Early Retirement Isn't for You

*from CubaGallery at Flickr Creative Commons

A lot of good bloggers are getting featured in mainstream news outlets these days. Which is good, I think. Even if the comments aren't positive, the narrative of someone like the Mad Fientist or the 1500 Days clan on a major outlet needs to be shared. Right?

I figure with how little the average worker even thinks about retirement, let alone actually saves for it, these outlier stories have value. They show another way to approach retirement, to approach work, money, life...all of it. 

The thing that drives me a little crazy is the ignorant vitriol in the comments section. Why bother to spew negativity if you're not going to spend even a little time reading up on these people you're criticizing?

House Lust

Back in June, we decided to take out a mortgage on our paid-off home. Why would we do such a thing? Opportunity costs. Paying off the low interest debt on our mortgage gave us a guaranteed return, though not as good of a return as we expect to get in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds. Any dollar you put towards one goal can't also be put towards something else, and all that. So we're investing the funds...mostly.

But that's just the sensible, personal finance reason that I'm obligated to state on the blog.

Another reason, the real reason, was that we wanted to buy another house. One in Tempe, close to our friends' new house, with visions of us walking with our future children over to our buddies' place for board games and beverages. If we couldn't use our wealth to buy the kind of life we imagined for us and our family, what's the point?

The Privileged

I'm a fan of Marketplace, the NPR program on finance and economics. But I especially love Marketplace Weekend, their Saturday show that takes a look at personal finance. I loved it back when Tess Vigeland hosted, and it seems even better now with Lizzie O'Leary.

This week's show had a segment on one of the uniquely modern career dilemmas: work-life balance. I'm sure we're all too familiar with this problem today's worker deals with daily, trying to find the happy medium between career, and everything else we label as life.

Writing it Down

Writing is hard right now, especially in the mornings when I remember stuff all over again. But I am trying to keep up with good habits. I figure you're always reinforcing some sort of habit, no matter what you're doing...or avoiding doing. It's all building a routine.

So I might as well reinforce something healthy, like brushing my teeth and showering, shopping for food and cooking our own meals, or taking walks with the family, instead of drinking too many beers, wasting time on the internet, watching too much television, or playing hours of Fifa on the PlayStation.

To Pepper

That's Pepper. Yesterday, I got up early to take her to the vet for dental work. Her breath had gotten bad lately and our regular teeth brushing didn't seem to be helping. On a prior visit, the clinic's doctor explained they might need to extract a tooth or two depending on the x-rays. We brought her in on Tuesday morning, and the vet would call us when it was time to pick her up. But when they called, they told us she passed away after they gave her anesthesia. The doctor gave her epinephrine and performed CPR for over half an hour, but none of that worked.

Are We on Track to Retire by Forty?

It's my birthday later this month, my thirty sixth. This month is my annual reminder to do a lot of things I usually don't care to think about, but still have to do. Note to self: remember to eat a bunch of cake while your friends and loved ones sing for you, pay for your life insurance policy, take a look at that beer belly and make some fitness goals, and check in on this plan to retire by the time you're forty.

Our early retirement goal is a scant four years from now, which on top of putting some real pressure on us to kick our savings into gear, is just plain old depressing since, you know, I'm going to be forty dang years old.

To the kids reading this, that whole YOLO thing has some legs. Get out there and live life while you're young and mistakes are encouraged.