I have no regrets. I think I REd at exactly the right time for me. I actually said one day at work shortly before I quit, "I think I am going to need to start abusing substances to deal with all of this crap" and I meant it. I am convinced that FIRE saved my life and sanity.
Someone else posted about engaging in too much change right after FIRE being a bad idea. I never really thought about that before, but I can see it.
Selling the house and moving half-way across the country was what we wanted, but it was really quite stressful. It took me a short while after RE to decompress. That decompression was necessary before making the big decision like a big move.
Life is really good. The cost for each person living in my duplex is about $200 a month (utilities, internet, insurance, property tax), although, of course, upkeep is a bit more than that. So, our expenses are low. My investments have done reasonably well and I'm actually working a bit again. I actually love it. I have found the job that has all of the things I loved about my former job, without the bullshit. I'm substitute teaching. I love it. I work when I want and where I want and I'm not worried at all if two weeks go by without a call. I don't have to mark or do report cards or deal with difficult parents, or brutal internal politics. I just get to hang out with and teach kids, and I always loved that part.
I appreciate hearing this. I am slowly coming around to the idea of keeping our current house and traveling a bunch in the first six to twelve months. I don't *want* to stay here long term, but we don't know where we want to go and selling a house, buying another house, and moving 1,000 miles would be a complete pain in the rear.
I also have a once in a lifetime kind of consulting/flexible work potential later in 2019 that might be worth playing around with part time.
I also hear this. Most of our stash is in our clown house, so we need to sell to be able to FIRE. If I could guarantee that the house wouldn't lose it's value in the next years, we could keep living there a bit until after we have decompressed. But I know what can happen to house prices, they can easily go down 50% in a bad year and then take years to recover. That would blow FIRE for us.
I think I am therefore in the situation that we need to start the process of selling the house while we still work, in the string 2019. Find our what we can sell it for and then decide if it is high enough to FIRE. And we still need to earn enough in 2019 to finance the year 2019, so the plan is to work until October. The house might be difficult to sell and take months to find the right buyer. It also pays off to wait until we get a really good price, because we are talking about tax free money that will be our FIRE budget.
So our plan is:
During this winter: paint some of the wood indoors to make the house look fresh for sale. Also finishing some lists that are missing. Putting the house for sale in May or whenever the snow is gone and the steep road is easy to drive. It will be full stress/high blood pressure to get everything in good order. We are now both working 80%, to reduce stress levels, so I hope we have more energy to do it now than last time we moved, which was mega-stressful.
I hope we find a buyer somewhere before the summer, but in worst case much later. When finding a buyer, we need to agree on a date to move out, preferably in the beginning of October.
We should use the summer vacation to find out where we really want to move to, as we don't have a very solid plan yet, just some loose ideas. We need to find a rental and hire it from a certain date, preferably without too much overlap.
We need to quit are jobs with a 3 calendar month! notice period. So maybe per first of July. Then we must have sold, to know the price.
Then we need to move to another part of the country, which is not something you drive back and forth in a day, it is more like 1,5 -2 days driving. How to move? We probably need to sell/ditch most of our current furniture and buy other second hand stuff over there. Or rent a furnished rental. We will need to move our personal items/hobby stuff. I am stiff thinking of what we be a low cost option. Driving ourselves twice? Renting a van and keep our furniture? My job has a hanger I could rent as long as I'm still working there, but I probably won't. Hiring a moving company? Hiring container transport overseas? I am also worried that the need to get replacement furniture will be something we lose money on in the process. But moving it will be costly.
Do you see the stress coming?? I am almost sleeping badly because of all this already now.
I think I will ask DH if we can prepare for that I start the indoors painting. That is at least something I could start on. I have also found one possible estate broker, but I am not convinced about her follow up.
Edit: the broker just called. They have now a new office in our local village, which I guess is good. She will visit us again next week and give us her price. I will put some pressure on DH to get this thing going as planned.