Getting excited and scared at the same time!
Now that its getting more real, I can start to understand what people are talking about when they talk about one more year syndrome, and the difficulty of walking away (for some).
Hope i'm not getting "institutionalized". Definitely feeling it a little bit.
Yes, I have been excited since last year. Ended up with an extra year then. Not because I had anxiety, but because I finally had DH interested in my detailed FIRE excel sheet, that I had reduced to a more simple level. He played with it, checking what would happen with a 0% growth of stock. My original FIRE plan was very lean and not discussed in detail with him. After discussing the details, he did not want to FIRE so lean, so therefore an extra year.
As we are going to move away from our current region, I experience often that I go some place to pick wild herbs or so, and then think: this will the last time I do this here. Our area is quite diverse with climate/biotop, both forest and coast. We also have many options for hiking trips and skiing trips close to home. We just don't have mountains. But it is a bit challenging. Will there be an new place available out there that is just as good, or preferably better?
I have quite a bit anxiety about the moving part. We don't know yet for sure where we are going. I can't get DH to think about it in more detail yet. His plan is to first move into a cheaper rental locally for some months, then sell off all the stuff that needs to be sold, and then move further away when we don't have so much on our minds. I am also a bit worried about selling our house and the process of getting it in pristine condition for sale. That is just a lot of work. But the final price for the house will be half or our FIRE stash, so it must be as high as possible. It also means that if we cannot get that price and we will have quit our jobs, we will need to make a plan B. Maybe wait it out until prices go up again, missing out on a year of stock market growth.
I am also a little worried about the sequence of things. We both have a 3 month! notice period at work (standard in Norway). That means that if I want to quit per January 1rst 2020, I will need to resign at the end of September. Which is before we will put the house out for sale, so we are taking a chance there. We plan to sell the home in the winter, either November or January, because we have seen that prices for villas in our region peak around that time. Also, we don't have the nicest garden and outside area. DH thinks we could come away with that if there is some snow. But we live on a hill with extremely steep roads where you need a 4x4 to come up easily in snowy conditions. So this is taking a chance as well. On the other hands, the buyers could guess that you need a 4x4 to live there. Selling a house without having a job is less stressful than working beside it like we did last time we sold our previous home.