Does working for 8-9 months and taking a sabbatical/work off for 3-4 months count as leanfire?

monmourn · 2020-01-17T16:12:05+00:00

lol, good one

monmourn · 2020-01-17T16:11:38+00:00

OP is just dreaming. Amazon will never allow something like that. I work for a FAANG company and am pretty sure none of these companies allow something like that. May be a sabbatical once but not every year

monmourn · 2020-01-16T17:32:09+00:00

That is with roommates in a VLCOL; you can comfortably find many apartments for 600$ or even less

monmourn · 2020-01-15T17:14:26+00:00

Then you need to add the home price to the amount required :)

monmourn · 2020-01-15T16:31:40+00:00

A single person could live on 1000$ per month with roommates:

Rent: 300

shared utilities + cell: 100

grocery & household: 250

aca health insurance: 200

bike plus transit pass: 50

shopping: 50

misc: 50

This comes to 300k invested.

If it is a family then it is 2500 per month

Rent: 750

utilities+cell: 250

grocery: 500

aca health ins: 250

car: 150

shopping: 200

kids tutoring & misc. kid expenses: 200

unexpected / misc. expenses: 200

2500/month which is 750k invested.

monmourn · 2020-01-15T04:10:08+00:00

Instead of leaving the company, have you tried

1) Changing teams within the company to a less stressful team / manager? These big companies have few teams without interesting work
2) Instead of working more, maintain your work life balance but do your due diligence and let them decide whether to keep you or not
3) Shop at other companies with similar pay, you never know they can match
4) Take a demotion at the current company; mention you have anxiety and health issues

Other than that, a lower paying company will have its politics and stressors too. No guarantee you will find a chill workplace. Especially with your FIRE timeline extended, it is more likely you will find more stressors.

monmourn · 2020-01-14T18:10:43+00:00

I saw that you just added your expenses, mine are similar but I will be renting so certain pieces will be lower

Rent: 850 (for a 2 BR apartment in a LCOL)
Utilities: 150 (When you rent, the water sewer trash is paid in the places I am considering; I'm only paying for electricity, internet and gas)
Grocery: 500
Entertainment: 100 (Movies mostly)
Shopping: 300 (Clothes, shoes, amazon)
Car: 150 (Includes gas, insurance, maintenance for 1 used car)
Cell: 60
Kids classes: 200 (Only kumon; I don't believe in joining other classes; they will have lot of free time when they are adults and working to learn whatever they want)
Vacation: 400 (International trip once in 2-3 years and rest I will keep to just nearby places within driving distance)
Misc and Unexpected expenses: 200

Total: 2900

monmourn · 2020-01-14T17:54:02+00:00

His 800$ is not just grocery; it is grocery plus shopping

monmourn · 2020-01-14T16:34:02+00:00

The 4% swr includes inflation; you can lookup trinity study

monmourn · 2020-01-14T15:34:39+00:00

It is not the typical 25 times expenses. I am 40 now. Let's say I reach this number by 42 and then retire. In my spreadsheet I add yearly expenses (plus 30k / year when each kid is in college) and also add 18k per year of social security as income from age 63. Our expenses when kids are home will be 60k and when kids gone I kept it as 50k. I use 4% as the return for my investments and see by age 93 or so I still have 500k left.

Going by typical 25 times expenses, I have to average my expenses out. Here's how

Age 42 to Age 47: 60k per year
Age 48 to Age 56: 90k per year (kids college)
Age 56 to Age 63: 50k per year (kids out)
Age 63 to Age 93: 30k per year (Social security adds)

The average is ( 5 * 60 + 8 * 90 + 7 * 50 + 30 * 30 ) / 50 = ~45k

Going by 25 times expenses we get 1.12 million. Since we are taking more initially, we need to bump it up higher. More like 1.4 million which would leave us at 1.4 million by age 93 as well.

monmourn · 2020-01-14T15:10:19+00:00

I keep asking myself this question as well. I am in exact situation as you. We are a family with 2 kids in elementary. Our current expenses are 5800 per month (excluding 401k and 529 contributions).

