The past year has been a wild ride and I think it’s high time that I updated this neglected blog with what life has looked like, where we are at now, and what it all means going forward.
Since this is going to be long, below is a bulleted list of high-and-low-lights – if you have any questions or want to know more about any parts of it let me know in the comments:
- May 2019:
- We are living in coastal New England with a 1.5 yr old, in an affordable house but that lacks space for making / doing projects especially in the cold northeast winters.
- I am working as a financial controller for a division, mostly working from home in a high stress job but that pays well.
- My work contacts me about a new job opportunity to be a finance director for a division, but I must relocate to Dallas, TX. This relo part isn’t very appealing, but I go through the interview process.
- My wife and I discuss/debate relocation… we originally moved to our current town/state to be near family.
- I nail the interview and had plenty of internal support from my current boss. I get offered the job while traveling out of state for business. I call my wife, in that moment we made a quick decision to tell them we’ll relocate for 1 year but then have to move back (this was a huge mistake. My wife felt pressure that if she didn’t go along with this I’d resent her – the mistake was mine. I should have slowed down and thought about how this impacted our life and happiness not just our FIRE number).
- Job is offered, I accept after negotiating a salary of $170k/yr + a 30% variable bonus ($51k +/- based on personal and company performance). The company pays relocation one way, and I have to maintain my employment with them or I have to pay it back prorated over 18 months (mistake #2 – having this weight over my head comes back to haunt me. I don’t like having this obligation as it constraints my freedom – it’s like a debt. I subsequently vow to never put myself in this situation again).
- We tell our families and friends. Mixed reaction.
- June 2019:
- I fly out to Dallas, TX to meet the new team including the business leaders I support and to look for where we want to live.
- I stay at a hotel. It’s hot as fuck in TX.
- Job is a mess and disorganized, but this is the part I’m good at and I dig in.
- Temporary housing kicks in, I find an apartment for us after a week of searching in Dallas as it is walkable and near parks/whole foods)
- Summer, 2019
- Wife rents out our house to tenants
- Wife and son fly out to Dallas to visit in temporary housing. I fly back and forth a couple of times. They stay in the northeast for a few weeks. Honestly I don’t recall all the details and don’t want to go look them up. It was a slog and it sucked being apart and it sucked for my wife as reality set in and we uprooted everything.
- Receive a $20,000 bonus with 1 year retention agreement as a reward for a special project I did (mistake again! I am uncomfortable with this hanging over my head… especially at the times that work doesn’t go well. And I should have stood my ground that this was a bonus for work done, and that the retention is irrelevant).
- September-ish, 2019
- We are in Dallas. I’m working late, highly stressed.
- Wife and son go to playground, walk dog, visit Dallas Arboretum, go to the Katy Trail and try to make the best of the situation.
- Apartment is noisy, but fine.
- Life is… about enduring this time knowing it is only a year (what a shitty situation to be in, fuck)
- Fall, 2019
- Technically fall doesn’t exist in Dallas, it is just hot as fuck all the time. People at work say this is the nice season….
- Work is stable locally with my team and business (and I’m actually getting kudos), but I have a blow up with my new boss. Doubt if this is the right role for me creeps in. We meet in person in 2 weeks, get it on the table, talk about how to best work together going forward.
- I’m resentful, and I hate having the relocation payback over my head and was naive that they cared about me as a person. I become more negative towards work
- We try and be frugal and from a macro standpoint we really are, but we are spending a lot of money at the excellent local bar/market: https://foxtrotco.com/stores/uptown. It is one of the only escapes after a long day, and feels normalish.
- Being on the path to FIRE this is a bit frustrating as while our income is higher our expenses are too. We’re still netting more money, but I didn’t fully understand this relationship between stress triggers and consumption. My worry about the FIRE spending aspect is an additional stress, and in retrospect really unfair to both me and my wife.
- I read “How I found Freedom in an Unfree World” by Harry Browne. A good summary is here. I think about the price to exit the “Boxes” that good ol’ Harry talks about which for me is the fact that this was a huge mistake to move to Dallas and I have too much work stress. The price is both the relocation money and the $20k bonus I had received with a retention agreement (I have to pay it back if I leave) expiring August 31, 2020, plus being locked into a monthly lease, bonus payment coming in 6 (short, ha) months. I feel trapped.
- VTSAX and the ‘stache are quietly doing their thing. Dividends paid and reinvested, market values starting to creep upwards. The unrelenting force of the American economy pushing forward.
- Wife does a great job making sure our son has as normal of a time as possible and even makes some sweet friends. She amazed me at the resilience she showed despite the shit show.
- Family visits and stays with us. Magic.
- December, 2019
- We are stressed. We are tired.
- We are using up the resilience that we have. Even now looking back we are somewhat depleted from this past year and need to build up our reserves.
