Cool story about our family's early retirement on the local news

[FUEGO]

I had a news crew come out to the house a couple weeks ago to interview me about early retirement. It turned out pretty well I thought. Article and video at this link.

They didn't get every single fact right but it was pretty fair toward us and the FIRE movement overall.

We no longer have a mortgage but do still live in what many would consider a starter home ("only" 1800 square feet and not in a luxurious neighborhood).

I think they conflated "eating most meals at home" and "only owning one car" with a strict budget. We do have a "budget" of $40k/yr but that's mostly for planning purposes and we tend to underspend it anyway (and actively try to spend more!). Not exactly "strict", but I get how it appears to most high-spenders.

 

[Walt34]

Great! It shows that "it can be done".

 

[Sunny]

Nice! Looks like they did a fair job.

Off topic, but it peaked my attention when they said you made some money you don't count on for your blog of 100k page views a month. I used to have a blog (about a game) that averaged 60k page views a day and didn't really make that much off of it. Maybe I did something wrong, lol. It floored me that many people would read my stuff, article comments were usually only 30-60 people though.

 

[jazz4cash]

You have a beautiful family.

 

[Teacher Terry]

Good article. With your doubling of your money you can easily have enough money even if you live to 100. One of the people said you may run out of money. I don’t think they can do math)

 

[RunningBum]

I'm amazed to see the same anchors at WRAL that were there in the 90s.

 

[FUEGO]

Off topic, but it peaked my attention when they said you made some money you don't count on for your blog of 100k page views a month. I used to have a blog (about a game) that averaged 60k page views a day and didn't really make that much off of it. Maybe I did something wrong, lol. It floored me that many people would read my stuff, article comments were usually only 30-60 people though.

Wow, you would think with 60k pageviews/day just some basic display advertising like they have on this site would make you a good bit of money. I was getting $2-3 per 1000 pageviews with Google Adsense and have since switched to a higher quality advertising network and get $10-20 per 1000 pageviews now. Plus I have a couple of affiliates like Personal Capital and credit cards that make another $1000+ on average each month.

Note to the detractors: all the blog income stats are fully disclosed on the blog. I think I was at a net of $28-30k on my schedule C in the past 2 years and it'll be a little lower but pretty close in 2018. Yes - that provides a big part of my $40k/yr spending but I don't spend much time on it. Maybe I'm retired, maybe I'm not

You have a beautiful family.

Thanks! We cleaned up purty for the camera.

Good article. With your doubling of your money you can easily have enough money even if you live to 100. One of the people said you may run out of money. I don’t think they can do math)

Yeah, no kidding! Our $35k average spend was under 3% withdrawal rate on our original $1.2 million. It's still around 2% even with the recent market drop.

I'm amazed to see the same anchors at WRAL that were there in the 90s.

Yes - David Crabtree and Greg Fishel have been there forever. I remember going to Greg's house as a kid selling stuff in the Boy Scouts and he was "old" way back then!

 

[MrsHaloFIRE]

I'm amazed to see the same anchors at WRAL that were there in the 90s.

agree!!!

 

[Teacher Terry]

I work online about 10 hours a week and consider myself retired.

 

[footenote]

Love it

 

[omni550]

Enjoyed the article.

Thanks for uncloaking. Nice to see you and your beautiful family. Keep up the good work!

omni

 

[Lakewood90712]

Excellent !



P.S. Suze Orman is putting together a team to confront you on camera and do an intervention . Your family ER success is screwing up her new book sales.

 

[USGrant1962]

Great feature.

Loved the ending with "Saving is the new spending"

I (and DW) sort of fell into that as natural LBYM folks. We hope to pass that on to the boys.

 

[Huston55]

Quote from the newscast: “Saving is the new spending.”

I love it!

 

[Scuba]

Excellent !



P.S. Suze Orman is putting together a team to confront you on camera and do an intervention . Your family ER success is screwing up her new book sales.

[emoji23]

 

[Ronstar]

Great story!

 

[Golden sunsets]

I love your blog Justin. I only wish you would post more. You have a great "writer's voice".


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[donheff]

Nice feature. I would be have been scared to death to pull the plug at 33 without a fortune. Good for you.

 

[JoeWras]

Thanks for sharing, FUEGO! I always turn down media requests. I really don't trust interviews with the media due to their habit of chopping up an interview to make a point of view. I'm glad to hear Mandy treated you well.

Bill Leslie retired recently. Also, a few other WRAL anchors actually did quietly ER in the last few years. A few others went to part time. David Crabtree is "normal" retiring soon. He will be doing more ministry work in his retirement. Deb Morgan will pretty much be #1. There are some changes ahead in the weather department as they have hired some young talent. Fish didn't announce anything yet, but I think Moss (the quiet, background backup guy) is retiring.

I've been in this market 30+ years so watching the trajectories of news people makes a good comparison to my ER.

 

[spncity]

I had a news crew come out to the house a couple weeks ago to interview me about early retirement. It turned out

Very nice.


Do you have articles and pics on your blog about building the RV? How to find?

 

[corn18]

Great story! I think it portrayed FIRE well.

Ironic that the ad they stuck at the beginning of the video was for a development called Bella Vista with houses starting in the $900's. Not the path to FIRE.

 

[Tiger8693]

Very interesting! I had (while lurking) read your comments and some others commenting about you, with interest. Going to your site answered a lot of questions for me. While I would never be able to retire with your spending (well, not until divorced ), It still provides a lot of information that could be helpful to me.

I have so much to learn about income from investments, and am researching as much as I can, especially dividends related to taxable accounts (MF vs. ETF's?).

Look forward to reading through your past articles when I am not w*rking!

 

[HFWR]

The last thing I would want is publicity...

 

[Tiger8693]

The last thing I would want is publicity...

Why? I'm sure his blog revenue will increase.....

 

[Dreamer]

We never even thought about retirement in our 20's, so there is no way we could have retired at 33. Nice story and family.