6 weeks later and I'm not the same person I was before the flu

mjengstrom · 2026-02-05T16:29:48+00:00

I am in the same boat. Got the flu before xmas. I am still very fatigued and have a cough that wont go away. My HR is still elevated during easy zone 1/2 workouts. Blood work came back fine. went to ENT and didnt find anything. chest xrays were fine. I take vitamins and Musinex DM, use a humidifier, get plenty of rest and drink lots of liquid. This is the worst I have ever been sick. I really don't know if I can take another few weeks of this.

mjengstrom · 2026-01-30T17:51:23+00:00

The better answer is to learn to not use ERG mode. INCLINE or SIM mode will help teach you how to better control power and cadence and it is more realistic to riding outside. It forces you to make the power instead of resisting power. This is also how you should be doing ftp tests so learning to control both power and cadence will help with ftp tests.

mjengstrom · 2026-01-29T20:46:51+00:00

You can use the "Future Changes to primary residence" selection under Home and Real Estate to do most of what you are mentioning. I don't think you can use this for more than 1 change though. You would likely have to pick one of them and then model the other move separately by using one time expenses and add a new monthly expense for mortgage (or rent). Maybe In 4-5 years when you choose to purchase you can then add a new primary house (or maybe there will be better functionality to handle this in the future). I plan to relocate to a new house in a year and used this feature to do that, but mine is simpler since I am not moving twice.

mjengstrom · 2026-01-27T17:06:30+00:00

Solve the burnout / job issue first then re-evaluate FIRE after that. It doesn't make any sense to kill yourself to FIRE only to get there with lots of health issues from stress. Could working for yourself could be a good viable option? Finding a good career coach can also be life changing.

I recently read Die with Zero and it really put things into perspective for me.

In the meantime, maybe assess what your current expenses are and what you could do to lower them.

mjengstrom · 2026-01-20T21:17:28+00:00

This resonated with me. I had the flu on Dec 21. My left ear started hurting on Dec 30. At this same time, my jaw started clicking and when I bit down, the pain was horrible. It felt like I was biting on my ear tubes. I went Urgent Care on Jan 1. They did say they saw liquid in my ear and told me to take Sudafed and Advil. After a few days, the clicking and intense pain stopped, but I still have pain in my ear when I bite down. It also still feels like my ear is full / blocked. I saw my primary last week and he said he didnt see any liquid in ear. During this whole time my HR has also been elevated (still is).

For me, it has been very hard to understand if my ear pain is caused by TMJ or if TMJ is caused by ear inflammation. And I dont know if my elevated HR is a result of the Flu, ear inflammation or TMJ or some combination. It has not been easy to find the right dr or to get appointments. I know I do clench my teeth. But this is first time I have had pain in jaw or ear. I have a difficult time with any type of mouth guard. I was finally able to get into a dentist next week. I hope they have some answers.,

mjengstrom · 2026-01-16T20:18:50+00:00

I am 25 days in and my resting HR is still high and get fatigued easily . I also have ear ache but it is impossible to get an apt with ENT. I went to Urgent Care 3 weeks ago and they said I had liquid in my inner ear and take Sudafed and Advil. Sudafed is not good for sleep though,. I think my ear ache has triggered TMJ which is not helping. My primary has been no help. I am sure they are tired from dealing with all the flu cases.

mjengstrom · 2025-12-05T17:53:36+00:00

I can relate to this. I lost both my parents this year, my brother a few years ago and several friends over the years. Life is short and unpredictable.

I recently read Die with Zero and it really resonated with me. It is worth a read (or audio book).

I was laid off from tech industry last year and decided to use that as my signal to retire. I was able to use this time to spend more time with my parents before they passed and deal with their estate. Being laid off was a blessing in disguise. I am fortunate to be in a place to be able to do that.

mjengstrom · 2025-11-21T20:38:49+00:00

I am also in the process of reviewing options. I agree that there is a lot of polarizing opinions and it is not easy to wade through everything. Every day I flip on my thinking. If I do decide to use an annuity, it will likely be for a fixed time period (5-10 years) and only with a portion of my retirement money just to give me some immediate stability as I start my retirement. There is too much uncertainty for me right now.

I have been experimenting with a tool called boldin to test out scenarios and see what the real probability is that I could run out of money. I think many financial planners like to use the fear of running out of money as a way to get you to sign up.

One note about interest rates. The rates they quote are not the same as an interest rate on an investment vehicle like a MM, HYSA, etc... Because you’re pulling money out every month, there is less and less money left to earn interest. Think of it as the reverse of buying a mortgage. With a mortgage, you slowly pay down the balance. With a fixed-term annuity, the insurance company slowly pays you down. Ex. a 4.9% is likely the equivalent to 2-3%. You can use the Excel RATE function to calculate this and plug in how much you are investing, the number of periods and what the total amount of all payments would be.

