Hi everyone:
I've been lurking these forums for a while. Guess it's time to do a formal introduction.
My wife and I are both in our early 40s. We've been planning a move to the Toronto area for a couple of years now. A major part of the plan finally became reality: we found a buyer for our house and just signed the contract last night. Now we're faced with the big leap forward
My current assumption is that we can live on roughly $40k per year, after tax of course. That includes living expenses (food/fuel/kids) and rent. We should be able to cover that with dividends generated from our portfolios.
I would feel a lot better if we have some sort of income from jobs that can cover our expenses, and not needing to rely solely on our investments.
On top of that, dear SO is not 100% comfortable with the retirement income plan. Every time I speak to her about the dividend scheme, she reminds me about the dividend cuts by the banks. I'd have to say she does have a point, that one is never certain about how the future pans out. I don't think more time spent on my part in analyzing my stocks could have really predicted what happened last year. Just look at all the top notch value investors that got burnt by their bank holdings. (And no, my portfolio is not 100% financials, but the problem with dividend investing in Canada is that a lot of the high yield stocks are banks.)
So the compromise solution now is for me to keep my job in the states, and have her move back with the kids this summer. I would move after she's found something. Not something I'd look forward to, but according to my dear SO, it's the "sensible thing to do". The darn thing is I'm tending to agree with her on it.
I'm hoping to get her more involved in our finance next year. At the minimum I want her to get a better handle on how our inflows and outflows look like. When we used to put everything on Quicken, she was a lot more involved. But alas the kids took priority over the last few years, and we just didn't have the time to do that any more.
But back to something perhaps more relevant for the FIRE crowd: how do you cope with the uncertainty? Is there something that you did that helped you manage the fear before the leap? (I know I know, having a couple of jobs is anything but certain, especially in an environment like these days.) I imagine the fear of FIRE will go away after living it for a while, so could any one share how long it took for this dreadful feeling of change to go away?
And I imagine someone will tell me that I can't get over the fear until I go for it
Thanks for listening and best of luck to all.
I've been lurking these forums for a while. Guess it's time to do a formal introduction.
My wife and I are both in our early 40s. We've been planning a move to the Toronto area for a couple of years now. A major part of the plan finally became reality: we found a buyer for our house and just signed the contract last night. Now we're faced with the big leap forward
My current assumption is that we can live on roughly $40k per year, after tax of course. That includes living expenses (food/fuel/kids) and rent. We should be able to cover that with dividends generated from our portfolios.
I would feel a lot better if we have some sort of income from jobs that can cover our expenses, and not needing to rely solely on our investments.
On top of that, dear SO is not 100% comfortable with the retirement income plan. Every time I speak to her about the dividend scheme, she reminds me about the dividend cuts by the banks. I'd have to say she does have a point, that one is never certain about how the future pans out. I don't think more time spent on my part in analyzing my stocks could have really predicted what happened last year. Just look at all the top notch value investors that got burnt by their bank holdings. (And no, my portfolio is not 100% financials, but the problem with dividend investing in Canada is that a lot of the high yield stocks are banks.)
So the compromise solution now is for me to keep my job in the states, and have her move back with the kids this summer. I would move after she's found something. Not something I'd look forward to, but according to my dear SO, it's the "sensible thing to do". The darn thing is I'm tending to agree with her on it.
I'm hoping to get her more involved in our finance next year. At the minimum I want her to get a better handle on how our inflows and outflows look like. When we used to put everything on Quicken, she was a lot more involved. But alas the kids took priority over the last few years, and we just didn't have the time to do that any more.
But back to something perhaps more relevant for the FIRE crowd: how do you cope with the uncertainty? Is there something that you did that helped you manage the fear before the leap? (I know I know, having a couple of jobs is anything but certain, especially in an environment like these days.) I imagine the fear of FIRE will go away after living it for a while, so could any one share how long it took for this dreadful feeling of change to go away?
And I imagine someone will tell me that I can't get over the fear until I go for it
Thanks for listening and best of luck to all.