I worked this past New Year’s Eve, so when midnight rolled around later that evening, I found myself fast asleep on my living room couch. My kids came over and excitedly woke me ten minutes before the ball drop. I stumbled over to the room where my family was watching tv and watched as the minutes counted down. Fireworks erupted on the screen. The clocks on the west coast silently crossed into 2025.

And that was it.

Another year ticked off.

A new year for a fresh start.

No matter the country, the majority of the world has agreed upon a standard measurement of time. And so the majority of the world celebrates that start of this new counting of a year together. Hours in a day. Days in a year. All based on measuring our planet’s lap around the sun. How fast it spins on its axis. Where this counting starts in our planet’s year journey around the sun probably isn’t so important. What’s important is that there’s a start and finish to this counting. Throughout the history of humanity, we’ve made many awesome achievements and technological advancements that have benefitted the way we live.

But the achievement of capturing time? Measuring it. Tracking it. Sharing it with others so that we can accomplish things together. That’s pretty cool. Time. We celebrate it. We bemoan it. Even now as I type these words and your eyes cross these letters, the time meter is ticking away mercilessly. Never going backwards, only forwards and onwards into the future.

In this era of late capitalism, it seems time has now captured us. The tables have turned. The prisoner has escaped and is wild on the loose. We rush about watching the time. The hands of the clock slicing up our days. It fuels our anxieties. We are slaves to our own creation, the clock, the day, the hour. Those chunks of time own us. We dedicate ourselves to the future using the clock. We have our own schedules and calendars dedicated to our enslavement by our master, Time.

As much as we are all dedicated to time. A few of us are really trying to escape this prison time has put us in. It’s not so much time, but the money associated with time that is the fence that keeps us in line. We must give time in exchange for money. But if you’re reading this, then you likely know the escape route: financial independence.

A week ago or so, my wife and I were giving a ride home to our nieces. The oldest of them is about to enter high school, and we were talking about how soon she would be graduating in just a few short years.

“She’ll finally be free from school. No more homework. No more waking up early.” My wife said.

Then her sister, who’s in second grade said: “No, she won’t be free she’ll have to go to work everyday. She won’t be free until she’s retired. But then she’ll be old.”

We all laughed in acknowledgement of this truth. Inside though, this hit home pretty good for me. It’s both astute and sad that even a seven year old girl knows that you aren’t truly free until you retire.

But do we really have to look at life this way?

Of course we don’t. I think the majority of our population doesn’t either. For most people, this is just life. It’s a privilege and honor to work and make money for your family. If we’re lucky enough to be born in a western democracy, free of war, that’s likely enough freedom one could ever want.

It’s really only us who are pursuing an escape, who’ve been ‘awakened’ from the matrix, that see we aren’t really free. A true First World problem. Where does true freedom start and end?

Are we really free if we can’t do what we want with our time or is that just being selfish? What are we willing to sacrifice in order to touch this freedom? Because it certainly doesn’t come without sacrifice, unless you win the lottery or are born rich.

This is what makes FIRE tough. We see the exit sign. We see the possibilities. We see that we’re trapped. Time owns us because money does. We are just searching for an equilibrium of Time and Money, and for me, that means freedom to stop working at a choosing of our own. It means taking back control of time.

2025 Money Stuff

In the personal finance department, I will be buying more bonds and international this year. December is my rebalance month, and I rebalanced into a 5% position in VBTLX (in a pre-tax account of course). Quite a bit more than I expected 5% to be, but stocks have had another crazy good year.

Here’s my portfolio asset allocation-

• 90% domestic- VTSAX and S&P 500
• 5% international – VTIAX and VFWAX
• 5% bond fund – VBTLX
• .5% cash in a HYSA collecting 3.8% – Amex HYSA

I have an ultra aggressive version of the Boglehead 3 Fund strategy. Here I still lean very heavy on domestic total stock. You can see my bond and international percentages are lower than what might be recommended by your average Boglehead. I do eventually want my domestic exposure to go down, with the other two going up, but not now.

Why so low a bond allocation at just a few years from retirement? Well, to be honest it’s less I feel the need, and more I have the ability, to take a bit more risk at this point while I have a fire hose of income pouring in.

