A FIRE Flower

Hi FIRE Flowers!

Lately when I’ve been reading FIRE blogs I’ve been feeling impostor syndrome creeping in because other FIRE people have crystal clear numbers, plans, and goals. They know their, well, everything, with so much more clarity than I feel like I do.

I started this FIRE journey following a classic technical path with a finish line of $1.5M that will generate the $60k/year we need. Clean, clear, concise. But just over a year ago, I started to prioritize quality of life over full fire and began dabbling with coast FIRE concepts. I run scenarios and numbers and change plans and ideas CONSTANTLY! And that is something I never see happening on other blogs. It makes me feel indecisive, uncommitted, wavering, squeamish.

So I’m here today to write about it. I’m going to cast out into words my webs of thoughts and feelings and hopefully by the end of this I have more clarity on where I am going. Or maybe we will all leave here more confused.

An Idea: Full FIRE As Fast As Possible

My partner and I had both had rotten days at work. We looked up at each other from our independent hazes of misery and decided to look into when the absolute soonest we could full FIRE would be and be open to any variables needed to make that happen.

The result: we could both full FIRE in 2 years if we moved to Tennessee. Our expenses would plummet from rent and lifestyle differences between Baltimore and TN, and for an added bonus TN is a no-income-tax state so our conversions would be state-tax free! And we could both be free in two short years!

So we sat with it. We visualized a life of hiking, cooking, reading, walking around in a mid-sized college town in Tennessee near the mountains.

And it was a great image! We reveled in it for two weeks.

The biggest issue with this perfect plan was that in order to make it happen we would have to leave Baltimore. We love Baltimore. It was an enormous triumph for us to get here and the more I visualized living in TN, the more I felt little pangs in my heart to have to say goodbye to Baltimore.

It was like when you flip a coin because you swear you like both outcomes so you don’t care which side the coin will land on, but when the coin is flipping through the air you feel a dread that it will land on tails. And suddenly you know the decision is heads. Suddenly we both knew the decision was Baltimore. Taking it away felt like a sad loss. I’ve never felt strong roots to a place. I’ve never felt like I had a true home. I have one now 🙂 And I will be hard pressed to leave.

And so after two weeks of BIG THOUGHTS – The Tennessee plan was over. It was a valuable exercise to discover that we’ve found our home and that our location, as it relates to FIRE, is a fixed constant and not a malleable variable.

Revision: Baltimore Coast FIRE

Locking in on location narrows down the different levers available to create scenarios, which is great. We are getting closer! But Baltimore isn’t an inexpensive place to stay alive (worth every dollar), so it does increase the expense variable of the FIRE equation.

Last fall my partner switched career paths to become a mailman. Very cool. Very sexy uniform. And he like it much better than his corporate work! So he doesn’t necessarily need to retire As Soon As Possible anymore. This is helpful because, once we sell the condo, his income alone will cover our monthly expenses. With $700k in our retirement savings, that will grow to $1.5M in ~10 years if we don’t add another dollar so FIRE is inevitable, it’s just a matter of exactly when.

All that to say, an income from me isn’t required for our success. My income will only influence either 1. how quickly we full FIRE or 2. the size of our annual expenses in FIRE.

After location, the next largest variable that can be converted to a constant would be our Housing expense. We are renting at $2k/month. Locking in on a mortgage would eliminate future variability and the anxiety I have around that variability ha! But our apartment is awesome, and it isn’t like a NOW rush to leave it.

We’ve talked about a small condo that would be quick to pay off and has lower HOA, but Baltimore is a city of Row Homes and it would be iconic to own one someday. Note: I have homeownership anxiety so idk if this is really on the table. The condo puts me at ease to pay an HOA that will handle most of the homeownership annoyances. The direction of our housing really depends on what happens with my career, which brings us to –

Crux: I Think I Hate My Job

There is something about my job that sends my shoulders to my ears and keeps a stream of cortisol rippling through my system.

I’m good at it. Nay, I am fantastic at it! And it is exactly what I wanted to do when I grew up! Achieved! And I love playing corporate politics and building informal networks and I even enjoy most Zoom meetings!!

But I have irritations specific to my role and my team. And they are getting harder and harder to overlook. Especially as our financial foundation gets firmer by the paycheck. Here is a collection of issues:

• I firmly believe I am undervalued.
• My leadership is WEAK meaning which means they make promises that my team needs to unnecessarily scramble to complete.
• My role grew into something new, but I am still maintaining the responsibilities of my old role. Read: Two jobs for the [discounted] price of one.
• My leadership is CONNIVING meaning they reap the rewards of the teams performance and keep it for themselves.
• My team just got approval for a $5M project. In the project proposal, all the arrows flow down into the reporting structure that I single-handedly built from scratch. I am not allocated any of the budget. They are using my infrastructure to bolster themselves. BARF. And I imagine once they absolutely biff it on implementation, they will appear in my inbox looking for me to sort out their garbage.

Wow, I am steaming just having typed that haha!

So all that to say. I am thinking of quitting. And taking the summer off. And deciding what to do later. My partner’s income will cover the bills. We might run a deficit on the condo payments (but hopefully it actually sells this year), but okay. I need to generate $2k a month to cover that bill. That’s a part-time job. That doesn’t need to be another corporate $100k/yr gig. I could retire from my corporate job and get a part-time coast career. The numbers work! I could do it!

I’m struggling because it isn’t a clear and obvious green light. It’s not as clear cut as if all the accounts were to equal $1.5M. It’s murky! I have to decide it’s time. It’s hard to leave the ‘normal’ path. I’ve put in a lot of leg work into the privilege of having a cushion to be able to take this time for myself to find my next path. It makes me nervous.

But I think it feels right.

Okay, done! I think I feel better. I apologize for not being an easy FIRE blog to follow along with, but I appreciate anyone who is here listening. Thanks for the ear. I like talking to you.

See you later – maybe I’ll have a big update by next quarter! AHHHHHHH Bye!