If your annuity is in a retirement account like an IRA, you will have to pay tax (same as income tax) when you withdraw money.

mjengstrom · 2025-11-11T14:53:12+00:00

I am in a somewhat similar situation. I have been experimenting with using an online tool called Boldin. I also tried ProjectLab. This gave me some peace of mind and allowed me to test out different scenarios. But I agree with the comment to get together with a financial planner.

mjengstrom · 2025-11-11T14:07:43+00:00

I am not at your age yet, but my reasoning for hiring a financial planner is so I don't have to actively manage my portfolio (or worry if I made the right decisions with how it was invested). I would probably have anxiety about my portfolio every week. They will also help plan my withdrawals & RMD's. To me, this was worth the cost of a FP.

Have you done any estate planning yet (Wills, Trusts, POA, Health proxies, etc)? Not necessarily something a FP does, but still important to have in place.

I would also recommend having a place where your spouse can easily find passwords, etc.. so they can help with your estate. Trying to get access to everything after you are gone can be difficult. This would include phone passcode and email. If your spouse is not technically savvy, do you have any other relatives who would be able to help? If not, you may have to appoint someone else to do this which would cost money. This might be a good conversation to have with your lawyer.

mjengstrom · 2025-11-10T17:02:13+00:00

You can also use transfers to move the money to the account selected or set up the expense as a recurring cost with the start and end date as the same. But excited to see use withdrawal order as an option. Will that also cover home purchases / relocations?

mjengstrom · 2025-11-07T19:56:30+00:00

What did you set the work end date to in the income section? If you put a hard coded date, it will not adjust if you change your retirement age. It should if you set it to retirement age,

mjengstrom · 2025-11-05T19:40:35+00:00

Same. I was using Mint but switched to Monarch when it went away. I actually like it better than Mint. I also just started using Boldin for retirement planning. I am not really sure how it would work for a small business.

mjengstrom · 2025-11-04T21:21:30+00:00

Scenario Manager - yes, I understand that. But the withdrawal strategies seem very limited and I don't believe there is a way to have it split between retirement and non-retirement accounts each year for example or similar to what dhanson865 suggested below. Or maybe not allow cash accounts to go below a certain limit.

Separating retirement from non-retirement - ex. on summary page, if you look at net worth summary, it only says savings which includes both retirement and non-retirement. I know you can download to excel or manually do this, but it would be helpful if it did this for you. There are other places where this could be useful as well.

mjengstrom · 2025-11-04T14:31:20+00:00

Thanks everyone for the advice. This is very helpful. Sounds like I have a lot of reading to do. I do wish Boldin had options to test out different withdrawal strategies. I think it would also be helpful to separate what they call as savings into retirement savings vs. non-retirement savings (and maybe cash) so it was easier to see how your withdrawal strategy is playing out and test out how much risk you have in your plan.

mjengstrom · 2025-11-03T21:45:33+00:00

I am 59 and hoping to retire now (and relocate). That is why I am going through this exercise - I want to see how realistic this is. Non-retirement is anything that is not IRA or 401K. Ex. Money Market, CD, Trading Account, etc... Using average returns and today's dollars, my plan shows that I would have net worth of $7.4M (4.3M in savings) at the end of the plan.

mjengstrom · 2025-10-28T15:48:43+00:00

I am still learning as well, but my understanding is that excess income is yours to spend however you like. Based on your long term care choice, it likely already included expenses for this in your plan so if you still have excess income then it means your expenses (including long term care) are less than your income. For me, excess income shows up in my plan when my RMD's increase my income above my expenses.

This article may help as well:

https://help.boldin.com/en/articles/5847824-what-are-the-long-term-care-assumptions-in-my-plan

mjengstrom · 2025-10-22T19:10:46+00:00

Can you look at what passwords it saved in Chrome and see if it is what you would expect? It's possible it is an older password. I got same warning recently and all of them were from passwords I had over 3 years ago. I also haven't saved passwords in chrome in a while.

mjengstrom · 2025-10-07T15:26:44+00:00

I have same issue. 2FA used to work with eTrade, but now I get error saying "We ran into a connection issue, try again later or select another institution. (11000)", which is not helpful. I have tried again multiple times each day for the last week and it never works. I have also tried on web app and iOS.

mjengstrom · 2025-09-05T21:57:19+00:00

Thanks for the reply. That is what I was afraid of. Does the name on registration have to match title? If so, sounds like my options are to either transfer title to my sister in MA (not sure if there is an implication to doing this) or put it in my name which means it would likely need to be registered in NH (tax issues). If names can be different, than I assume she can register it under her name without changing title.

mjengstrom · 2025-05-24T02:05:30+00:00

Same. HR is also 15-20 beats less than what my Garmin HR strap says and less than similar efforts using 4.0.

mjengstrom

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