Bold Life Changes

Derek and I have big goals. When I started publishing our net worth, we were -$4328. It’s hard to get to early financial independence saddled by a big debt burden and low net worth. We’re now up to over $80k! But, we still feel (and are) so far from the type of life we want to be living. Big goals sometimes require bold life changes.

There’s two ways to big wealth. Earn more. Save more.

My Rationalization Against Focusing on Earning More

Earning potential is limitless. But, I feel like I’m close to a threshold right now that it will be very difficult for me to get over. I make just over $100,000. I don’t know how to convince my current employer to pay me significantly more in the short term. I know I’m lacking in some of the skills needed to convince a new employer to pay me significantly more. I could work on honing these skills, but that’s a lot of effort. I could create my own business to make more, but I know it takes time and energy that I don’t have. I’m trying to find a business model with this blog. That’s probably a really bad business move compared to other business moves I could try. But, I need to dedicate a certain amount of time to success before admitting defeat and changing my game plan. If finding a lucrative business was so easy, we’d all be happy millionaires.

So, based on these assumptions and thoughts, I’ve shifted attention right now to “saving more.”

Focusing on Saving More Sometimes Makes Good Sense

We have a pretty rad savings rate compared to pretend average American saver couple over there. Compared to the FI community, our roughly 25% rate is peanuts. If I saved 50+% of my income, we’d be financially independent wicked fast.

The biggest obstacle to us saving more is the high cost of living where we are. My well paying job is here, so we’re not positioned to say, move to Detroit where living is cheap. Instead, we’re looking to dramatically reduce our housing costs locally.

We’re House Hunting!

I spent a lot of time thinking about what we want out of a place we plan to live. Like, more than a year thinking and researching. Within our metro area, there’s one place that fits our criteria and also fits our budget. Providence. And so, we’re finally now exploring increasing our commute in order to get ahead.

The plan is to buy a three or four family house that we live in and rent out the other units. This “house hacking” if we buy the right place, will allow us to reduce our out of pocket housing and transit costs to be less than what we currently pay now. We’ll have tenants helping pay down our mortgage, and we’ll live for less than $2050/month. Major win. Crap commute.

I’m Ignoring Mr. Money Mustache’s Advice to take Mr. Money Mustache’s Other Advice

I’m an avid fan of MMM. He’s all about living closer to where you work because often people don’t factor in the total cost of commute + life when calculating costs and they mistakenly end up spending more for less (The True Cost of Commuting). I get that. But, I’m going to move further from my day job because it’s the only path I see to eventually having a day job (or no job) that I can rock out from my home.