Thank everyone! I love this community. Y'all are so nice. :D
@expatartist: I teach a 4/5 combo grade this year, the wife teaches High School English (mostly Juniors, AP literature, also does the yearbook).
I don't yet have a history of my 'stache. I much more enjoy helping others and answering their questions than talking about my own.
But since several people asked, I'll do a short timeline (and maybe someday a more exhaustive post):
- Graduated college in 07, started teaching. Wife graduated at same time, subbed for a year, started teaching in 08. (Both Teach for America Alumni, if that means anything to you.)
- Bought a condo to live in in Vegas. In 07. Whoops?
- Made big investing mistakes in the stock market, lost 6-figures from that in 08. Whoops?
- Bought a rental in 08. Saw both condo and rental plummet over the next few years. Whoops?
- Had negative net worth from 2008-2010 due to these last few items.
- Hit 0 net worth in approximately June 2010 (didn't track net worth at that point, but working backwards that's the best I can figure -- first recorded net worth was 62k in April 2011).
- Bought a few more properties in 2010. Saved lots in 2011 while looking for deals. Bought a few more long term holds in 2012, plus did some flips and bought a note.
- Bought a few more properties in 2013.
- Hit FI 2013 based on spending levels at that time.
(Future plans: aiming for full FI in 2016 based on a higher spending level, about double 2013 level. Planning two kids and lots of travel in FIRE - likely living around the world in different spots for 3-6 months and not even having a permanent U.S. home per say - so want a higher budget for those reasons.)
Nothing changed spending-wise from 2007 to now (~20-25k/yr).
Income-wise I started out in 2007-2008 grossing about 35k (and wife less, as she was subbing), which grew to 42k each after a few years when we got Master's Degrees. Next year, 2013-2014 school year we get our first cost of living raises in years, so our gross base pay will about 44k each, or 88k together. We also do lots of "extra" work (tutoring, Saturday school, summer school, prep sells, etc.) so that boosted our income (stuff we enjoyed doing, however). We manage our own rentals for now, but basically just collect rent and call repairmen, I don't do any repair work myself.
Massive savings rates (always north of 70%) made the early "setbacks" not so bad, and helped propel us forward. If we pushed to being quite frugal, we could probably save 80-90%, but we live pretty cushy lives.
We also enjoy travel, so we've done plenty of that along the way, including such lavish trips as (all of the below are separate trips):
- Over 2 months backpacking through Europe
- A week in Barbados
- A week in Loreto Bay, Mexico
- Many trips to Southern California to see my in-laws (at least 4x per year, approximately 20-25 trips) and Seattle to see my family (at least once or twice per year, approximately 8-10 trips)
- A week cruise out of Miami to St. Lucia, St. Kitts, and St. Maarten
- A week in Athens, Greece (separate from Europe backpacking trip)
- A week in NYC/CT
- 3-4 days in Boston
- Trip to WA peninsula to go to the beach/rain forest
- I also individually (without the wife) did quite a bit of traveling for a hobby (Texas several times, New Jersey, Philly, Chicago a few times, Indianapolis, etc. - probably another 11 individual weekend trips to cities in the U.S. for just myself)
Most (all?) of those were done quite frugally, with deals, special promotions, whatever.
We also have taken advantage of being locals in Vegas, seeing various "entertainment" things such as:
- Cirque du Soleil's Beatles' Love
- Penn and Teller
- 2-3 other magic shows
- Wayne Brady
- 2-3 other comedian shows
- Phantom of the Opera
- Shark Reef
- Madam Tussauds' Wax Museum
Again, most (all?) of those were done quite frugally, with deals, special promotions, whatever. In fact, almost every single one of those were free (and the ones we paid for were usually at least half off or more).
That's not an exhaustive list of entertainment stuff, those are just the items people would generally think of as expensive. We've done other cheap/free entertainment stuff like camping at Mt. Charleston multiple times, camping trips to the Grand Canyon and Death Valley, hiking at Red Rock, etc. etc.
(These experiences were added because I figured I might as well type them up now, to counter the "but you're living like misers at that spending level!" arguments - not that I'll see it from you guys, but when I use these crib notes to write a more thorough history of our stache it'll be helpful at that point.)
