When I started blogging on January 1st of 2013, I had a full-time job and Mrs. 1500 was a stay at home mother. Our plan to financial independence was supposed to look like this:
- We’d downsize our home and save like mad.
- If we made our goal ($1,000,000 with no debt in 1500 days), I’d quit.
- We’d ride off into the Colorado sunset.
And then, it didn’t quite work out like that.
It’s been 2078 days since I’ve started the blog and much has changed. In many ways, I’m a poor example for the FIRE community. However, if you look at my story in a different light, I may have something to teach you.
What You Cannot Learn From Me
I started this blog out of a passion for writing. During the first three years of blogging, I made about $100. It didn’t matter. I was writing for an audience of one because it was something I enjoyed. I’d much rather be in front of a keyboard than a TV.
But then, the blog started making more money. Today, I earn somewhere around $2,000/month. While this isn’t substantial for a typical worker bee, it’s a huge amount of money when you factor it into a safe withdrawal rate of $40,000 year. The 4% Rule becomes 1.6%.
And then something else happened. Mrs. 1500 had been writing posts for a real estate investing site called BiggerPockets. She wasn’t getting paid, but she loved real estate investing and enjoyed writing, so she’d contribute an article when she had downtime. Around the time our youngest daughter was set to go back to school full-time, BiggerPockets announced they were hiring. Mrs. 1500 applied and was hired. As I was leaving my job, Mrs. 1500 was back at work and was now @MindyatBP. Cha cha cha changes.
Here is what life looks like on a typical workday after the girls are off to school:
- 8:30 am-10 am: Exercise! This is weights every other day and cardio or rest in between.
- 10 am-12 pm: Writing, emails, social media.
- 12 pm: First meal of the day.
- 12:15pm-3 pm: Random time! One or more of the following: building, cleaning, fixing or reading.
Mindy writes articles or works on the BiggerPockets Money podcast.
So, there we are. Life post-work is much different than I thought it would be. I never thought this blog would be successful and didn’t expect Mindy to go back to work.
Mrs 1500 Note: I love my job. Every morning, I get up excited to go to work. In fact, some days I feel guilty leaving for work when Mr. 1500 is dealing with crabby or fighting kids. “Sorry, I have to go have fun at work.”
I really love my job. I would **almost** do it for free. At some point in the future, I will probably leave. Eventually, the girls will be out of school, and I’ll want to do more traveling than my vacation time allows. But I will always be a part of BiggerPockets, probably still doing most of what I do now, just not getting paid for it in a formal setting.
But every week, I receive a letter from someone, thanking me and BiggerPockets for what we do. “You changed my life.” is one of the most common sentences we hear. So not only do I love my job, but people are benefitting from my work every day. That’s a powerful feeling.
And my girls are in school 35 hours per week, 40 weeks per year. I work 40 hours per week, 48 weeks per year. The majority of the time that I am working, they’re in school. I’m not missing anything. My work is flexible enough to allow me to leave to attend the older girl’s cross country meets, volunteer in the classroom as needed, and even go on field trips.
I guess I can label these “Mindy Notes” now, right?
Here is what you’re not going to learn from me
- Living on the 4% Rule. We don’t have to – at least not yet. And when we do, we’ll be doing it with more money and later in life when there is less risk.
- How to transition from saving to spending: This is difficult for many and we don’t have to do it yet. We’re fortunate enough to still have excess money, so we’re still in saving mode.
- Health insurance. We’re very fortunate to have great health insurance through Mindy’s job. When Mindy leaves, we’ll go on Liberty HealthShare which will cost about $500 per month.
Our path is similar to lots of other FIRE bloggers. MMM himself barely monetizes his blog, but because of immense traffic, he earns more from blogging that he did as a software developer. There is a lot of money to be made in writing about not spending money.
So I’m not the real-time FIRE experiment that I had hoped to be, but there are still lessons you can learn from my example.
What You Can Learn From Me
-$60,000 to $2,160,000: Compounding Is Where It’s At
My story was in the New York Times and FIRE stories are always polarizing. One comment I read was this:
This guy had a 6-figure income. Whatever.
It’s true. However, it was at the end of my career when most typically have the highest earnings. When I started working almost 20 years ago at my first real job, I made $36,000/year (about $54,000/year in today’s money). I also had $60,000 in college and credit card debt. I worked very hard for years to build my career.
While I’m very thankful for the above average income at the start of my career and the exceptional income at the end, I’m even more thankful that I was born in a place that allowed me to make something of myself. I put in a lot of 80-hour weeks over the course of my career and I was fortunate to work for managers who recognized me.
Perhaps the main lesson in what I’ve done has to do with one of the most basic of personal finance lessons, compounding. As of today, my net worth sits at $2,160,000. Mindy and I haven’t made anywhere near that amount of money. Go compounding go!
