We're getting through the week!

Any work-related matters you'd like to get feed back on or talk about?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!

Hi everyone! Longtime lurker here.

My boyfriend and I have been talking about having him move in with me later this year. I own my 1bd 1ba condo and pay about $3k in housing expenses monthly.

Those of you whose partner moved in with them, how are you splitting expenses? I've long thought about splitting proportionally to income, but I'm curious to hear others' experiences.

I have some kind of half baked idea of having him pay about $1k in "rent" (which is probably a little below market rate for half of the rent for a 1bd), which we'd put into a joint account for whatever.

This is the man I intend on marrying and I'm totally fine with paying more. Just....no real idea how to even broach this topic! I've never lived with a partner before, let alone had one move into the home I own.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: wow, I took a nap and woke up to a lot of great responses! Thanks everyone. Definitely the wakeup call I need here.

I think I swung way too hard towards generosity; my last relationship broke down in no small part because my ex was really stingy about how we would split expenses (we hadn't even moved in together!).

Current bf has stated multiple times that he just wants to split housing expenses right down the middle, and I've been a little unsure due to the fact that I'm gaining equity and he isn't. But I'd never really thought about it in terms of the risk I assume as a homeowner, either, so I really appreciate that insight from y'all.

I think I'm leaning towards a proportional rent split - he's wrapping up school right now, so I'm not sure what his income will look like yet, but based on his previous internship offers and income before school, it's likely to be similar to my income.

I just got an email from wealth front on their new offering. I need to do more research, but I am intrigued as I don’t have much in terms of bonds. Wanted to ask yall if you have thoughts? Or if you see any red flags.

https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/23265024478484-Automated-Bond-Ladders

I have a pretty decent job right now making around 3.5k a month after taxes and deductions. My expenses come around to about 1,500 a month so I have a good but amount to save. My problem is I have consumer debt, around 7k in credit card debt. Also about 21k in student loan debt. 10k from undergrad and right now about 11k from my MBA program which I’m not finished with yet. I wanna retire early but I’m not sure if furthering my education with an MBA in Accounting is dumb because of the cost. I wanted to break into a field with stability and my undergrad degree in Kinesiology was definitely a stupid option to pursue, but am I just digging myself into a deeper hole with school debt? I’m hoping this MBA in Accounting will pay off and I can get a pretty good role using some of the experience in banking/finance that I already have, and then throw everything into retirement accounts. I feel very measly compared to some people this sub my age in no debt with 100k+ net worth.

Hello!

Any recent triumphs you're proud of?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!

Hey! Just found this group and thought it could be helpful to reach out for advice. I follow a FIRE-ish lifestyle, I save about 40-50% of my income. But I continuously have issues with shopping. I’ll overspend and then I’ll go on really strict saving periods to pay everything off and tell myself never again… yet the cycle starts again. I’m still meeting my savings goals but it’s really tiring to constantly be ultra frugal to pay off my overspending. Any advice is helpful ❤️

I am a working mom (3yo & 7yo) and I live completely debt free, I have been working towards fire and predominantly funding my retirement accounts which has been my main focus but now I’m realizing I haven’t put that much into a taxable brokerage, and so I’ve recently been working on that. However when I was talking with someone in finance they asked me about my living will/trust and well I don’t have one. I guess I hadn’t worried too much about it given that my retirement accounts have beneficiaries and thus they will go there. But now that this missing component has been pointed out to me I can’t stop thinking about it. Which should I go with? And do you think a company like legal zoom is good? I’m realizing these can become quite expensive.

I feel like most social gatherings are cool with me drinking water, playing games, and hanging out.

The only issue has been when going on dates. It still seems like food & drink are a big factor to the dating culture (I have been a teetotaler for 11 years).

Especially if their love language is quality time and quality time involves going out to eat.

Do I try to get more activity based dates and home cooked meals instead?

Hello, happy Monday :) How is the start of your week going?

What is keeping you motivated currently?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!

What post was the most helpful to you?

What post did you wish you saw earlier to help you with FIRE?

It can be from different subreddits or any resource/website but what was the most helpful or impacted your journey to FIRE the most?

Which posts would you recommend someone completely new to FIRE to read?

If you had a PPOR paid off, 300k in super at mid 40’s and want to shift down work gears in a couple of years what would you do with an investment property with the following situation:

• Value $1.2m
• Mortgage $880k but have $700k in offset
• Rental income about $800/week after all expenses

Tax bracket - 45%

Ie keep it as an income stream, sell it (CGT of approx $150k) and invest .. or something else?

My situation is not terrible, but also not very happy, and I could use some tips for how to make it less depressing while I'm sticking it out.

My job has some great aspects, but also some really bad aspects (mostly related to upper management) Micromanagement and bad decisions imposed from people without expertise in my area are regular occurences.

I care about my work. I want to do it well, and it's frustrating when I feel the quality of my projects are undermined.

However:

• The jobs market is bad.

• As mentioned, there are good things: work life balance, interesting projects, some good colleagues.

