Exactly 3 years left!

The FireFamily has a lofty goal of being fully financially independent by April 2024. Since it is the middle of April 2021 as I write this that means we have 36 months remaining to get our shit together and meet the goals. This seems like a reasonable time to reassess the situation, see if anything has changed, if we are still on track and go from there.

Goal	Current Status	To do in next 36 months
Own 5 income producing units	2 current, 1 under contract – Ahead of goal	Purchase at least 2 more rental properties
$2,000,000 NW by April 2024	$1,268,800	Increase NW by $19,500 per month – a LOFTY goal
Max 457/401k	On track	Continue – Consider changing this goal to open up after tax cash for real estate?
Max 529 each year ($15,000/yr)	2021 – DONE	3 years to go
Pay off business loan	automatic payments/current	on track

When I look at my goals above I feel like perhaps the goals are too conservative and we could achieve quite a bit more in the next 36 months.

I expect we will have the rental property goal met much sooner than 2024 so I have adjusted that goal to be completed by June 2022. Once that goal is met then it will be logical to increase this goal to have more cash flow in retirement/travel.

$2mil NW is the only goal on here that feels like I will really have to work to achieve it. Since the timeline is so short at 36 months remaining I am at the mercy of the market to achieve this goal. I think shifting even harder into real estate will help us meet this goal independent of the stock market.

Maxing the pre-tax accounts is pretty easy as long as I keep my full time job. Everything happens automatically so that goal is not nearly as rewarding to achieve.

Maxing the 529 does take intentional action, but is absolutely not a problem. If the contributions were not maxed I might have considered dropping $50k or more into the 529 this year and never worrying about college savings again, but that’s not how the IRS works.

Paying off the business loan is another one of those goals that each month doesn’t feel super rewarding. Since the check is cut automatically from the business account I just have to count down the months until that burden is gone.

1,095 days remaining until I can quit my full time job. FireDad will be 39 and FireMom will be 34 with 100% freedom to take back our days. The FIRE community is one of the most important things I’ve ever studied in my life and I’m grateful every day for the skills I have learned and honed from this community.

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Setting yourself up for post FI/RE success – Setting Goals

If you are a consumer of Financial Independence content on a regular basis then you can’t ignore that there has been a MASSIVE uptick in the people who have really struggled 2-5 years into their retirement. 

It makes sense though, depending on how you measure the growth of this movement, there is no denying that it has grown to a scale no one imagined. It’s also been around long enough that there is a sizable population that has been early retired for some large chunks of their lives. Nearly all of the earliest FI bloggers have been retired for years and many of them decades. Some of them are starting to admit online that they got slapped in the face that “money doesn’t buy happiness” still applies if you live frugally. People need a purpose.

I follow plenty of the bloggers who have been varying levels of happy and content with their choices, but the takeaway that I heard “was that burning your life energy away to reach that FIRE finish line at all costs is a miserable decision and might even be worse than the “normal” folk who work until 63”. I also took away that nearly everyone who seemed happiest among the FIRE Giants out there is that they all had some form of meaningful pastime that they pursued very purposefully. 

The fear of the post FI regret was all too real for me and in searching for guidance on that issue I found the Die With Zero book I wrote about. Elements of that book are exactly what I needed to guide my decisions with less than 5 years to go until our FIRE date. 

Invest in hobbies and interests I’ve always been interested in. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what would produce the most happiness in our family compared to actual dollar costs. Here is the current list to achieve:

1. Spend as many clear nights as possible looking at the stars, when covid ends, reach out to astronomy groups, clubs and observatory in walking distance, consider volunteering there. I’ve spent too many years wanting to study astronomy and it’s so silly I never have. That stops; it’s time to live more intentionally.
2. Invest in my health to ensure I never am the slow leg when taking our family on adventures.
3. Show our children as much of the US as possible, every national park at the very least, and hopefully for months or years at a time. Anything is on the table to achieve this. 
4. Increase our knowledge of homesteading, including doubling our growing capacity in the next two seasons.

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Some of these are personal and others are shared goals of our entire family. I expect that when we reach FI/RE and are truly comfortable while being able to achieve these goals that we will be giving our children a better childhood than anyone I’ve ever met experienced. 

In the end, all of these goals point back to the only goal that really matters. To make sure we give our children the best life we possibly can.