It's been about two years since I started hanging out here and getting serious about early retirement. Although DW and I had a decent sized stash to begin with, the extra focus has been enough to put us over the top to where we now consider ourselves quasi-FI. If everything stays on track, RE should follow some time in the next 2 1/2 years. At this point, most of the money-saving changes have been made, the calculations have been run, and it's largely a game of waiting until the stash reaches my comfort level for pulling the trigger.
Yesterday I read MMM's latest blog article, "Making Space for Badassity." It was refreshing to see a back-to-basics post from him after the last year or two of articles on topics that are largely tangential to the central tenets of the MMM programme. It got me to thinking about whether DW and I have truly done all we can to pin down the badass lifestyle. Our annual spend is hovering around $40k, which would be a little over $30k if the house were paid off. I'd say that puts us firmly within the realm of badassity. Most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked, but are there still areas where we could improve?
Food: This is the biggie. The two of us are still spending a face-punch-worthy $750 - $800/mo on food. That includes coffee, alcohol, and the very occasional restaurant visit/take-out order, but does not include any personal care items, cleaning products, etc. We do feed our recently-launched DS a couple of times a week, but still. We like good food, so we'll never reach the $300 grocery bill that the cheap starch-eaters achieve. But I think we could do a little better job of substituting sale items for high-priced items, and we probably need to dial back the urge to keep the freezer and pantry stocked to the bursting point at all times.
Housing: We live in a 2,600 sf, 5-bed 3-bath house. It was more house than we needed when DS was at home; now it's just ridiculous. We live in a LCOL, so our housing costs are still lower than most people on this forum. But they could be a lot lower than they are. We've been watching the real estate listings for a long time now, hoping that a 1,600 sf 3-2 on a nice rural property will go on the market for less than $150k. But it hasn't happened yet. We could use a little more than the equity we have in our current house and find plenty of modest houses where our neighbors would be right on top of us. And we would be FIREd instantly. But we just can't bring ourselves to give up our woods, birds, deck, berries in the yard, deer, and peace and quiet.
Air Conditioning: AC use is one of the areas where DW and I still are not on the same page. If she had her way, the thermostat would be set on 72 F during the day and 68 F at night. We've managed to reach a shaky truce at 74-76 during the day and 70 at night. It doesn't get all that hot here (upper 80s is a heat wave), and the AC needs to run periodically to reduce the humidity inside, so that isn't quite as ridiculous as it might sound. But we're still spending more than necessary on keeping the house cool.
Clothes Drying: Revealing a deep, dark secret here - we don't have a clothesline! The layout of our steep, wooded property simply is not conducive to it, unless we want to put it out front for all the world to see.
TV: Another deep, dark secret - we still have cable TV! It's just basic cable that only costs a little over $20/mo. We can't do hulu or Netflix unless we spend a few hundred to replace our antique CRT TV with something that is internet-capable. Plus, I'm a little concerned that we might hit our ISP's data cap. I'd be perfectly happy doing without TV altogether, but DW wouldn't go for it.
So there you have it. After largely getting our life in good MMM shape, those are the areas where we haven't managed to do the full monty.
What about you? Where do you still need to improve?
