Hi There MMM world!
My wife and I have just begun the journey to Financial Independence. After ingesting huge numbers of blog posts here and from the Mad Fientist, I wanted to reach out, and that I ... mustache some questions ;) (Please don't ban me for bad puns!)
My wife is very frugal, and a great saver. Before we got married in April, she had saved up over $46000 in her 5 years working as a teacher. I just sold my first live-in flip in August, and walked away with $60000. We have some $10000 cash in other accounts, and each began contributing $200 each month to a Roth IRA last year. In addition, she has about $20000 in a 403(b) through her employer.
While we are both frugal, we each got late starts in our careers. I volunteered from 18-27 and had no savings to speak of when I finally stopped and moved back in with my parents. I then worked in customer service for 5 years working up to $50000 yearly salary. I thoroughly hated this work, so as my wedding approached I told my company that I needed a change, and that that change would need to grant the freedom for me to travel with my new wife all summer. Rather than pointing out the door to me, they created a part-time work from home role as a junior developer doing data work for customers.
So, here we are. We are worth just over $100k (woohoo!) We have no debt (Amazing!), and we hope to reach FI so that we can transition back into meaningful international development work by the time we are 40. My wife earns just about $50000 yearly and I am at $26/hr 20 hrs/week. We are striving to save her whole income and to live on my current part-time earnings and any other side-hustles I can find, saving everything else. Our plan currently is to begin by purchasing some cash-flowing properties in the well-performing market we live in as I now have some experience buying, selling, and refurbing real estate. Right now, my question is who out there that works as a software developer might have some advice to improve my programming chops and land something 6 figures or close to it.
Since my title already includes "developer", it seems silly not to leverage that into higher pay, either with my current employer or someone else.
I look forward to getting to know some of you out there in the coming years, and wish you all the best of luck in your journey to FI.
Michael
