Engineers obviously make more so they can retire a little bit faster, but for me that's obviously a trade-off that I'm willing to take because I'm not an engineer. I do design, but for me it was figuring out how I can get into tech to make that tech money.
The shockingly simple math of early retirement software#
I cannot be a software engineer, like I just cannot. Money Mustache and even Kristy Shen from Quit Like A Millionaire were all software engineers. So many of these people who are in the FIRE community like the Mad FIentist and Mr. I increased my income by moving from advertising into tech specifically. I think that's a key factor towards starting your FIRE journey, which is how can I increase my income? It's not by any means that I'm making a little bit of money, I'm making a lot of money relative to the average person. I'm happy in this lifestyle while I work towards my goal for FIRE. It is a job that I'm happy at and that I am living comfortably at. Actually in the current job that I am in, it's not the highest paying job that I could have gotten. I think it's important to find that medium where you're not hating your life. There is a fine line between going for the highest paying job and also finding happiness at your job. You quickly realize, yes, you can nickel and dime, you can cut back your spending, but also a lot of it is how can I increase my income? If you have to move and adjust it, it'll change and be fluid with you. But that being said, I think it's so important to even get started on your FIRE journey. It's like well, I could invest it and then that dollar could become fifty dollars in a couple years. That is how I know I am financially literate because it's such a struggle for me to spend it. It's harder for me to spend money than it is to save and invest it. I would beat myself up for the longest time, but I'm still a work in progress. I think when you first find FIRE it is this notion of where can I nickel and dime everything? So I've had to shift out of that mindset. I know some of the flack that financial independence movement gets is often that people live in the spreadsheet. Until September of 2019 I was not tracking my expenses at all. Between all three of them they blew open my mind about tax-advantaged savings accounts, what an HSA was, a 401k, and how I should be maximizing all those to take advantage of retiring early. Money Mustache blog, and I'll link all of these links below, but after that I binged the Mad FIentist podcast, and then I proceeded to watch all of Our Rich Journeys YouTube videos. And I thought, “You know what, okay, this is super radical, but if I miss my goal at least I would still be on the path towards becoming financially independent and not having to work for money.” I could do what I've always wanted to do, which is to be a stay-at-home mom and take care of my kids and not have to worry that I need to be working and I can't be there with them. So I crunched the numbers and for me it would take me 10 years to retire so I would be 37. I'm a graphic designer and so many of them are engineers and I knew that if they could do it, I could still achieve those results maybe on a different timeline. And after following him, I thought, “You know what, they all did it, I can do it too.” He was a software engineer and crunched the numbers and did all the math and looked at historical studies. How? What? Why? How is this even possible? I was hooked.
I read that and literally my mind was blown.
And he has this article on The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Retiring Early.
Money Mustache blog-basically the bible of FIRE.
Two years later I was at work and a friend sent me an article to the Mr. I was making $60,000 and so that was enough for me to save enough money and be like, “What should I do? Should I invest it? Should I save it? What do I do? How do I make this money grow for me?” But I had no idea what financial independence or what that concept was. My journey into personal finance actually started way back-I say way back 😂-back in 2017, when I was first making my own money and I had a decent salary. Welcome to Millennial Money Honey where we talk all things money! Today I wanted to share actually a super intimate look at my own journey into FI/RE, Financial Independence Retire Early and how I got the idea that I even wanted to retire, so let's talk!
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