- We visit my family in Vermont. Magic. We stay in the “East Wing” of my mom and step-dad’s house with a private bath. It’s small and perfect. Sitting at my mom’s kitchen counter and talking late into the night and stress fades away in those moments. I feel safe and loved and work doesn’t have the same hold for that glorious week.
- “Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified.” WHO starts to investigate.
- Q1, 2020
- We start talks with our tenants about buying our house, especially knowing that eventually it won’t be big enough for us and is already lacking in space. They are flakey, late with rent, and can’t get approved. They end up having a friend who “fell in love” with the house and is interested in buying. There are starts and stops, but we make arrangements. One less thing to deal with.
- COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, is a big fucking deal. Even personal finance bloggers write about it.
- Confirmed case of coronavirus in our apartment building. Vague descriptions from the management company that they have done or will do additional cleanings in the elevator that the individual normally uses. To get from our apartment to outside you need to open our door, go down an elevator, through a security door, then a security gate. Or… go through a set of doors, enter the parking garage and go down the 3 flights to leave the building – we usually did this to avoid running into unmasked individuals and to avoid touching anything.
- Coranavirus was not taken seriously by many and it was really uncomfortable. As cases began to grow we made our decision: it was time to get outta dodge.
- We booked flights, arranged a pod to move our stuff, I sold my car to some friends in Dallas, my wife’s car and our dog was driven home by a friend we met through Foxtrot for some hard cold $, I told my boss we needed to move back to New England ahead of schedule, and we found an inexpensive apartment to land in – in fact it’s the college apartment my wife and some of her friends lived in that we got on a month-to-month (with 2 month notice) basis for $1,100 a month. While we still had to pay rent in Dallas for a few more months it was well worth it to get out when we could (one of the powerful moments of working towards FI – we can do this).
- We keep investing in the 401k and have saved up some cash with the idea of buying our next home and to have some flexibility. The stock market doesn’t know what to do with itself:
- April, 2020
- Bonus is paid out. We invest.
- We make our move back! The morning we were leaving I brought the last of our items to the Pod – luckily our friends at Foxtrot market (notice a theme?) let us park it in their lot – and when I went to shut it the metal door jammed… all of our stuff inside, a flight we had to leave for shortly, and I couldn’t shut the door to our pod. I considered leaving all our stuff or trying to cancel our flights, or… I don’t know. But then I took a big breath, and carefully worked the metal door, pushing and pulling, straightening, and then… it came free! That was the last challenge Dallas gave us. From there we headed to the airport, flew home and landed in Boston where our family had met us with a car to borrow.
- May, 2020 – Current
- We sell our house to the friends of the tenant. We invest.
- We settle in a bit. A couple of weeks of quarantine and things are as normal as possible during this covid craziness.
- Social distance visits with some friends and family.
- Work has a voluntary part-time program. I apply for it and my boss originally accepts. They then change the program, remove me from part time and deliver me and everyone else at my grade and above a 10% pay cut as part of covid response initiatives for a couple of months… I tasted that extra freedom I thought I’d get.
- We exhale a little bit, and we start slowly recovering from the past year’s disruption, but I think we all have some open wounds from the stressful times. We are ready to put down roots.
- We ride on our bikes, go for a lot of walks, and swim in the ocean. We start planning again.
- Housing has gotten more expensive and it is a seller’s market with limited housing inventory and a lot of competition. We look at a few houses, but so far nothing great.
- I started a keto diet and lost some weight – down to 246 lbs as I type this from 274.4 lbs from my last update, not all since I started keto but definitely the last 15 lbs or so. Update on Nov 30: I’ve now changed things up, have continued to lose weight and began regular lifting/biking. Things are looking up!
- When the dust has all settled from an expensive year triggered by stress spending, extra expenses from paying double rent in two states for a few months, plus a 10% pay reduction these last few months, how did we fare financially? Let me just leave this here:
- Net worth as of 12/31/19: $734,888 (up $262k vs 12/31/18)
- As of today (July, 2020): we’re up almost another $100k since year end, fueled by the year-end bonus, high salary overall, some nice investments on the dip and a core of frugality:
Holy. Shit.
- Update: I wrote this and it sat in my draft folder for months, so now it is the end of November and uh… we keep marching upwards with more contributions and more market returns, and it turns out that things are getting wild in the net worth category:
As I said…Holy. Shit.
Overall
- I learned a lot this past year, and it was really hard. But I’m still learning and growing as a person, and things are looking better than ever.
- My biggest lesson I’ve learned is to not put financial/work expectations above my family/health needs.
- I’m back! I want to keep this blog much more updated – I have many draft articles and ideas to write about as I continue this Life project and work towards the happiest life I can design.
PS – Did I mention it’s hot in Dallas?
