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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: rickyjo on March 15, 2019, 11:37:04 PM

Title: FIRE Semi-Hiatus (fix the things!). New plan for me, looking for square1 ideas
Post by: rickyjo on March 15, 2019, 11:37:04 PM
<long winded>

Before all the complaining: I am lucky and blessed! I have a weird history, but it’s mostly worked out. I make passable money, my wife loves me and works, we don’t have kids yet, and we own our crappy (but awesome) condo outright and beloved shitbox cars. We know how to live cheap. My wife has it figured out, she’s not into the early retirement thing as much, because she loves her job (so rare: what a boss!), but is roughly-mustachian levels of frugal. I make more money but constantly have job headaches. It occurred to me that there are alternatives to simply working to death until early retirement, maybe I would rather find a long-term balance. Heck, maybe that’s just code for I want to “retire” even earlier--because none of us really "retire" do we?
I work in IT—and I genuinely love IT, but it’s been truly difficult to find a job that has long term potential. I watch lectures for fun—I swear—and when I arrive at work, I’m actually excited to begin, but then the corporate awful nonsense drags me down. In my last job I wasn’t as fulfilled professionally, but it had its own upsides. I’ve compromised paycheck for what I hoped would be dream jobs, but it’s just not quite clicking.
 
My head is in a weird place tonight: I love my field, surely there’s a job out there for me, but I need a break that won’t completely derail the long-term plan. Instead of searching for my dream job or suffering through my real one, I want to study, learn, immerse and clean my damn house, solve my totally addressable health concerns and make my wife dinner…then I’ll go find my dream job.

So, here’s the question:
The last decade has provided us a reasonable #$%! You fund (I’m joking a bit, even the difficult people in my life are mostly pretty cool; thank heaven for that), my wife makes enough to roughly break even without me (and she’s cool about whatever I decide to do, she knows I’m not a deadbeat—oh man, a sensible, supportive spouse is huge for FIRE), so that means, if I could make even a modest amount of money, I could reasonably throw myself into study, and solving all the things.
I would like to make, say, $500-$1000/mo during my “vacation” to make sure we’re making modest progress while I’m focusing on other things. Any thoughts for part time gigs (or whatever)? It doesn’t have to be IT—the great thing about being in IT is you can Google anything, so if a regular guy that’s not afraid of learning can do it, sign me up. My health is good, but I have some back issues that probably preclude heavy labor, but not day-to-day physical stuff.

I love you guys, I think FIRE and FIRE-like ideas will help us make the world better. I know this question isn’t exactly FIRE, but I hope it’s close enough to fit.

Cheers,

- Ricky

</long winded>
 

Title: Re: FIRE Semi-Hiatus (fix the things!). New plan for me, looking for square1 ideas
Post by: civil4life on March 16, 2019, 01:20:37 PM
I just wanted to share a book I read that might be helpful.

Designing Your Life

https://smile.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=designing+your+life&qid=1552763943&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Title: Re: FIRE Semi-Hiatus (fix the things!). New plan for me, looking for square1 ideas
Post by: Mustcho on March 16, 2019, 02:46:22 PM
Hey Ricky!

I'm at a similar crossroads due to my work being hard on my mental and physical health. Maybe we can chat, PM me 🙂
Title: Re: FIRE Semi-Hiatus (fix the things!). New plan for me, looking for square1 ideas
Post by: rickyjo on March 19, 2019, 06:07:06 PM
Thanks for your replies my friends, and sorry for the delay.
I bought the book you suggested, @civil4life. I found a hardback free shipping copy for $3, here: https://www.ebay.com/p/Designing-Your-Life-How-to-Build-a-Well-Lived-Joyful-Life-by-Dave-Evans-and-Bill-Burnett-2016/219767898?iid=202615324966
Oh no, -5 Mustache points, I should have gone to the Library :)
@Mustcho : I PM'd you my email address. I confess that right now I'm not very responsive, but it would be fun to talk. Just know that it will be sporadic as work is nuts right now. I am not on this forum super often, so if you don't mind using email that would be better for me.
Title: Re: FIRE Semi-Hiatus (fix the things!). New plan for me, looking for square1 ideas
Post by: WalkaboutStache on March 19, 2019, 09:50:19 PM
I started a thread to talk about Design Your Life.  It is here:

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachian-book-club/designing-your-life/

There is also a thread about life design more generally here:

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/throw-down-the-gauntlet/design-your-life!/