Took Monday Off But Now I’m Back

So, there was no post yesterday, not because I’m lazy but because there was a lot going on. Not that I’m not lazy, but I just wasn’t yesterday. You understand.

As most of you know, I’m going through a rough patch in my life and having to sort of take a step back to examine where I’m headed. That means I had a big decision to make between two job offers, both of which were a cut in terms of pay but one allowed me to keep working from home. Unfortunately, that’s the job that came with the biggest cut.

That being said, I went with it.

After comparing each point of both jobs in an Excel spreadsheet and weighing the pros and cons, trying to ignore the ease of just working from home as a factor and paying more attention to the pure facts, the answer became clear.

Clear, that is, assuming I work steadily to create a decent side business. As that’s been my intention for a long time coming anyway, it really made sense and is just the fire I need to get going with it. Even if that means starting small.

And actually, the offer isn’t as bad as it was previously. After some more back-and-forth, I was able to decrease the damage from around 38% down to about 35%. That means I’ll be able to take more advantage of my upcoming 401(k). It also means there’s less of a gap to bridge in terms of side income earnings. The amount isn’t laughable, but every bit I can shave off the distance helps.

Good Listening

In other news, Mad Fientist released his new podcast recently, which I listened to almost immediately. I’m listening to it again right now, in fact. So good. In this episode, he rapped about financial independence, early retirement and geographic arbitrage with Ed Mills from The Millionaire Educator. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was just out of Fientist podcasts for a while or if it was just a particularly interesting episode, but I found this episode the most inspiring by far. Ed Mills apparently started out 40k in the hole after going to grad school, then got to zero net worth at 35.

In other words, he started on his FI journey at 35. It took him a few years after that — I think when he was 37 or 38 — to hit the $100k mark, and then it just kept going up from there. The kicker, though, is that he and his wife did this as teachers.

Did you hear that? Teachers.

So many of us are ahead of the game in this respect. I know a couple of people in our community who are in their early 20s who have hit $100k net worth. To think that someone in their late 30s could hit that number, but then just consistently hit goal after goal is such a great example to the rest of us. One, that someone could do that in such a short time (I think he and his wife achieved FI within 15 years), and two, that he and his wife were on the same page for so long to the point where they achieved what we’re all after. And they did it all as teachers.

Just … wow.

The Library

Another thing I’m excited about is learning about my local library’s collection of audio books. For a long while before I cut back on some unnecessary expenses in my life, I was paying $14.95/month or about $180/year for Audible. It’s a great service, but just unnecessary for me. So I put it on pause to make it easier to use up the credits that are just sitting there without accruing more in the meantime. Then I come to find out that my local library has a very similar service and it’s all free!

So now I can have my cake and eat it too.

Oh, and did you know that there’s this other service the library offers? It’s sort of like Netflix but offline. Apparently you can borrow actual books from this place, and as long as you don’t keep them too long, you don’t have to pay anything. I know, I know. I was blown away by it too.

Just keep that between me and you. We don’t want everyone to find out.