Author Topic: Losing Steam  (Read 4409 times)

BeanCounter

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Losing Steam
« on: February 10, 2017, 09:58:32 AM »
I was just posting in the "race from $500k to $1M" thread and it made me stop and think- I feel like as we get closer and closer to our FIRE number, it seems like it's getting harder to save. The 'stache has more steam than it's ever had and it gives me the desire to loosen the purse strings. I feel like saving on the small things just doesn't have the impact anymore. There isn't anything I can do to move the timeline up much.
 For DH it's even harder. He keeps telling me "don't worry about it we're loaded". So has anyone else had this experience? And what do you do to keep up your momentum?

joonifloofeefloo

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Re: Losing Steam
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2017, 10:02:21 AM »
Hey BeanCounter :)

I lost steam a while ago. Once I'd finished optimizing as much as I could without causing myself ridiculous suffering, I just...stopped. The purse strings are definitely loosened, lol. I feel like I have "enough." I'm happier to have that experience and feeling than to have momentum, so I leave it at that.

tarheeldan

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Re: Losing Steam
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2017, 10:02:41 AM »
Every piece of lifestyle inflation has a corresponding impact on your FIRE number in order to keep that up

Vindicated

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Re: Losing Steam
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2017, 10:17:46 AM »
Every piece of lifestyle inflation has a corresponding impact on your FIRE number in order to keep that up

To add to Dan's statement, you can add something like this to your excel spreadsheet.

=(Investment Total/25)/(Monthly Expense*12/365)

This will tell you how many days of a year you can pay using the 4% withdraw rule.  (XX out of 365, with the goal of 365/365)

What I like about it is that it shows how your currently monthly expense, if you continue at that rate, can lower the number of days you can afford to be retired, based on your most recent month's expenses.

pachnik

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Re: Losing Steam
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2017, 10:21:07 AM »
I lost steam pretty quickly actually.  At first, there was lots of stuff to optimize - eating out, phone bill, gym.   And I went back to some things like the gym because I do go twice a week.  I missed going to it especially in the winter months.   

I keep putting one-third of my pay into long-term investments - mainly my RRSP.  However, at this point, the returns are usually higher than the amount I contribute. 

LZZ

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Re: Losing Steam
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2017, 10:55:48 AM »
I have ebbs and flows.  November and December I just didn't give a f*k on what I spent money on and was saving 40% instead of the normal 50%.  This month I'm doing a "no frivolous spend" month to make up for that.  Sometimes I don't realize I'm being spendy until I get the credit card bills after ... 

BeanCounter

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Re: Losing Steam
« Reply #6 on: February 10, 2017, 11:05:22 AM »
well, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I guess I'm always struggling with the balance of pursuing FIRE and YOLO.
I was playing with my spreadsheet again and it seems that we're currently saving $70k per year and approximately 5 years from FIRE if the market yields about 6% of returns. But if we worked hard we could save $80k per year. Increasing our spend by $10k only increases our time working by 3 years. Saving less for the next eight years gives us an extra $10k to play with each year for eight years plus every year after that in FIRE forever.

nobody123

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Re: Losing Steam
« Reply #7 on: February 10, 2017, 12:17:27 PM »
My wife and I generally go back and forth a bit.  Sometimes we're really excited about finding a new way to save money, sometimes we get discouraged by the fact that we don't spend on as many "wants" as we'd necessarily like to.  I actually like my job so I've decided to stick around until my kids are out of college so I can pay for it, so not having a goal to RE super early (it will be my late 50s) also takes some of the fun out of it.

At this point we have a decent nut saved up, and even if I didn't save another penny, compounding should allow us to have a very comfortable retirement when the time comes.  I show a ~ 90% success in cfiresim not including my pension or Social Security, and if I include those I'm leaving my kids multiple millions of dollars when I croak.  So for now, I just try not to screw things up, set a good example for my kids, and wait for time to pass.