and start that approval process. In the meantime I'm still getting paid full-time with full benefits, have no real day-to-day responsibilities, and will hit another stock-vest in late November. Whether this new role works out or not, or only for a while, all the ways this could play out seem to be good outcomes for me/us.
You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… 60 years.
I truly feel that the personal/lifestyle changes above (wife's engagement with finances, my downshifting at work, and the unexpected opportunity to continue working on my own terms) have been the most significant events of the past year. But I've buried the lede somewhat by not saying until now that we had our first +$1MM liquid-net-worth year. Table below for the curious, but it's actually just over $1.2MM (if we include Zillow's opinion of my house), meaning we've averaged around $100k/month growth in total net worth. Mind-boggling. We'd now be somewhere around a 2.6% withdraw rate. To be clear, we didn't do anything extraordinary this year, just the usual index-funds and savings from income. And today I see that the Top Is In once again.
A year ago when I started this thread I had questions about taxes and healthcare. I still do appreciate all the technical responses here, and have read the sources. At that time I had the sense that taxes and healthcare were, if not a threat to our FIRE, then at least a challenge. Now, one year later, with ACA seeming likely to continue, with the significant growth in our investments, and with a better gut feel for the likely max-cost scenarios, I'm much more relaxed about the whole thing. It surprises me, but I find myself resonating with the posters who suggested just planning for next year or two, and taking things as they come. It now feels like I can spend as much time & energy optimizing this part of our financial lives as I want (because we all enjoy playing our own amateur financial advisors, right?), but not need to spend any more time than that. Knock on wood.
That's about it.
I hope you've all had as good a financial/occupational/matrimonial year as I have.
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Assets:
Oct 2020 Oct 2021
Taxable - $1,050k - $1,353k
Trad 401k - $1,150k - $1,453k
Roth 401k - $ 300k - $ 413k
Roth IRAs - $ 230k - $ 307k
HSA - $ 70k - $ 98k
Cash - $ 50k - $ 250k
House - $ 600k - $ 815k
Liquid NW: $2,850k - $3,874k
Total NW: $3,450k - $4,689k