Hi All!
it's been 1279 days since my last confession.... oh wait, that's something else.
Apparently it's been 1279 days since I've visited/posted here (at least according to the calculator that kills old threads that are more than 1269days old... or so I'm assuming).
I haven't been here for a loooong while because, well, a few different reasons.
Among those: that we've been incredibly busy, that we (I assume like most) have been a bit preoccupied with the state of world affairs/a global pandemic for the last few years, and (to be very frank) I didn't exactly receive a very warm welcome the last time I tried...
Truth be told - I forgot all about this site until I got a reminded today from someone who wrote us on the side asking questions... which reminded me why I came here to begin with.
My/our goals and aspirations remain the same as the first time I logged in/posted here a few years ago - to hopefully help those who feel slightly "outside the norm" and might have also come here looking for something different than the "standard/known" path and might be hoping to learn that there are in fact different paths available when trying to reach the same/shared destination as most here (freedom, I assume).
I promise I'll try to be as brief/succinct as possible... especially since we all (okay, those who remember this thread) know that I'm not really familiar with the forum rules, FIRE nomenclature or really FIRE in general and/or what the "standard" is... which is much of how I "did it wrong" the first time - so I won't claim to know how to do it any better this time around, but I will keep waving the white flag and walking slowly forward in hopes that my words help at least one person along the way.
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Okay, an update - so, last time i wrote here we all thought a pandemic was simply a topic for a movie that we all watch with a bag of popcorn. Oh how the times have changed!
We were personally about 8yrs into our "RE" and entering our mid40s, feeling great about our decisions and loving everything about our lives (even if we weren't yet certain we had the FI part 100% figured out yet)!
We were also just settling into life aboard a sailboat and still learning all the lessons involved - from how to sail it, to how to keep things running, how to dodge weather, how much it actually costs (which was in fact WAY more than the van we traveled in before.
As fate would have it... right about the time we started to realize that boat expenses were greater than we expected, and as we were trying get our house back home listed for sale to cover our living expenses for a few more years (while we figured things out/waited for other investments to grow) - the pandemic hit, our tenants back home struggled paying rent and the housing market shut down completely meaning our house not only didn't sell but sat empty.
Our finances/cash flow got very bad, and very quick!
For a while I started falling into old fears, occasionally thinking people that wrote us here (and everyone else we know who warned us to follow the tried/true path) may have been correct, that maybe we had left too early and were destined for failure - and if I'm honest we got pretty close to a worst case scenario financially.
We found ourselves talking about selling the boat, going back home and getting jobs again (in the middle of a pandemic) and/or starting another business.
I won't lie or sugar coat it - it was stressful to have those conversations/make those decisions... especially down to the last days before turning back home (when we were also watching hurricanes forming in the Atlantic while we were stuck/quarantined right in middle of the hurricane zone (with expiring visas), we're trying to work out/navigate getting entry to another island/country outside the zone during a global lockdown and also trying to solve our personal finances/avoid foreclosure back home).
But at some point we decided to NOT turn back home. We had reinvented ourselves a few times already and now we believed we could do it again - even if it meant starting from scratch.
This time however, we didn't have to start from scratch.
At some point we realized we didn't need to start a new business… we had started it years before and I'd already been working at it for free because I enjoyed it (even if that technically breaks FIRE rules, or so Ive been told) and I simply dove back in to try and make it more/better than it was when we left (after all, we were stuck quarantined in a foreign country, weren't allowed to leave our boat and had little else to do anyway).
For the rest of the pandemic I dove back into the business and was amazed to learn that covid had also created a massive craze in our industry/market (or at least was driving people back to what’s important- nature, freedom, travel, time with those they love, etc).
What seemed a month before to be the end of our journey suddenly turned into a ramp up of sorts. The business took off - we went from drafting letters to let our team go due to covid to within 30days taking deposits for projects a year and a half out... and all doing things I love and had already been doing for years for free because of that passion.
With the increase in work and cashflow, I started to take money from the business for the first time ever, which relaxed our financial concerns until the house back home sold. It was great, I was enjoying the time spent, we were saving money rather than spending it for the first time since we quit our jobs, and all seemed right in the world...
But over the next year or two it also became clear that while orders/income/money increased, our freedom and happiness were on an inverse curve. I suddenly felt jealous when she would be out snorkeling with others, we started planning the next island at least in part by connectivity rather than desire alone, and I started growing to resent very long hours spent doing what once again started to feel more like work than passion.
Ive been re-REing ever since... but we do now find ourselves in a far better place (financially) even than we've ever been before. Somehow during covid we restocked the 401ks we had pulled out/depleted years before. We took the cash from the house selling back home and traded it for an oceanfront condo on our favorite island overlooking an epic reef. We 1031'd a house we renovated years earlier for a 4plex with better cashflow/potential and we decided to push our fears and travel far further than we had ever planned/dreamed. We just transited the Panama Canal last week and are now prepping our boat to sail across the Pacific Ocean.
Im sure many who wrote/responded earlier would (or will) chime in and say "I told you so... you left too early and had to go work again". Others will say "its not really FIRE if youre working or worked again". Others still might claim that we just got lucky or that we are careless/reckless... but I maintain the same sentiment that I originally came here to share with others.
If you truly love what you do, Im the first to say by all means keep doing it! But if you hate the path you're on - there ARE other options and other ways to reach your goals!
Life is short. We are all already on a timeline and counting days, we just don't know the number.... but you can always make more money - but you can never buy more time.
I can tell you first hand there is nothing greater than following your passion and happiness and no greater feeling than knowing you're free to go and do what you want when you want and still be young enough to enjoy it fully.
Saving until you "hit your number" is certainly one tried and true path to get to RE... but anyone choosing that path also needs to be well aware of the risks involved (namely, that you may spend a few more decades working in order to avoid a fear of running out of money because you live too long... but in reality could die earlier than you calculated and never get to spend the money or time you had planned and worked so hard for.).
Our chosen path (of leaving early and figuring it out as we go) also has risks, no doubt! But the beauty is that we aren't risking the living part... and were young enough and able enough to figure those risks out and recover from/solve them (in this case, doing a bit of work that I loved enough to do for free earlier, all while waiting out a pandemic on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean. It could certainly have been worse).
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All of this can be criticized/debated (I'm all but certain it will be).... but the simple fact is that we each have the power to control the outcome and there is more than one way to reach success (but there isn't a second life even if you guess the timing wrong on this one)!
2years ago we lost our beloved dog and travel companion - and as much as it hurts to this day we at least know that we spent every day/hour with her and we all lived our best lives together as long as we could (she travelled to more countries than most people we've met).
To some of you that may seem ridiculous, but she was our everything and we only made it through because we still have each other.
Last year, my DW had a medical scare and it actually seemed as though I was going to lose her as well.
It shook me/us to the absolute core - but I can tell you quite clearly and honestly that in that moment (and in the days spent in the hospital after while she fought back) - I didn't once, for a single split second think about money, or our savings or insurance or how I would pay for those doctors/tests.
When that time came, literally nothing else mattered other than how we had spent our lives together (and fortunately, how we'll get spend the rest of them).
I/we never once had a single regret, because while I'm not ready (for either of us) to be done with this beautiful life - we know that we are both comfortable whenever that time comes because we've already spent more time living, truly living and experiencing our wildest dreams than we could have ever hoped if we had chosen the "other path" and it's more clear to me than ever that none of us get to control when or how our time comes.
We only get to control what we do with the days left in between!!
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Congrats on doing so well in your plans and enjoying life rather than being a corporate slave and chasing one more year.
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