Yes I think so. if it’s at my house or I know the state of her house is acceptable.
More worried about her influence as they get older.
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Sorry, so as i was saying…
You guys did an amazing thing! You saved so much and tried so many cool things! I’m really confused about the spending and markets… you had 400k, spent 4k/month, and now have 10k? If your assets dropped by half , i still see 150k unaccounted for? And my concern there is if YOU know where it is, and if your rich life is actually 400k/year.
Based on years of internet knowing and loving you, i think that you need to budget a comfortable life, especially food wise. You cook delicious food and you need someone else to cook delicious food for you. Like me, that person is takeout. For some it is a spouse, for us it is takeout. Plus you dive deep into super cool hobbies! Each of those feels like a one off, but i think that you could figure out what you spend on hobbies in a year and average it to a monthly sinking fund.
The in laws thing - you offered a nice thing when you were in a different phase of life. Now you and in laws are both broke with some retirement money and some equity. You can’t support them unless that means they move in with you and help with chores. In my family culture we’d do that! I think in yours it means just stepping back and setting limits. You can always give MORE if your job works or if greyman magically makes more. And giving them time doesn’t seem to be helping either. Also what are plans and expectations around your parents?
I think that a structured job and maybe some adderall or alternative therapeutic approach will be emotionally and financially healthy. I spent 15 years simultaneously planning for life with and without kids. Its rough, because you want the kids option. But taking the bigger external commitments can keep you from focusing on what you dont have. And a doctor can talk to you about medication options and risks and benefits.
I’m not you so all if this will be modified to what works for you.
Concrete money short term - can you get a lone of credit and decide how much to pull whike you get a job?
Gabor Mate also looks at “why the pain” for when wr have addiction or maladaptive behaviours - i think ALL of us will have better money habits if we can figure that out.
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We started with 350k, which grew to 400k. Only 60k initially was outside of the 401k. Thinking we were like $15k a year spenders we expected the initial $60k accessible to last 4 years, maybe a bit more if we lightly side hustled. But we spent an average of 40k or a little more per year and since we weren’t smart enough to move the out of EDIT NOT 401K, REGULAR BROKERAGE INVESTMENT FUND to cash some of it was lost to the markers as well.
So now we have probably $300k in the 401k. We didn’t spend $400k in a year and a half.
I’m a little miffed and feel like I was led astray by some mmm article on the cost of taking from your 401k (one of his don’t worry you won’t run out of money articles) but now I can’t find it.
(Also some numbers are ish and based on the maximum it ever got close to so hand wavey)
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Thank goodness! It all seemed too confusing.
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Ok how fun would that be though
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Were you ever $15k/year spenders? With a 500k house just in taxes you’re probably paying 3-5k in just property taxes and that doesn’t include any life spending.
I’m excited to see how much your rich life costs after you calculate it. I would maybe do 3 categories:
Rich life light with kids and not helping in laws
Rich life light with kids and helping in-laws
Uber bougie have everything in your rich life budget.
Rich life light= everything on your list that is a STRONG desire. Maybe not the plane or all services hired out.
P.s. I love that you shared your rich life with us! I think it is incredible and it sounds like a beautiful and rewarding life and I want you to have as much of that as you can.
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Something else I want to throw out there in the being kind to yourself category… is that i know a lot of people who hit all the FIRE points but few under 40. Most of my FIRED friends did it the moderate to high paid job, low living expense route that Pete did, but they functioned in a different economy than i did, offset by about 5 years. I also know people younger than me, or my exact age who found a different loophole to exploit, but generally the cost of living benchmark has been shifting so rapidly that the honest ones can see the advantage of being where they were WHEN they were.
Were you guys trusting the bible of Pete? And that is how the assets ended up inaccessible? Now you know and you can research harder.
It has to be so ridiculously hard in the states figuring out which pieces of legislation apply to what - here you need to know rrsp rules and that’s it! Plus the minutae on the individual investments.
Another awesome thing is that according to the internet everyone is looking to hire, so you should be able to bargain for part time, make 4-6k/month and save a little
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I could do it! But i feel like thats how you turn into lottery winner who goes broke. But let’s fully imagine that rich life. Do we think my aesthetician comes every day or sleeps in my mansion?
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Definitely live in. Also live in masseuse.
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You would think but Colorado property taxes are notoriously low, especially in Colorado Springs. That year our taxes were $1400 for the year.
During mid pandemic we had no memberships, never went out to eat, meal planned exactly what we needed for the week and had very little food waste, never went anywhere or spent money on gas… This was pre-cats too.
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Yep, pretty much.
