FI-nding My Balance

Some of the core tenets of the FIRE move­ment: Save mon­ey, live below your means, choose mod­est hous­ing, buy used when you can, DIY when­ev­er pos­si­ble, ride your bike as much as you’re able, trav­el hack, and be fru­gal with food spend­ing. If you want to super­charge your FIRE jour­ney, maybe invest in real estate, and pick up a side hus­tle or two. All do-able, right?

I found the FIRE move­ment when I was 21. That was rough­ly 8 years ago. By fol­low­ing the paths of those on the FIRE jour­ney before me, I avoid­ed many finan­cial pit­falls that com­mon­ly trap young pro­fes­sion­als and instead dug into the list of tenets above: I had room­mates. I drove the same car for 9 years. I hus­tled like crazy with var­i­ous projects on the inter­net. I made my lunch as often as I could. I maxed out my retire­ment accounts. I trav­el hacked sev­er­al amaz­ing trips. I kept spread­sheets of every pen­ny I spent. I bought a mul­ti-fam­i­ly prop­er­ty and turned a prof­it. I bought as much sec­ond-hand as I could (& uti­lized groups like the Buy Noth­ing Project).

Did it work? ABSOLUTELY.

I’m 29 years old and I’m a quar­ter-mil­lion­aire! The medi­an net worth for some­one under 35 is $11,000. The medi­an net worth for some­one 65–74 is only $224K. And because sta­tis­tics are fun (but can be mis­lead­ing), the aver­age net worth of some­one <35, and some­one aged 65–74, is $76K and $1.1m respec­tive­ly. I’m doing bet­ter than the medi­an and aver­age mil­len­ni­al and doing bet­ter than the medi­an old­er age brack­et in Amer­i­ca. I’m not brag­ging — mere­ly cit­ing sta­tis­tics to show I’ve saved a LOT of mon­ey in a rel­a­tive­ly short time. [stats from this arti­cle]

When I start­ed my FIRE jour­ney, I want­ed to retire at age 35. I strong­ly dis­liked most things about the pro­fes­sion­al lifestyle — I want­ed to regain the free­dom I had in col­lege. The free­dom to take naps and work on what­ev­er struck my fan­cy that day. I want­ed to save as much as I could to buy that free­dom as quick­ly as I pos­si­bly could. BUT, the more I worked/saved and hus­tled, the more I felt trapped. I start­ed out on the Lean­FI path, where I could spend $23,500 a year. I no longer see that as real­is­tic for me. It turns out I just want­ed to work for an orga­ni­za­tion that respects me as a human being! Who knew? Turns out I can make mon­ey and have free­dom too!

Since I was a teen, my Mom has accused me of hav­ing cham­pagne tastes on a beer bud­get (no I was not drink­ing back then!). That was def­i­nite­ly true. Fast for­ward to today and I’d say my tastes are more sparkling-wine-not-pro­duced-in-France on a seltzer bud­get. I don’t pur­sue extrav­a­gance; I see no rea­son to buy fan­cy brands, have the lat­est and great­est elec­tron­ics, lease the nicest car, or impress peo­ple with my ZIP code. I also don’t see the neces­si­ty of cram­ming myself into a tiny stu­dio, or being a land­lord, or dri­ving a $500 jalopy, or sub­sist­ing on rice and beans.

I’m work­ing on find­ing bal­ance in my life.

Am I great at find­ing bal­ance? Not yet — it’s a prac­tice, just like yoga or Bud­dhism. It’s the rea­son I rent­ed a fan­cy $1,800 apart­ment near DC last year. The pen­du­lum swung too far to one side on that one. I learned from that expe­ri­ence and now have a nice, rea­son­ably-priced apart­ment in St. Louis. I could’ve spent a lot less on rent than I do now, but I love my neigh­bor­hood and my apart­ment. I have enough room to eat, sleep, bathe, play, and work in my space, which is vital to my well­be­ing (par­tic­u­lar­ly now that I work from home).

