Hello all,
This is my first post but I've been following the forum and blog for a little while now, and my wife and I have just put in motion a plan to drastically increase our savings that I though I would share here as it could apply to others.
To start with a little bit of context: we're in our early 30s, no kids yet and only one income. I work as a consultant/CPA and the pay is good but I spend most of my weeks travelling while my wife stays in our apartment in Los Angeles.
This creates two problems for us: we have expensive fixed costs from renting and living in LA, and we spend most our time apart.
The plan: my company offers a "road warrior" status, where the expectation is that you constantly travel, but in return are paid 30% on top of your ordinary salary. All housing / food / car costs are taken care of by the company.
So we've crunched the numbers and if my wife follows me everywhere I'm deployed, we can give up the apartment, the car, and most of our monthly expenses, thereby bringing our monthly spending budget from $5k to $1.5k, and getting the additional 30% in income.
With this, we would be looking at a savings rate of 86% (of take home pay), vs. $57% today!
Combined with our current $250k in assets, we can hit our FIRE target (30 times annual spending) in 6 years only!
The obvious downside is that its much harder building your social network when you only spend a couple of months at each location .. but we're hoping that the prospect of financial independence in our 30s is worth that much.
So if you job gives you that opportunity you should go for it! If not and you're a CPA, send me a private message because I know we're always recruiting!
If anyone has suggestions on how to make the nomadic lifestyle work best, I would love to hear them.
Cheers,
Poiss