Passion Play Pay
I hate the word retirement because it means ceasing to do something. FIRE may be about quitting your job, but it’s not about quitting work. A job is work plus all of the stuff around it like a boss, a schedule and a shitty vacation policy.
The point of leaving your job isn’t to cease doing work, but rather to leave so you can do your best work. And work is best when it’s optimized for happiness, not money. For me, it’s writing and building stuff around the house. Here is what a typical work day looks like for me now:
Your ideal work may be volunteering, welding, coding or painting. It isn’t watching TV. If you’re leaving your job to do that, don’t. You’re better off at work.
When you optimize work for happiness instead of money, peculiar things can happen. My happy work started making money. And it did the same thing for my wife. The reason for this is simple:
When you do work optimized for happiness, you do your best work. You do the work you were meant to do deep down. This is the work that makes your soul sing and leaves you satisfied at the end of the day.
And when you’re doing your best work, people take notice. In my case:
- Blogging: My writing resonated with some crazy people who started following me.
- Building: This week, I was out farting around in the garage when a stranger stopped by and asked who did the work on my home. When I told her that I had done it, she asked me if I could remodel her home. This happens frequently. I put a lot of time into my home and get compliments almost weekly.
What is your best work?
Maybe you like woodworking and your neighbors start paying you for custom cabinetry.
Maybe you can play an instrument and parents at your children’s school start knocking down the door for lessons.
Maybe you can weld and folks start paying you to make metal animals like my neighbor:
I’m embarrassed to admit this but screw it. Sometimes when I write and come up with something that I think is really good, I tear up out of happiness. I enjoyed my work as a software developer, but I was never overcome with emotion by manipulating ones and zeroes. Writing is so great.
So, if there is something you can take away from Mindy and me, it is this:
FIRE may open doors that you never even knew existed. Do your best work and don’t be surprised when it takes you to unexpected places.
The early retirement police may call you out for making money, but if you’re doing what you love, who cares what anyone else thinks.
Life isn’t what I thought it would be in retirement; it’s much better. I’m so thankful.
This too:
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*Only if your life is pretty bad to begin with.
Making even minuscule amounts of money from something besides my W2 job, especially an artistic endeavor, give me thrills. It’s addicting. For me that’s one of the greatest joys of being FI
Yep, me too. It’s always fun to make money, but much more fun when you’re doing work you actually enjoy.
How do you like the air fryer? I have been thinking about getting one, but I don’t know anyone who has one.
I LOVE the air fryer. I was worried that it would be a gimmick, but now we use at least 3x per week. It works awesome for tofu, but we also use it for potatoes, chicken nuggets (kids) and bloomin’ onions. We have this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K1QQ2QI/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
LOVE the air fryer.
Thanks for sharing this. My hope is that following this FI path will open up opportunities I hadn’t considered and that’s exactly what happened to you.
Yep. You’ll be amazed. If you work hard at something that you believe in, you may find that it’s hard to fail.
Uh oh Carl watch out! The trolls will be out in full force since you mentioned the forbidden phrase “Liberty health share”. I’ve getting flack for that recently.
On the other hand, I am SO GLAD you started writing. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you and Mindy better and (for better or for worse) look to you as role models. You aren’t perfect and you make that imperfection ok 🙂
Ha, Liberty is always a flashpoint! “There is a million dollar limit per incident!” “It’s not traditional insurance!!”
Not worried.
Thanks so much for the kind comments Gwen! It has been great getting to know you too!
It didn’t work out like you planned. It’s even better! I love it.
FIRE really opens up a world of possibilities. You have a lot more time to figure out what you can do. Life is full of uncertainties. Why not embrace the uncertainties instead of avoiding them? You’ll run into them anyway. You guys are doing really well.
THIS!! ->>> “Why not embrace the uncertainties instead of avoiding them?”
love this and your approach. For us it’s not about retirement, it’s about fulfillment. And it sounds like you’ve got that in spades!
Exactly. It’s taking life to the next level. And it definitely doesn’t involve increased TV or Cheetos!
For us, it involves the occasional Cheeto 🙂
Good read, not all paths are set in stone. I think adapting/changing along the way makes it great and a bit less predictable.
FIbythecommonguy recently posted…Dividend Income Update – August 2018 (+684.32)
Yep. Stasis is no fun. Neither is having the next 10 years of your life planned out.
Today I feel so far from the FIRE goal. We had such a lovely weekend and I really didn’t want to spoil the mood by coming in to work this morning. We were in such a nice groove. One day (and I hope compounding continues to be friendly over the next decade) I’ll have a sizable stash to quit this job and work on (or figure out!) my dreams/passions instead full time, not on the occasional weekends throughout the year.
