July 2017 – girl .FI.day

2983 days…17 days in…

Has it really only been 17 days? It feels like an eternity really. I am astonished at what we have been able to do in such a short time. Intention is the word that comes to mind. What a difference being intentional makes.

Here is just a quick update of what we have been able to do in a little over two weeks:

Opened up a Vanguard VTSMX retirement account and began funding it. (GAH! How exciting is that!)
Paid off a credit account
Ordered the firestick and new remotes so we can cut cable THIS WEEK!
Did a three-month analysis of our spending on mint.com (Think you cannot afford to save or pay off debt, I will bet you there is a ton of waste happening. If you eliminate the waste, you can do some BIG things.)
Reduced our cell phone bill by $25 – I know that’s not much, but we have a 3 month plan to reduce it even further. Every dollar counts.
Cut out several unnecessary items in our budget for a total monthly savings of: $200
We stuck to our weekly meal plan. (which means money saved on food)
And the BIGGIE…We stuck to our budget and discretionary spending for the month of July!!! – REALLY! This is HUGE. I don’t know how many times I have to readjust the next months budget due to overspending in the previous month.

In the coming weeks our goal is to accomplish the following:

Fully cut cable
pay off several accounts for a total monthly savings of: $1761.00, that savings will go directly into debt repayment
Pay off Wendy’s car
Continue funding retirement
Fund a “baby emergency fund” with at a minimum of $1000.00
Cut utility bills

The above is just a minimum. If we keep this train chugging along, by our next update we should have far exceeded the above goals.

Love and Prosperity,

Your Girl FI-day.

P.S….This book is a MUST read if you are interested in retiring early. Seriously. A MUST.

3000 days…Phase 1

So far during phase one, we have identified all of our debt and all of our income. We have a budget – this our road map for our spending. If you don’t have one – it is a must. During this phase we will be tackling our debt with a fury.

We will also be searching for ways to save more on our monthly expenses. I view this space as a space to not only document our progress and educate others on the “FI-life” but to also have some accountability. So here are some of the action items we intend to execute during this phase:

cut cable
cut cell phone bill
cut food budget
no eating out, except once a month
free entertainment
start tracking our expenses on mint, track the last 3 months of spending to see where additional cuts can be made
pay off a few of our high monthly expenses that can be paid off in the next three months to free up monthly money
begin retirement fund
pay off Wendy’s car

What I hope you all will find by watching our journey is that we still live a very full life. We are not misers. We are simply choosing what matters most and doing a cost/benefit analysis of where our money goes.

I also believe in visuals…So I have created a spreadsheet to track our progress. Its a little frightening to put this out there, but I know that if WE can acheive this HUGE goal – so can you.

	Total	Equity	Investments	Curt’s Retirement	Consumer Debt	Student Loans W	Student Loans C	Overall Gains
5.1.17	-295809	106000	0	14427	69922	240601	105713
7.1.17	-290489	106000	0	14427	64602	240601	105713	-5320

Now the above numbers still FREAK ME OUT…however, its important to look at the positives – we reduced our debt, resulting in an overall gain of $5300.00. That’s pretty significant. Now lets see home much more we can do by our next update!

– Your Girl-FI-day

On the Brink…

The idea of financial freedom is not a new concept for our family. I have been a Dave Ramsey fan for years. In fact, for several years, I taught Financial Peace University and later developed my own debt freedom courses. At one point we had zero debt except for our student loans. However, over the last few years, life got a little crazy. We adopted 4 Littles; expanding our family of four to eight in eighteen months time. We thought why not add a little more CRAZY to our lives and decided to move to another state in the middle of that. During that year long process, I commuted between two states until we could finalize our adoptions. That was a HARD year. After our move to San Diego, we purchased a fixer upper home big enough to fill our newly expanded family. And now, here we are exhaling – catching our breath, and let’s be honest, spending WAY too much money than we should be.

We are on the brink…we put everything we had into the house, including financing much of the rehab costs. As it stands right now, this house IS OUR RETIREMENT, and that makes me uncomfortable.

I feel at any moment catastrophe could strike, and it terrifies me.

You might think it hard to dream in such a state, but it has only amplified it.

We have this CRAZY (there is that word again….) wild dream. A dream of a life on the beach. Of retiring early with no debt and enough money in the bank to fund that life comfortably forever. It is not impossible. In fact, there are communities of people who have done it and ascribe to the “FI-life” – they call themselves “FI-ers”. It really is a thing…don’t believe me? Google is your friend. Google “financial independence” or “early retirement”. You’ll find them. And if you can’t find your way to google, I have made it easy for you and have listed some of my favorite blogs below. I stumbled upon several of the same websites a couple of years ago and have been soaking it all in since. And now, its time. Its time to step away from the cliff, the brink of disaster, and boldly and fiercely go after the “FI-life”.

Our number is 3000. 3000 days is roughly 8 years. In eight years Curt and I will both be 55. Why 55? At 55, Curtis will be fully vested in a pension. So it makes sense to hold out for eight years (if I had my hearts desire – we would leave sooner than that – but I am not going to turn away a lifetime pension.) So we have eight years to pay off all of our debt (except our mortgage – but we will pay it down significantly) and save at a minimum, $500,000.00 maybe more.* That along with the equity of our home by that time should give us between $500,000.00 and $750,000.00. Using the 4% rule (if you don’t know what that is take a look at this article from Mr. Money Mustache), we should have enough income coming in from investments and Curt’s pension to live on for life. At age 67 we will also get a significant bump when we begin drawing from Social Security (assuming it still exists).

So that is the experiment. 3000 days to FI. I hope you will join us in this endeavor and maybe along the way – catch the FI bug. In my next post, I will list several of our actions steps so that we have some tangible measurement of our “wins”!

Love and prosperity – Your girl-FI-day.

Suggested websites:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com

http://www.madfientist.com/

http://www.choosefi.com/

http://www.1500days.com/

http://www.frugalwoods.com/

https://caitflanders.com/

*Keep in mind that the dollar amount we could be saving could be significantly increased if we did not have to use it for debt service. That’s why it is so important to pay off all of our debt as quickly as possible.