8 Years of FIRE: Lessons Learned

I haven’t been paying attention to this blog much because I’ve had a lot going on. Summer is almost here and we’ve already had loads of visitors come through town. One of the great things about living in Colorado is that there are always fun and interesting people around, locals and visitors alike. And there always seems to be a party.

But it isn’t all parades and parties. We’re still also doing work on our remodel that we started in 2019.

***sigh***

Lately I’ve been working on trim, fixing faulty flashing around a couple of skylights, and getting the landscaping in order.

I thought this remodel would be a 2 or 3 year job, but then COVID happened and life changed:

• I became our kids’ teacher. Our older kid is an introvert and loved every minute of home schooling. Our younger kid is an extrovert and hated every minute of it. It wasn’t a good time. Work on the home came to a stop as 2 hours of school work turned into 9 hours of struggles. Building materials also became challenging to source and expensive to buy.
• The pace of my work slowed way down. Prior to COVID, Mindy would go into an office a couple of days each week. I’d put on my tool belt, crank up the stereo, and have 7 uninterrupted hours of time to build. Post-COVID, Mindy has worked from home. Since a big part of her job is recording, I have to frequently stop what I’m doing so the house is quiet. Working from home is great and I’m thankful because it has improved our lives, but it also caused the remodel to drag on.

There are no replays in life, but I wouldn’t have bought this home/taken on this project if I had known what was coming. But the end is near. I have about 100 hours of work to do which I should be able to wrap up this year.

I’ve hired out some jobs like a custom metal railing and moving landscaping rocks. Much of the work is too much of a pain to hire out though. For example, when my skylights leaked, I got a couple of quotes:

• One quote was for $3,000 to replace the skylight seals. The guy who gave me the quote then told me I’d have to source a roofer to fix the shingles and a carpenter to fix any rotting wood. It turns out that the seals were fine (it was faulty flashing), so I’m glad I didn’t go this route.
• The second quote came in at $10,000. It also came with a 6 week wait time.

I did the work for around $300 (2 skylight flashing kits and a bundle of shingles) and 8 hours of work. I don’t like working on shingles, but I dislike it much more when it rains in my home.

I have not had a healthy relationship with this house project. I’ve felt stuck in a trench that I dug myself. I’m almost out though.

I look forward to having a better relationship with work soon though. More on that in a moment.

Investments

Our investments have changed. Early in retirement, we owned:

• Syndication deals. I thought that this would be a good way to diversify. All but 2 closed before interest rates went up which was great luck for us. Rising interest rates sunk many a syndication. Other random stuff to note:
  • All of our syndication deals that have closed outperformed their original projections.
  • None of the deals that have closed outperformed the S&P 500.
  • We have two deals still open. We are into one of them for $25,000 (Wildhorn Capital) and this one stopped paying a couple of years ago. This one will most likely end up vastly underperforming the S&P 500. Wildhorn is a good operator that just got caught in a tough situation. We are into the other one for $50,000 and it’s doing fine, although it will probably end up underperforming the S&P as well.
• Trailer park. I have some great stories from owning this and it outperformed the S&P 500. However, it vastly underperformed the equity I sold to buy it (Apple). Whoops.
• Private lending. We’ve been lending money from our self-directed 401(k) to friends and investors for real estate acquisitions. All of these loans have worked out well, but we probably won’t do any more. We may do a 72(t) soon and want as much as possible available in our accounts to maximize our distributions.

Now 8 years post-job, I’m excited about two investments:

• SpaceX. It landed its first rocket on December 21, 2015. Almost 10 years later, it has landed 443 more (as of May 12, 2025). No other company or government has accomplished this. Even once. More amazing was catching a massive rocket for the first time last year. SpaceX has a chance of becoming one of the biggest companies in the world. Note: It was a real pain to figure out how to invest in it. I have a post coming up next week from my friend Craig over at Access IPOs on how to invest in SpaceX.

• Index funds. Yeah, I know. Pretty boring. But sooooo freakin’ effective. If you’ve been in the market for the past decade, you’ve had incredible returns.

Going forward, I probably won’t stray too far from index funds. It’s been fun investing in tech stocks, private companies, and messing around with real estate, but I want to keep it simple from here on out. Tech won’t rule forever and I just don’t want to think about my investments as much as I do now.

It’s been an incredible ride. When I stopped working, we had a net worth of about $1,400,000. Now it’s $6,200,000. Mindy’s job covers the bills, so we haven’t had to use our savings yet to fund our lives. At the same time, we haven’t added much either, so the gains are mostly from investment appreciation. I’m a tech nerd and investing in tech nerd stocks served me well.

Fitness

This is the most important part of my FI journey. When I had a job, I sat at a desk all day. I was often stressed which destroyed my willpower. I ate crappy food. I prioritized making money (fixing up houses) over exercise. My weight often hovered around 180 (25% body fat). I had high blood pressure.

After I left work, I made it a priority to get in better shape. I didn’t really know how to work out or eat correctly, so while I was definitely in a better place, I also wasted a lot of effort. But now I’m doing well.

• The photo on the left is from October of 2017, 6 months after I left work. I weighed 156.4.
• The photo on the right is from 5/13/2025, 8 years and 1 month after leaving work. I weigh 163.1.

