The Financial Independent

By this point, I’m sure some among you are wondering, “Who the hell is this guy claiming to be financially independent and yet can’t stop running his mouth about spending money?”— well, I’m not above flexing my bona fides, dear reader.

I knew I had really made it when I paid off my school loans in one fell swoop.

I went to college as most well-to-do people my age did, and like them, I graduated no less than fifty thousand dollars in debt. Goddamn. While I did get a standard issue corporate job (insurance), it was far from high paying. You’d get two measly paychecks a month: the first paid for rent and the second paid the debt, food, electricity, internet, etc. etc. and at the end of the day, there’d be hardly anything “extra” left. So far, so bad as early retirement backstories go.

Well friend, I had one trick up my sleeve: fuck this job— the one simple trick that all those internet ads are trying to tell you. There’s the unfortunate reality that you have to pay your dues before you get to command the pay of a respected member of society; for me, it took a grueling two years. With those two years of relevant experience to my name, I could prove to recruiters that I wasn’t a complete dunce, and I made it clear to said recruiters that I was going to take the offer that paid the most. So push came to shove: I played those companies against each other, and I took an offer for an annual salary a little over $100k. Hardly the sexiest offer I’m sure, but you should know this was about a year after the bottom of the Great Recession^[1]. People were still fairly tight-fisted even then. More intriguing than the annual salary, though, was the signing bonus: forty thousand dollars just to take the offer. Uh, heck yes! … And that’s how I ended up in a new city, far from home, with more dollars than sense.

It was around this time that I stumbled upon the-man-the-myth-the-legend himself… Mr. Money Mustache (it was only with the hindsight of writing this blog that I learned that MMM started just a few months prior), and I learned that I should be “SOCKING AWAY $5000 PER MONTH”^[2]. Alright, MMM, game on. So between the payments I had already made earlier, my own meager savings I had managed up until that point, and that fat fat signing bonus: I had wiped out all my loans after 2 weeks of work. Looking back, I wanted to see how I stacked up against the ideal in that first year: I earned $73k (post-tax & 401k), and I spent $29k, not even $4000 per month, what a wimp. Even more importantly than paying off my debts, I had landed on a bigger goal: acquire so many assets that I’d never have to work again.

As a good little acolyte I partook in all the conventional FIRE advice to avoid getting on the Hedonic Treadmill^[3]. I had a used car that I bought for cash, but I ultimately didn’t use it much. I walked to work, yes, even when it rained. I did have roommates for a time, and while that does save money on rent, you really lose on all of the other shared expenses. My roommates would just piss through electricity at an astounding rate. Part of the problem is everyone had a space heater in their room: the absolute worst way to heat a space financially, but they were too sheepish to just raise the thermostat on that nicely efficient natural gas furnace. The other annoyance was food: my god, you’d think meat was actually manna from heaven. Literally every meal, they have some kind of meat, and not some cheap-ass chicken thighs or some such: one guy had a weekly prime rib dinner. Did I mention we were all in college or recent college graduates? And we all split the costs evenly. So after a couple of years of fussing with that crap, I bowed out and got my place. I paid more true, but the peace of mind was unbeatable.

Now, for the typical American, this still doesn’t quite explain how I ended up a fatty. You would look at those paltry figures and guffaw: no one saving such small sums would end up a multimillionaire… and you would be completely wrong. In fact, if I had only invested the same $44k per year for the last 12 years, with a real return on the order of 4%… I’d have EIGHT million dollars. But, alas, I’m an idiot. Especially when it comes to investments. No joke, my bad investment strategies could be a post all their own, but I will summarize my acquired wisdom as “fuck real estate”. And so despite investing far more than that over these years, I only have $2.5 million to my name: someone play a tune on the world’s tiniest violin.

But you know what’s cooler than 100k per year? 200k per year! Every job I worked kept activating my trap card: fuck this job. Every time I got some new position, and that would bump my pay a little more, it dawned on me that I had been dramatically undervaluing my time. I asked for 120k, got it, no questions asked; the next job, 150k … “no problem”. Then 200k… literally no recruiter or manager ever pushed back, so I had to think: everyone else must already be making bank if it’s this easy. And ultimately, this is why despite not needing it, I’m still so seduced by the money from my current job, which on my latest W-2 reported a whopping $575k (that I will admit took a little cajoling).

By embracing frugality, annihilating my debts, and some shamelessly hustling, I’ve built myself an unshakable financial fortress, and you can too! While I faced my share of BS along the way, and making (many) investment mistakes, I remain firmly on the path to earlier retirement on my own pace, and the journey to financial independence has taught me the value of my own time, so much so I want it all to myself!

Questions / Comments, feel free to reach out to TheFinancialIndependent@gmail.com. Cheers!