Why more risk? To be clear, I’m still not at my “FI Number” but more to the point, I’m already acutely afflicted with one more year syndrome, why not take measured risk to have more in the tank for unexpected expenses later on? I’m flexible in my retirement date. Sure I have a target, but it’s not like I’m in my 60’s–or even late 50’s, with no time to recover should something nasty occur. It’s either relatively smooth sailing to end of 2026 and I retire, rebalance. Or something really bad happens in the economy (or life) and I keep working a few more years and retire in my late forties instead of early/mid forties.

There’s varying opinion on how someone with a pension should view bonds in their portfolio. A fixed income is half the reason for a bond allocation (the other half being volatility reduction). In this case, if I were to retire at a more traditional age, then I wouldn’t need a traditional bond percentage (20%, 30%, 40%). No, a 10% bond allocation equates to ~20% for me, since my pension could be viewed as 10% of my bond allocation. My pension will easily cover my housing, including taxes (hopefully home insurance too. But who knows what it will be in the future!)–the only risk/weakness is that it is not inflation adjusted.

But I’m not retiring at a traditional age. In this case, I will be renting out my primary home, which will net us my forecasted housing expense during full time travel. Another version of a pension, if you will.

Early retirement throws a whole new angle at why one should have bonds. The big driver for bonds for me (and rightly everyone) is a hedge against Sequence of Return Risk. Since an early retiree has a much longer time period for their portfolio to sustain, the risk of portfolio failure is increased. Bonds simply make me feel more secure at night.

The purpose of bonds would be to sell them in a prolonged bear market to allow equities to recover. I’ve toyed with the idea of a bond tent going into my early retirement. I’m still not completely set on a final bond allocation amount, but I do know it will be in the 5% to 10% range. With international in the 10%-15% range.

Since I’m two years out from retirement, I’m going to glide path my way into this range. All year long I will be funneling more money into both bonds and international.

Yes, I’m heavy on domestic. This is the allocation I’m riding into 2025 with. I have a full understanding and preparation for a correction this year. I don’t see us anywhere close to being able pull off another 20% year, but who knows. I said the same thing about 2024 and look what happened…goes to show I don’t know anything about predicting the future.

2024 was an awesome year for me and my family.

I’m certified Coast Fire…and now Lean Fire. Results of two amazing bull market years and dedicated saving and investing. With each passing week, I become more independent from needing an employer or a job. The decision I made with my wife back in 2020 to pursue financial independence has been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made as couple. I’m realizing on this journey that having money in a bank account doesn’t solve the daily struggles I encounter. It doesn’t make me deal with commute traffic any easier. It doesn’t help me get out of bed in the cold of morning to go to work. It doesn’t clean my house. It doesn’t make me and my family get along magically every minute of the day.

It doesn’t really change anything in my daily life.

What it does give me is abstract confidence.

At work, I feel more empowered to state my opinion or holdfast to a decision. It makes my dreams of the future feel more real, and less like dreams. In bed at night, when anxiety starts to creep into my mind, the sudden thought that if I were to quit tomorrow my family and I would be just fine–and if I were to work another five, ten years, I would be beyond taken care of in retirement. The mere thought of my invested portfolio value at the age of 41 gives me that fuzzy feel good assurance that I’m doing something right in life, despite all the mistakes and bad decisions I’ve made up until this point.

New Year

I don’t have a New Year’s resolution this year. I quit drinking again back in October. I started running again last December. I started regular fiction writing and submitting again last fall. Most things that would have been good resolutions, I’ve already started doing. I guess if I had one resolution, it would be to remain disciplined in my endeavors. I plan on rejoining my old sailing club this year. I’ve missed sailing.

Overall I’m very excited for the coming year. We have a vacation planned for Japan during my kid’s spring break. Work is going well for me, which makes a huge difference on my quality of life. I’m looking forward to my daughter’s softball which starts up next month. Also looking forward to getting back out on the bay for sailing.

Happy New Year!

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What are your thoughts? Any new resolutions for 2025? Portfolio allocations? Escape routes from time?

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