Background
Each month I will post an update on my finances to both give you, the reader, some insight into my situation and to give me markers of my progress on my financial journey. My updates include both spending and net worth.
- Spending is divided into joint and individual spending. My husband gets $600 a month and I get $450 a month for our own individual spending as an “allowance.”
- I don’t include charitable contributions in our numbers below, but we allocate 10% of our post-tax income to this each year.
- Our net worth goal tracked using undisclosed units of money. Our goal is to hit “Financial Equilibrium”, based on Thomas J. Anderson’s book The Value of Debt in Building Wealth. This is fairly close to our FIRE number.
The Charts
The Numbers
Monthly Update
August was such a good month. I got back into exercising and cooking and now my shorts fit again. I got to spend a week with some friends (including their kids and dogs) for a group trip up north. I realized what it is that I am interested in right now and was able to give myself the leeway to accept that things I previously found intellectually stimulating are no longer of interest to me and that’s okay. Also, because of all the money floating around, our net worth managed to go up (in nominal terms at least). Seriously, not working is great.
On the other hand, I’m literally a day into my new job and I’m realizing that I don’t want to work. The job itself seems fine, the people seem fine, etc. etc. It’s just… I’ve been through all this before. I’m bored of it. The only thing for me here is a paycheck. And maybe that’s a healthier space to be in than where I have been in the past, doing 60-80 hour weeks consistently so I could prove myself or something. Right now, I have no shame in saying that I’m in it for the money. Once I hit my one-year cliff, if I’m above my FI threshold (and judging from how things are going, that’s a very distinct possibility), I’m out and done with full-time W2 work forever. Life’s too short and there’s so much living for me to do.
How was your August?
Yet Another PF Blog 
My August was not good but it’s really nice to see that yours was! I’m glad for you.
I have had this realization in the past several months that I don’t want to work anymore, this has all just become a paycheck to me, but we are years out still so I can’t check out yet! I kind of wish I hadn’t realized it yet because it makes me more impatient but then, being emotionally detached is actually good for me in the long run so I suppose it all works out.
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I haven’t been keeping up with my blogroll as much lately but just checked yours. I’m so sorry for everything you’re going through right now. *internet hugs*
In terms of work, I feel like I’m finally having the pandemic-fueled revelation the media keeps talking about with people quitting their jobs: life really is too short to care about all these things that, fundamentally, do not matter.
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It’s an epidemic of not wanting to work these days.
At least my husband likes his job.
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Ick, I’m sorry about your school/town/state. Hopefully you & your family get through unscathed.
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Thanks!
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It sounds like a great month, and congratulations on being so close to your FIRE number!
The pandemic has definitely also changed my feelings about work in the long term. I still like working, provided I can find a good situation or workplace (generally okay work-life balance/not too many billed hours or active work hours, but I don’t mind the occasional fire drill or bad week here and there if I have reasonable flexibility and control of my schedule at other times; no interest in managing other attorneys on large teams or in a law firm; colleagues who are reasonably pleasant to work with), but I become… increasingly more sure that I’m really not interested in attaining certain higher ranks in the profession. I guess I did always feel that way, but my certainty about it has increased a lot in the last 18 months.
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I feel like for me, and this is super contextual to the privileged position I’m in as a high paid knowledge worker, in a lot of ways I feel like the pandemic rewired my relationship with the idea of work that I had been holding onto since 2008. Like the “I need this or else I won’t have a job and I will have no money and my life will be terrible” thoughts have largely been replaced by “nobody can guarantee you tomorrow, and by the way a lot of people are suffering and you’re doing what exactly 10 hours a day?” I’m thinking about opportunity cost a lot more in terms of my time on earth rather than money.
And a lot of it is probably because our financial situation is very good at the moment and we’re in a place of more-than-comfortable. But I definitely think the pandemic is going to be one of those major turning point moments in my life.
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