Camp FI SE 2018 Recap

What an amaz­ing week­end! I don’t think I’ve seen the oth­er side of mid­night in a very long time, and yet this week­end I saw 1 am! Of course, as part of being on vaca­tion I was­n’t wak­ing up at 430 am like nor­mal so it all bal­anced out.

What was I doing this week­end? I was at Camp FI SE in Flori­da, mak­ing new friends, laugh­ing with old friends, play­ing board games, eat­ing snacks (ok, there was a lot of that hap­pen­ing), and hav­ing a few tasty bev­er­ages. Oh, and I guess we talked about finances and stuff in there too. Once or twice.

The Good Old Days

If you’ve ever been on a vaca­tion or fun retreat like Camp FI, you know the feel­ing. The one where halfway through, you step back and think to your­self, I am hav­ing SO MUCH FUN and I nev­er want it to end!! But then, you remem­ber it has to end, as all good things do, and you get a bit melan­cholic and it kin­da ruins the rest of the time you’re away from the real world.

It def­i­nite­ly hap­pened to me. I looked around, sur­round­ed by hap­py peo­ple chat­ting away about Roth IRA con­ver­sions, thru hikes, and real estate hor­ror sto­ries, and got a bit sad. I did­n’t want it to end. I’m sure there’s a Ger­man word out there that describes the feel­ing. If not, I’m going to need my Ger­man speak­ers to come up with one!

The song by Kesha ft Mack­le­more pret­ty much sums up my entire thoughts on the mat­ter. Give it a lis­ten.… it’s so good!

Take a minute or five each day to step back and appre­ci­ate how good things are going. These kinds of events are always some­thing I look back on fond­ly and I’m glad I stored up the mem­o­ries for the future.

From Consumer to Producer

This shift has become more clear to me over the last year or so. It’s very rare any­more I go to mee­tups and intro­duce myself. Most peo­ple know me, and they know my sto­ry. I’ve gone from being the attendee to the speak­er. This was first made clear to me at Fin­Con 2017, where I was invit­ed to be on a pan­el. Being a speak­er meant I had an oblig­a­tion to go to the Pro Mixer.

“Sweet” I thought to myself, “I can min­gle with the Pros!”

I got to the event and looked around. There were no Pros. I was the Pro. I was there so peo­ple could talk to me.

Talk about a huge difference!

I was also invit­ed to give a pre­sen­ta­tion last week­end. I had a blast get­ting to share my knowl­edge with every­one there! My friend Noah and I gave a talk on some things to think about to pre­pare for a mini-retire­ment. It was very well received and I walked away from the talk with more speak­ing expe­ri­ence under my belt. Help­ful, since that is one of my goals for 2018.

Anoth­er spe­cial part of Camp FI SE was get­ting to take part in a round table host­ed by Jonathan of Choose­Fi fame. It was tru­ly an hon­or to be sit­ting behind the table with peo­ple I look up to and respect. Some­one com­ment­ed there was noth­ing that could be asked that we could­n’t answer. We dis­cussed how the old­er two pan­elists felt about the younglings find­ing this stuff ear­ly, the ben­e­fits of find­ing FIRE ear­ly, and some oth­er mis­cel­la­neous but relat­ed top­ics. I real­ly hope it gets released for every­one to hear!

The fact we were all wear­ing coör­di­nat­ing t‑shirts made me laugh. (Side­note: the Choose­FI t‑shirt is so comfy!!)

Once again, Camp FI SE saw the birth of a bounc­ing new baby blog. Last year it was Joel from FI 180. This year it’s a blog called mynextmoneymove.com by Chris­tine. Her new blog will focus on bring­ing FI to those in the 15% or low­er tax brack­ets. And not like, I opti­mized my income to get low.… more like they just don’t earn tons of mon­ey. Even my site got a facelift! (Tell me what you think about the design in the comments!)

Good luck, Chris­tine! Con­grat­u­la­tions, Joel!

Next Level Fun Stuff

Since we were stay­ing on a camp, there were plen­ty of fun activ­i­ties to do! We played cards, board games, hung out at the fire, played kick­ball, went on a team build­ing course, did some archery, and took long walks around the prop­er­ty. I’ve includ­ed some pic­tures below of all the fun times we had.

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What’s Next?

I’m going to be hon­est. I am burnt out af. Before I left for this trip, I was real­ly strug­gling. I live in a small apart­ment sur­round­ed by too much stuff. I miss my boyfriend. Work is suck­ing every bit of life out of me they can before I leave. The pod­cast takes time. I have so much to write here on the blog. I have side hus­tles to start. The house requires attention.

I’m still kin­da strug­gling but not so bad now that I’ve returned. Why you ask?

At Camp FI I was with peo­ple who get it. They under­stand. They don’t judge. They lift every­one up and encour­age those who are struggling.

(psst.… that’s me. Just in case you missed it earlier.)

So many peo­ple said nice things to me at Camp FI that I can’t quit. I got remind­ed I’m mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in peo­ple’s lives by writ­ing. Some­times I for­get and things relat­ed to pro­duc­ing FIRE relat­ed con­tent seem like chores.

I’m not quit­ting, but I will be dial­ing things back here a bit more than I had been. This is lit­er­al­ly the only thing I can cut back on that won’t neg­a­tive­ly harm a part­ner or oth­er peo­ple. I quit in 10 weeks. I can grit my teeth (not grind. I don’t want to go back to that lev­el of stressed.) and bear it. With bet­ter opti­miza­tion strate­gies I will keep writ­ing and mak­ing a difference!

I’m going to lay low for a while. No trips. The next event I have planned on my cal­en­dar is Camp FI: Mid­west in August. I would love to do oth­er FI relat­ed events, but right now I don’t have the men­tal band­width. If you email me, my response will prob­a­bly be hel­la delayed. But please! Don’t stop writ­ing them! I love each and every sin­gle one of them. Espe­cial­ly if they involve cat pic­tures, gifs, or videos.

Thanks for read­ing! Would you go to an event like this? What would like to see in an event like this?