• And the big one: if I can stick it out in this role, or one with similar/better pay, for four years, it will be a big step towards financial independence. I'll be able to take a massive chunk out of the mortgage, while also putting plenty into my pension. If I can get the beginnings of a good pension pot, and the mortgage either cleared or massively reduced, I'll have options (retrain/career shift, go back freelance, try out some consultancy ideas)

So: I at least need to stay until I find something else (which could take a while), and I want to stick it out if it makes sense to do so.

Any suggestions for making it feel less bad? Or how to care a bit less, without actually stopping caring?

I'm trying gratitude practices, getting out for lunchtime walks, calming mantras etc.

Hope your weekend is going well!

Any fun plans?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!

So the recruiter originally told me I should be expecting something close to the maximum of their pay band but the actual offer came back lower than what I was expecting. They have a maximum within the pay band that they're willing to offer but even that is 8-9% of a pay increase from what I'm making right now. They are currently discussing a bonus that could be offered in addition to this.

The job would require me to move to a big city with more than a 50% increase in cost-of-living. There's a lot of good benefits between relocation paid for, extra PTO, company ownership, telework capabilities, nice office, etc.

The main reason that attracted me to apply was that I would be doing what I've been wanting to do for a while now and I feel like I've capped out career aspiration wise at my current job. I was really hoping to accept an offer and move out for the first time. I wish I had other job offers to compare this too, but this whole thing happened really fast so I've unfortunately had all my eggs in one basket. I'm afraid of letting people down when I hyped up this opportunity so much.

I'm not sure there's anything else for me to say when they come back to me with their next offer amount. One thought I had was to ask what is preventing me from getting the maximum of pay band (cause I could switch to the next pay band pretty soon it seems) but I wonder if that's rude to ask. Another is to ask what annual bonuses look like along with the bonus that comes with getting professional certifications.

Thoughts?

I (31F) currently make $150k at a big company in my industry. It's a hybrid role where I go into the office 5-8 days a month. I generally have no complaints from a day-to-day perspective. While rumors of layoffs abound internally and throughout the industry, I don't have any reason to believe I will be impacted. That said, new hiring has frozen, and I don't anticipate that I will have an opportunity to be promoted internally any time soon despite being identified as ready for the next step.

I'm in final rounds of interviews with a small company in the same industry. It's a fully remote role with a title promotion where I could be making $200-$225k. If I leave my current role in the next 2 months, I'd be losing $50k between bonus and stock vesting. The company is aware of this, so I like to think a potential offer would be on the higher end.

That said, multiple interviewers have been very transparent about the place being chaotic and how people there can be overly direct (which I interpret to mean rude). There's also unlimited PTO, which makes me nervous since I feel like I'd be less inclined to take it (nor would any be paid out if I left, as is required in my state). It seems comparable to my current job in every other way in terms of total comp, health insurance, etc.

I think this is something I could manage, but it's hard to tell if I have FIRE blinders on. If it's relevant, husband and I are a third of the way to our FIRE goal. Any thoughts on if this would be worth the leap?

Update: They decided that they needed me to do a case study presentation after several interviews, and since I was having cold feet anyway, I decided to pull out. Thanks for the advice!

Happy Friday!

What sorts of things are you looking forward to in the near or far future?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!

I am currently on a 1 month self imposed break from work for the first time in my life after reaching a breaking point. I'll spare you the sob story but my 20s were rough. I worked 4-5 jobs while going to school to get a Master's and gain my freedom. Now in my 30s, I have very little but I'm free and paid off the rest of my ex's debt with my NP salary. Working in healthcare has progressively worsened my outlook on life and I can't imagine going back to work. I was going to suck it up for another 20-25 years and FIRE but I don't think I can do that in this field. If minimum wage jobs were enough to pay the bills I'd do it. Is work normally this painful and hard or am I doing something wrong? I genuinely don't know if being an adult is simply this hard, or if I'm bad at my job, or in the wrong career. Please help.

Just getting into fire now and have a long way to go in terms of understanding but hoping to get some ideas with one area in particular.

I am mid 40s and live in a VHCOL area. My PPOR will be paid off in a few years as will an IP. By the time I retire I’ll have enough in investments and retirement fund to live okay… but given I’m in a VHCOL my PPOR will still be over 50% of my NW. We have no kids so no driving need to leave an inheritance.

As my partner and I get older we may need care. We may also want to do some things that don’t exactly fit into what our investments can provide for (eg travel etc)

What are the ways in old age to utilise the NW locked in a PPOR whilst still living in it, and what other ideas should I be considering?

My monthly expenses are around 4.7k including 1700 for rent per month, bringing my annual spending to 56.4k.

I have 470k invested across a mix of retirement accounts (158k), liquid index funds (173k), company stock (119k), and other accounts like HSA (18.8k).

I also net 3k each month from a rental property where I get 7825 per month in rent, 3500 of which goes to mortgage and 1k of which goes to property taxes. It's a low maintenance building that has averaged maybe 1-2k in maintenance since I've owned it for the last 3 years, with the exception of an anticipated roof replacement.