I also love how your house looks, and if we ever decide to change ours, I’d use your photo above for a reference for ideas. It looks so clean and pretty. 🙂
Figuring yourself out is definitely half the fun, if not more, Once you don’t have to think about money, you open up mental bandwidth. It sounds like you’re already well prepared, so I doubt it will be an issue for you.
Thanks for the kind comments on the house. I kind of made it up as I went along, but I’m happy with how it turned out! I love thinking about this stuff, so let me know if you need help!
“so let me know if you need help!”
I will, thank you! 🙂
Thanks for the NYT link. Hadn’t read the article yet. You are famous!
Frugal Professor recently posted…Financial Update – Aug 2018
Famous!? Ha! Maybe for 5 minutes, but probably less than that in the modern day.
“There is a lot of money to be made in writing about not spending money.” HA!! This cracked me up!
I write about not having stuff (and thus not spending money on it). These sorts of scale-down-you-will-be-happier blogs are so unlike the aspirational lifestyle blog crap out there (and so much better for health/planet/wallet). Thanks for what you do (both of you).
Awe, thanks Marcia, really appreciate it. We may be out in your neck of the woods again soon and hope to see you. I know I mentioned it before, but please look us up when you make it to Colorado.
No plan survives unmodified huh? Well isn’t that the truth.
I once had grand plans to own a businesses and escape from corporate work. But here I am today — not calling myself “retired”, writing my blog, being a SAHD, and building stuff.
Instead of owning a small business, I just own small bits of very large businesses. This way definitely takes less time. 🙂
It’s a different life than I planned, but I can’t complain. Life is pretty darn great.
Mr. Tako recently posted…August 2018 Dividend Income And Expenses
“It’s a different life than I planned, but I can’t complain. Life is pretty darn great.”
Yep. 🙂
I think this is one of your best posts yet.
I’m looking at pulling the pin on my job in 3-5 years, so I’m starting to look ahead to how I’ll want to spend my days. Posts like this resonate with me – you both sound so darned happy!
Thanks Frogdancer. Life is amazing. I’d say that right now, I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. It took a while to find a balance, but it’s so good now that I’ve found it.
i’ve been practicing what my retired life might look like on my paid time off. i was just off a week and was disappointed in myself that i didn’t hike/run/exercise more but need to be more forgiving of that. the only pressure is from me and that i’ll write about it. y’know what i’m figuring out? i am drawn to cooking/serving/hosting/teaching. a couple of friends came to our cabin for dinner and i couldn’t wait to cook for them. i like teaching others what i’ve learned from success and failure. i might take a one week staycation later this year to work on the same things from home. i still have yet to figure out how to write more consistently while away from home. nice article you’ve written here.
freddy smidlap recently posted…Tiny Retirement Practice- Days 1 and 2
“i was just off a week and was disappointed in myself that i didn’t hike/run/exercise”
I look at this another way. You were so damn busy that couldn’t fit it in. That means you’ll do very well in life post-job.
Thanks freddy for the kind comments.
Great post and love the home remodel! Can you share the color/material of the siding? We’re considering residing our vinyl-sided home and we came across Hardee board which is quite expensive. Looking for more frugal options. Many thanks!
We used this for the material: https://www.homedepot.com/p/SmartSide-8-in-x-144-in-Textured-Strand-Lap-Siding-28869/202057810
It’s durable and a lot easier to work with than the concrete stuff. I’ll post the paint codes here when I find them in a day or so.
I think making money doing what you love is one of the amazing benefits of FIRE. When you can retire from what is mostly a money job it opens up passion jobs, which it sounds like writing is for you. Congrats! I have always balanced money jobs with passion jobs, and as we get closer to FIRE (we have enough for Lean FIRE but not the Fat FIRE life we’d want) it’s very satisfying to be able to do more of the passion jobs. Thanks for sharing your journey!
“Blogging: My writing resonated with some crazy people who started following me”
Heeeey, I resemble that remark!
And this honest blog post is a reason why I love reading what you write.
You two give me hope that once I’m done with the daily grind, I too will find a grove… I worry that I will feel aimless because I don’t seem to have an all consuming passion that I’m running to. I am still mostly running away from corporate drudgery. Hopefully once I have more time to breathe, I will follow my rabid curiosity about random things and inclination to help people, and see where it leads…
This is why most people who become FIRE will probably generate income! A group of people who want to save and live life will probably get into some kind of hobby and become skilled at it. Easier to become skilled when you have an extra 40 stress-free hours. “Working” say 10 hours a week tutoring kids at 2x your old salary is much better than working 40 hours at your normal salary surrounded by bureaucracy.
Oh, btw, how is the air fryer? Been hearing good things and that onion does look pretty nice.