Also I already have two interviews scheduled from two emails I sent on a Friday afternoon yesterday 
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Just speaking to this part…once you’ve separated from an employer anything you contributed (or your employer contributed that was vested) in the 401k is yours. You can leave it where it is if you like the investment options, although if your employer was covering any fees those might now come to you, but it’s your money and you can make a conversation to Trad IRA if you want to. And from there you’ve got the Roth ladder you can initiate, although personally I’m watching that pretty closely because it’s one of the loopholes that keeps popping up on the chopping block (primarily on the contribution rather than conversion side, and there are some fairly high limits, but it’s something to be aware of).
For the record I don’t think withdrawing from your retirement is a great idea from what you’ve said, but you might want to start getting yourself into a position where you could some number of years down the line (not that there aren’t some downsides to traditional IRAs, especially if you’re going back to work and might want something like backdoor Roth available down the line).
Edited because conversion and conversation are two different words…
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Are you feeling like you don’t know where the money went? I’m getting that sense but I could be misreading. I was also wondering if you were ever on a $15k a year budget, like Ginja asked? I don’t recall you mentioning that kind of lifestyle in your journals; I’ve lived at that level before and it’s pretty frugal.
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With inflation I don’t know that a barebones rice and beans life would cost only $15k now.
And I don’t want a barebones rice & beans life for Grey.
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Yeah I was thinking that too- though she does have a paid off house which is a huge advantage. I think there is a way to live on $15k a year with a paid off house but it would be very bare bones and allllll DIY all the time for everything. It was a tough budget when I did it years ago and things are so much more expensive right now.
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This is good to know ahead of time and a MASSIVE red flag to me, especially combined with greyman’s belief that’s she’s manipulative.
Here’s what I see: Greyman thinks you need to set really firm financial boundaries with his parents. His parents have not actually requested you support them. You want to support them/feel like you promised to support them. It seems like you’re the only one who thinks it’s a good idea?
I do think if you try to chase down MILa receipts then she’s just going to hide them more/harder. It’s a bad bad cycle to start and you should think of ways to not get into it.
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Some big-ticket items like stuff for Greyman’s business. I impulsively said he could buy a mill after my MC, and then got into car flipping. We currently have two cars that are not yet ready for sale but were underpriced even when we bought them. (Also there’s a thing where if we sell 3 or more cars in a calendar year we need a dealers license).
The cats are wonderful and I love them and they were very expensive.
We bought a fancy new TV. We had never bought a tv before.
A lot of my end was takeout, food, not being great with not getting too much food and wasting it from leftovers or stuff that never got used or put away (ADHD tax alert!)
Our current food spending is probably like $1500 a month, which is a drastic increase from the beginning of our unemployment.
For an idea of our current fixedish monthly expenses, we spend
- 140 on internet
- 37 on trash
- 470 on insurance
- 47 on dental/vision insurance
- About 200 on utilities; not totally fixed but that’s kind of the upper end
- 452 paying for our teeth and gum procedures this year
- 141 average per month property taxes
Food I don’t really have a good grip on the price of if we were to be more reasonable. Cat food and rabbit food I also don’t have a great idea. Vet I set aside $50 a month for but have never had to get non-routine care for the cats, so it’s emergency cat savings.
I don’t really buy clothing anymore since finding Buy Nothing, but I did buy new sneakers this year.
I dunno, I feel like we got a lot for our money and some of it (like the cars) we expect to get back and then some. Just it’s gone now and I’m like oops.
Eta oh also 70 a month on a gym membership that I need to cancel because we don’t use it.
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Now that we’ve cleared up that you didn’t spend 400k last year, i don’t think anyone is that worried about the spending needing to be lower (maybe tracked or planned better). Just finding you the money to spend.
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I think other folks have already given you lots of good advice on other front. I want to say CONGRATS on this especially. I think it’s good that you’re recognizing what you want (a job! sometimes, anyway) and I hope that the interviews go well!
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Yeah, exactly this. @Greyweld it sounds like you had a lot of big ticket items (you got chickens too, I think?) but I think it can be unwise to see these as all one offs. I’d consider those your “shopping” category and it may be that yours is just really high. Your fixed expenses are obviously not the problem, but I think if you’re spending $18k a year in food that starting with a realistic rather than an idealized budget makes a lot of sense. Even if you get your food budget down by a third, which seems pretty unlikely, that’s still $12k a year without doing anything else, and with so many expensive hobbies I think there will always be big purchases that are wanted.
I think budgeting for your real life is what will get you where you want to go, and congrats on the potential job leads! That’s fantastic. IIRC you were a super high earner so I think you’ll have no problem funding a fancy lifestyle once you’re back in the game. And with a paid off house already? I think it’ll feel much easier with all that money coming in and not just drawing down on your stash month after month. You’ve got this!
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