Based on this my math --(expenses-rental income)*12*25 -- is showing that I need 462k invested to maintain my current lifestyle. Does that seem correct to folks? Correction: Should be 510k at 4% SWR.

I have 0 kids at the moment which might change in the next few years so that seems like the major risk factor. Would love to get other folks' eyes on this to vet any assumptions. Thank you!

Hello!

How is your day going? What are you thankful for today/generally?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!

Hi all,

I’ve been meaning to get a good chunk of my savings into a HYSA for a while and had narrowed it down to Wealthfront or Marcus. Then I started seeing more people talking about money market funds and it sounds like they have some advantages over a HYSA but I’m much less familiar with them. An HYSA seems very straightforward and simple to start and use. Would a money market fund be more complicated? Are there tons of options to decide from? Trying not to get stuck in analysis paralysis but want to make a good informed decision. Any help appreciated!

Leave it to yahoo to come out with an article about not bothering with FIRE 🙄

How do y’all navigate naysayers? I usually don’t mention FIRE goals at all in conversation but it does occasionally come up when discussing retirement and the look of disbelief / frustrating comments can be wild.

We're getting through the week!

Any work-related matters you'd like to get feed back on or talk about?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!

Hello!

What are your goals for this month?

How did your goals for last month turn out?

I have a great job. I'm fully remote and earn just over $200k base salary. More days than not, it takes me maybe 3 hours total to get my day's work done. Of course there are some days that I'm busy all day but that's relatively infrequent. For the remaining 5 hours of my work day I'm playing games on my phone, watching a show/movie, reading a book, doing things around the house (or out of the house) all with my laptop/phone nearby incase I do need to take action.

Rather than do all that... I'd like to find something lucrative to do in those 5 hours. I can't commit to being fully r/overemployed because I feel like that is a bit too risky given I do have a great job. I don't have any skills/hobbies/interests that can be monetized. Looking for something that can be done from home and on my own time maybe at like $20/hr? I thought about data transcription/entry but don't know any decent place to start with that. Any other ideas?

For starters, I know logically I do not have it that bad. I’m in my early 30s, married, no kids yet, and we both make decent money. But we also live in a VHCOL area, my job sucks (in large part because my manager is a micromanager, but also I’ve been wanting to change careers for a while), and it just feels like everyone else is doing so much better. We recently realized we can’t buy a house bc we just don’t have enough saved that’s not in retirement, but I also don’t want to give up on retiring early. This also makes me not want to change careers because I’ll likely have to take a pay cut. Also I do hope to have kids in the next 1-2 years before I feel like my body is too old to do it, which will be another huge financial change as well. I just feel lost and discouraged. And even though I have enough money to live my life, I feel anxious about money and anxious about how we can achieve goals like buying a house, being happy/successful in my career, having kids, and retiring — maybe not even that early anymore. Tired of thinking about it, tired of being an adult.

Any thoughts for pick-me-ups and how to get out of this funk?

Edit: for more specific context, our net worth is about $550k combined which I know is much better than some, but also a lot worse than many of the posts I read in these communities with people achieving $1M+ by our age, by themselves. I did not spend my 20s partying or taking expensive vacations either and have always lived frugally, but I did go to grad school and only made $60k my first two years of my career. Now my husband and I make triple that (combined) but it feels like all the people around us started making 6 figures in their early to mid 20s and we’re late to the game and will continue to be behind.

I've started gearing up my knowledge wrt Executive Presence since I started noticing the term show up in job listings at my level.

I started with Executive Presence: The Art of Commanding Respect Like a CEO by Harrison Monarth which is.. entry level, imo. He discusses things like the importance of emotional regulation and of making good eye contact. If you were just coming into middle management, this is a book I'd recommend.

But if you're a mid-career woman? THIS BOOK is where it's fucking at. Hewlett is UNFLINCHING when it comes to dealing with the reality of being a woman in power.

She tackles dress, makeup, speaking too little or too much. She focuses some on other minorities (racial minorities primarily) but a lot of the examples are specific to women.

No shade to Monarth-- I get that he really can't speak to these issues, being himself an attractive, (presumably tall) white male. But Hewlett has been in it and she opens the book with a harrowing account of being interviewed for admittance to Cambridge in the 70s wearing a foxfur stole because her working class mother was convinced she knew how "the other half" dressed because she had read Nancy Mitford novels.

You guys, this book is so fucking good. And she has the data to back it up. And the strategies to combat it.

If you're working on moving up, this is worth a read.

Hello!

Any recent triumphs you're proud of?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!

Why do SO MANY FI guys brag about their genius hack of having a wife who cooks for them? Extra annoying when they’re unironically congratulating each other. I’m like yeah, dudes, other people’s free labor does put money in your pocket. Not something to brag about though, is it?

But she enjoys it! Maybe you, FIREyFemme, enjoy it! And maybe it’s cultural conditioning that says wives don’t get to RE the same way their husbands do.

Hello, happy Monday :) How is the start of your week going?

What is keeping you motivated currently?

Feel free to discuss other matters in this thread!