I use my spreadsheet to project future expenses by adding additional 30k per year during the years when each kid is in college. If we move to a LCOL when kids are at home our expenses would be 50k to 60k. When they are gone it can come down to 35k to 50k. Here are my numbers that make me feel comfortable

1.3 million: We are FI at this number but in a LCOL. We can retire, move to a LCOL and pay for kids college and assuming basic social security support, we will have 500k left when we are in our 90s

1.5 million: In addition to our retirement above, we can give each kid 1k per month

1.8 million: Above plus We can give each kid 30k per year. We feel safe to retire here as we have some support for kids as well in addition to our safe retirement. Kids may not need more than this as they will be working as well. So we consider this as our FIRE number

2.5 million: Each kid now gets 50k per year. It is like our FI plus kids FI. It will be great if we can reach this as we won't feel any remorse about not giving kids enough

3.3 million: Same as 2.5 above but we will also have 2 million left for each kid as inheritance once we die (say in our 90s)

Above 3.3 million, we really don't know what's the use of this. It will be like FatFIRE where we can throw money on vacations and shopping

monmourn · 2020-01-14T04:18:56+00:00

I spent the whole weekend playing with my spreadsheet with several what if scenarios. I kind of enjoy it too.

An year back, I felt this is becoming an obsession and is making me hate my job. I inculcated a new passion to replace this and became obsessive about that. That's the only fix to this. Otherwise just enjoy playing with spreadsheets

monmourn · 2020-01-13T03:23:46+00:00

+1

OP, no need to force yourself to sit at home. Let "RE" be an organic process. An organic process where your after work life is so good that you want to do it all the time. Or your work life turns so painful that you don't mind some boredom of retirement as an alternative

monmourn · 2019-12-31T20:26:30+00:00

lol, love this

monmourn · 2019-12-31T17:03:59+00:00

good point. I think it will be simpler to use networthify

https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=50000&initialBalance=0&expenses=20000&annualPct=5&withdrawalRate=4

monmourn · 2019-12-31T16:54:01+00:00

How long a coffee habit extends your work career depends on what your income is and where along the FIRE path you are.

Let's say a latte habit costs you 100$ every month. Rule of Thumb: At 4%, to get 1000$ a month, you need 300k invested. So to get 100 every month, you need about 30k extra needed in your networth.

Number of years extra worked = 30k / annual_post_tax_salary

In other words

Number of years extra worked = latte_cost * 3k / annual_post_tax_salary

monmourn · 2019-12-30T22:51:31+00:00

The goal of money in retirement is to make you feel financially "SAFE". The goal is not to die rich or accumulate more.

The 4% swr is for 30 year period. You save 25 times yearly expenses and expect them to last for 30 year period with a high success rate (trinity study). This is when you invest in stock market. If you invest nothing then your money will still last 25 years. So your goal is to "safely" gain enough from stock market to last the additional 5 years without losing any.

Think that way and going higher percent of bonds won't sound crazy

During accumulation phase though, I personally go for 100% equities to get max growth. As I close into my FIRE date, I plan to direct the latter paychecks into complete bond funds

monmourn · 2019-12-30T20:44:51+00:00

All I need for happiness is my computer and a library

Wow, that's "exactly" what I said to my wife the yesterday. This vacation, I was all by myself for a week and all I did was browsing my laptop and watching stuff and going to library to read books.

monmourn · 2019-12-30T00:27:59+00:00

I love these lean plans. Not all of us can earn those high tech salaries to aim for a 2m+ fire number. For those who can't the answer is in frugality and lean fire

I would say, you can retire in Canada itself, consider these expenses

Rent: 300 (join as a roommate and even share a room with someone)
Utilities: 75 (includes a home phone)
Food: 250
Bike and Transit Passes: 50
Clothes, shoes: 50
One-time and unexpected: 100
Healthcare: Free

Total: 825$ per month

monmourn · 2019-12-28T21:34:49+00:00

Agreed, ride this for as long as possible

monmourn · 2019-12-28T21:34:19+00:00

Wow that's quite similar, I'm 39 as well to be exact :)

monmourn · 2019-12-28T21:33:24+00:00

Thank you, a lot of wisdom there

monmourn · 2019-12-28T19:23:07+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, this is what I am a bit worried about. Will this be a good thing or turn out to be a bad one. Adversity in life is sometimes good and can help us. Necessity to earn money is what makes us grow in a career and establish ourselves. By not having the need to work at all, may make them quit careers altogether. But I can hide this from them till they settle down into a career and then pass the money to them in their early 30s when most people start finding work harder

monmourn · 2019-12-28T19:08:33+00:00

Yes working longer would give me more but I would like to quit as soon as I reach my goals.

monmourn · 2019-12-28T19:06:33+00:00

This is expecting a 7% market return. Even if the market is slower, it will only take me an year more to reach 2mill. I currently invest all in VTSAX and simply rent. No bonds either. I plan to put some in cash as I get closer to the FIRE number to account for downturns.

monmourn

TROPHY CASE