As I wrote in my Great Car Debate post, I’ve been strug­gling against the pull of a new car pur­chase for the last 5 years. Mat­ters accel­er­at­ed quick­ly (well, the oppo­site) when my car near­ly over­heat­ed in a dri­ve-thru. I dis­cov­ered the car has a coolant leak that is most like­ly due to a fail­ing head gas­ket. The car has had plen­ty of work over the past nine years but I don’t have the tools or the space to con­tin­ue doing the work. Frankly, I don’t enjoy it either. It’s stress­ful and I’m ter­ri­fied some­thing will go wrong…leaving me strand­ed (or worse). With 194k miles on him, Levi needs more and more work and I’m done deal­ing with it. If you are handy, enjoy work­ing on cars, and have the time to do so, I encour­age you to look for cars like Levi to dri­ve (or come to St. Louis and pick him up — spe­cial price for my read­ers!). Once some­one fix­es the head gas­ket, fig­ures out what’s going on with the AC, changes the oil, replaces the ser­pen­tine belt, repairs the sus­pen­sion, and puts 4 new tires on him, he’ll be a great car again. But that some­one will not be me.

While I limped around in Levi, I did my research and kept an eye on the mar­ket. Ini­tial­ly, I was look­ing at a Hon­da Fit or a Toy­ota Corol­la hatch­back. But then I did some more research and found I real­ly liked the Sub­aru Crosstrek and the Mazda3. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there were no fair­ly-priced Crosstreks (even if the car has a dope song about it). There were no Corol­la hatch­backs at all, so that was out. There were a lot of Hon­da Fits and a few Mazda3’s. I cre­at­ed a spread­sheet to keep track of and com­pare the var­i­ous options. As if I’d pass up the option to cre­ate anoth­er spread­sheet!

I went to test dri­ve the Hon­da Fit and the Mazda3. The Fit in the spread­sheet was sold by the time I got to it, so I drove anoth­er one from the same mod­el year and did­n’t like it very much. I drove the Mazda3 and it just felt right. The S Grand Tour­ing is the high­est trim option avail­able, so the car was loaded with options. It felt like a lux­u­ry car to some­one com­ing from a bare­bones basic Pon­ti­ac Vibe… and the price was decid­ed­ly not that of a lux­u­ry car.

Every­one, please meet Car­men Sandiego, my 2015 Maz­da 3! She’s got a mere 48,000 miles on her and looks like a much new­er car. She is also a blast to dri­ve, which is not some­thing I’ve ever said about Levi (the clos­est I got was “BLAST IT” when the starter died and left me strand­ed). My out-the-door price from the deal­er­ship was $14,817.50. They took care of all the paper­work and I now have a car legal­ly allowed to be on the road (Lev­i’s plates are from Min­neso­ta and the reg­is­tra­tion expired last year… I’m work­ing on get­ting the title so I can sell him). It was incred­i­bly nice not to do things the hard way for once. No Craigslist strangers and hav­ing to fig­ure out all the paper­work on my own. Did I leave mon­ey on the table by buy­ing from a “steal­er­ship” (as my friend Bill calls them)? Prob­a­bly. Am I ok with that? Yes, because it was eas­i­er. I still got a good deal and have some equi­ty in the car already.

I know I’ve done well when some of my FI friends AND my real-life friends had strong reac­tions to me buy­ing a new car. Reac­tions ranged from “WHAT? YOU WENT TO A DEALERSHIP? HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING?!” to “Damn final­ly pulled some of that mon­ey out the mat­tress”.  I learned what I need­ed to know to not get ripped off when buy­ing a car from a deal­er­ship, and am very grate­ful for all the guid­ance and lessons learned in the past.

The loan from my local cred­it union is for 36 months @ 2.94%. My pay­ment is $410 a month, but I intend to have it paid off in about 18 months between my tax refund, my year-end bonus, and accel­er­at­ed pay­ments. I would’ve pre­ferred to buy with cash, but that was­n’t in the cards this time. I’ll buy the next one with a wad of Ben­jamins for sure though 🙂

Just because I have a new­er used car does­n’t mean I’ve giv­en up on all the FIRE prin­ci­ples. I’m still going to buy used as much as I can because I enjoy the thrill of the hunt. I’m still putting mon­ey into my retire­ment accounts each month. I’m still eat­ing most of my meals at home. I’m still keep­ing my elec­tron­ics as long as I can but I am no longer opti­miz­ing every lit­tle thing. Since I’ll be work­ing until 55 now, that’s an extra $1.5 mil­lion in my pock­et in pay alone.… and that assumes I’ll nev­er earn more than I do now. Add in two pen­sions, and I think I can afford to let my foot off the prover­bial gas (and put it back down on a 2015 Maz­da ped­al! Zoom Zoom!) and live a lit­tle bit less lean for now.

As always, thanks for read­ing! Did you decide to upgrade some­thing in your life? What was it? Sound off in the com­ments below!