Your comment about living on the 4% rule really struck a nerve with me. When I quit my job I didn’t have a blog income or anything else other than the 4% rule. I was really uncomfortable with withdrawing from my nest egg. Then unplanned orthodontia, dental bills, and other one time things popped up. The first year was more like 6%. I also realized I’m going to have to partially fund my mother’s retirement or else let her work until she dies. I got cold feet and went back to work at a startup. Was fun at first, but now I hate it. The work is challenging and interesting but the bullshit has started to creep back in. Looking for an excuse to leave now. I think like you and Mrs 1500, I need to find that happy medium of just enough income but not a real job doing something on my terms. Need to take a leap of faith and just go for it instead of falling back to the “safe” but miserable route.
Awesome article Carl. I really enjoyed reading it before bed tonight. Wow. I know exactly what you mean. Life after FIRE can be even more fun and there really is a way to make money whilst doing something you enjoy. Loved the article.
Thanks Alan! It was inspiring hearing you talk about all of the crazy ways your students have made money. Smoke grenade sponsorship?!! 🙂
Writing is a serious life hack. Putting your thoughts out there is so clarifying. On top of that, if you do it long enough money might just come along. I think we kid ourselves with this safe withdrawal nonsense. Most of us are way below 4% when you factor in our “unexpected” income.
The haters about the NYT article just made me go back and review what I made from the time I joined the Army as a teenager until the time I got out. The following is straight from the SS website. I got married in ’92 and had a kid in ’93. Yeah, I certainly got here due to all that money I had rolling in….
1996 $20,944
1995 $19,015
1994 $18,393
1993 $16,114
1992 $14,181
1991 $12,475
1990 $11,157
1989 $9,470
1988 $7,070
Granted, I’ve done pretty well the past 21+ years, considerably better than those 8+ years, but I loved that one bedroom apartment for $350 a month, as well as knowing it was just me and my wife (and daughter) against the world. Wouldn’t have traded it for anything and it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t have any other options….
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I’ve said it for years-if you have what it takes to put together a million bucks early in life, you’ll continue to generate some level of income in “retirement.” Productivity is tough to turn off.
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Enjoyed seeing you featured in the NYT article. Don’t sweat the haters. You set an ambitious goal a long time ago, worked hard, stuck to the plan, and saw the power of investing and compounding take place.
Freedom 40 Plan recently posted…Hacking 10 or More Years off Your 30 Year Mortgage
This is so timely! I’m leaving my 9-to-5 in exactly 30 days. By that point, we’ll have paid off our student loans (eek!) and we’ll have the freedom for me to jump ship. I grew my freelance writing side hustle over the last year and it’s finally making enough money to replace my full-time income. Crazy, right??
It feels like I’m retiring, even though I don’t meet my definition of FIRE (being able to live off of passive income and not to mandatory work). My work will still be mandatory, but I’m the complete master of my time and schedule. I’m going to really love having the flexibility to live *like* I’m retired. 😉
This just might have been a post that teared you up a little!?! Congrats on the NYT article and your TV news coverage – so great! Most importantly, it’s so nice to see you’ve found your FI groove. Can’t wait to see you guys soon (maybe in Longmont next week, but definitely at FinCon)!
You do have a beautiful home, something about that wrap around porch appeals to me!
It’s an interesting turn of events you’ve experienced. I suspect many people hitting FIRE will experience something similar. It’s amazing what happens when you no longer need to work for money. All sorts of interesting opportunities seem to fall into your lap.
Owen @ PlanEasy.ca recently posted…Keep Things Simple: Create A Routine For Your Finances
Great article from Mr 1500. You never know what the future holds, so just be your best you and see what happens.
A very interesting story of unintended consequences doing something you love. Well done! Thank you for sharing.
I agree with you on the “Retirement” word- even if Mr. MM doesn’t. Retirement has a connotation of no longer working at anything at all, and living off of your pension or residual income. Financial independence indicates that you can do whatever you damn well please- including working at something that you love, though it may pay less than your “real” job. If you can get paid for doing work you enjoy or love and will bring value to someone else, then why not? Its like finding a coin on the ground- are you gonna just walk over it? Or pick it up, because you might as well? No one would say a retired person picking up money just sitting there on the ground makes them a fake “retiree”.
I’m just starting on your blog, I’ve had it on my radar for a few months now, but have been working through Mindy’s stuff on Bigger Pockets and her podcast (love it, BTW, can you please tell her keep up the good work?).
“It’s like finding a coin on the ground- are you gonna just walk over it?”
Funny enough, this is the exact same analogy that I use! Hilarious!
Thank you for the kind comments, much appreciated.
And Hawaii? Love it there. Come on Southwest, please start flying there soon!!!