Despite weighing 6.7 pounds more now, I’m clearly leaner.

It has taken a LOT of work to get here. I do NOT put on muscle easily. My workouts are mini torture sessions and I struggle to eat enough protein. It’s worth it though as I feel great. I’ll have more to say on this in about a month after I go back for another hydrostatic body mass test.

To Work Or Not To Work

My real job was a software developer and I really enjoyed the core work. Getting business requirements and figuring out the best way to implement them in code was fun. What wasn’t fun was having to work with difficult people, incompetent bosses who didn’t (couldn’t) understand the basics of the technology they were in charge of implementing, rigid schedules, and office politics. I still wouldn’t mind writing code again, although I’ll never do it in the context of a job.

But work is important. It just needs a redefinition in retirement:

Pre-FIRE: Work is an action performed for money. Perhaps you make some friends. If you’re lucky, your work give you a sense of purpose and achievement.

Post-FIRE: Take the definition above and eliminate the part about money. The rest still applies. When you take money out of the equation, you’re liberated to focus on friends, purpose, and achievement.

Work is whatever you want it to be. It can take the form of training for a marathon, learning a new craft, writing a book, or designing furniture. The only rule is this:

There should be a little bit of fun struggle (MMM calls it voluntary hardship) because solving puzzles and pushing through some pain makes you feel great.

But you get to make the rest of the rules. You can do it for as many hours in the week as you want. You’re even allowed to make money from it, but don’t let that be the primary goal. If it gets boring, you can drop it and move on. Half of the fun of retirement is figuring it all out and evolving. Stasis is dull.

I had an unhealthy relationship with work for most of my life. Work and a paycheck were how I validated myself. I dreaded losing my job. I’d even have frequent nightmares about it. I never got canned, so I shouldn’t have entertained these thoughts as much as I did.

I still need work in my life, but my definition of work is constantly changing. At the moment, it’s intense physical fitness, designing a home (more on this in another post), and sometimes even working on this blog.

Lessons Learned

So what have I learned in 8 years?

1. The FI community overvalues money at the expense of more important things. Folks in this community get all uptight when it comes to the 4% Rule:

Just one more year!

Instead of 4%, I’m going for 3.7958578%! Maybe even 3.7958521!

What if blah blah blah happens?

The numbers you should focus on are your blood pressure, blood sugar, resting heart rate, the number of hours you sleep in the night, and the amount of hours you spend with your family. If work is causing any of these numbers to go off the rails, take action.

2. Get your life right wherever you are. FI will give you more time which is great, but don’t wait for it to fix your sh*t. Your heart and relationships don’t care if you’re FI or not.

3. Without your health, you have nothing. It’s a lot easier to become the best version of yourself when you’re not working. If you’re one of those super humans where you and your partner both work high-powered jobs, have 3 kids, and you look like fitness poster people, you’re awesome and much better at life than me. I devote at least two hours a day to exercise. It’s either strength training, walking, or exploring nature. I wouldn’t be able to do this with a job, although I certainly could have done better than I did.

4. FI allows you to be resilient. When my roof leaked, I had the time to fix it. Same with the heating element on the dryer. Same with the pool plumbing. I’m happy that I have the time and confidence to solve the little problems that the daily grind of life throws at me. It’s also nice being able to help others. When my mom’s roof went off the rails, I was able to drive out to Vegas and rebuild it.

5. Free time has different value in different seasons of life. Ask yourself this:

Would you rather be rich at 80 or have a rich life at 50?

Don’t be reckless, but don’t get caught up in a state of fear either. The same qualities that made you a millionaire at 50 will help you out of a bind should your portfolio take a dump. But you’ll probably be OK because if you’re anything like me, you’ve spent 337,390 hours thinking about it. Believe in yourself.

6. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. I was at Camp FI Rocky Mountain a couple of years ago. I was giving a talk in the afternoon, so I went for a hike in the morning to clear my mind. The day was perfect. It wasn’t too hot. The clouds were epic. Colorado had had a lot of rain, so the plants were green and full of life:

The thought I had was this:

If I knew I was going to die today, I could do so knowing that I hadn’t left anything on the table. FI has allowed me to spend time with my kids, see wonderful parts of the world, and I’ve made great friends for life.

And the crazy thing is that I don’t think I came into my own until I discovered FI. I’ve always felt like a strange, awkward human:

I don’t want to talk about <insert: your local sports team>. How come no one else wants to talk about rocket engines, solar panels, or eVTOLs? (I’m the real life of any party!)

I found my crowd in the FI community. Lots of you are strange and awkward, just like me. I feel good in my own skin. I’m so thankful for it all.

More 1500 Days!!!

You can also find me (and the dinosaurs) at:

• BiggerPockets: Hey look, I’m on a podcast again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DOFfBN7cxg
• YouTube: My channel is mostly devoted to home improvement, but I have some other material coming up soon too.
• Instagram: Pretty pictures of dinosaurs, sunsets, and nail guns!
• Twitter: Spontaneous, often insane, ramblings
• Coworking space: On the surface, MMM HQ is a coworking space. Look a little deeper and you’ll see that we’re really building community. The members of MMM HQ are some of the finest people I know
• Buying a Tesla? Use my referral code to get some perks!