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Tag: Financial Independence

Correction Mode 2025

Correction Mode 2025

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Exciting times ahead, I’m heading to Japan in a few short weeks. While I’ve been budgeting carefully, this spring has been an expensive one. I bought the airline tickets back in December for around $4500 roundtrip, and have been sporadically booking and paying for accommodations every few weeks. Since we’re timing vacations with our kids’ school breaks, our options were either April or waiting until June. We’ll be there for around 2 weeks with stops in the tourist triangle of…

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Why I’ve Stopped Caring About FIRE

Why I’ve Stopped Caring About FIRE

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It dawned on me on my way to work one morning that I’ve stopped giving a damn about FIRE. Driving through the darkness of the early morning freeways, lights of the San Francisco skyline and bridges glistening out past the windows, podcast on the History of Byzantium blasting through the truck speakers, the thought popped into my mind that I don’t really need an exit off this freeway I’ve found myself cruising down. I don’t need FIRE anymore. What do…

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A Post From The Boring Middle of FIRE

A Post From The Boring Middle of FIRE

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We just got back from a week of camping in Humboldt County. 3.5 hours north of San Francisco lies some of the most incredible Redwood forests I’ve ever visited. Cell service is sparse. The rivers are cool. And some of the trees are 1,200 years old. Walking through the shady forest floor amid ferns and clovers, I get the same feeling as when I walk through an old Roman ruin in Europe or Mexica pyramid in Latin America; except this…

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Fulfilling Dreams: The Path to Retiring in my Forties and Embracing Financial Independence

Fulfilling Dreams: The Path to Retiring in my Forties and Embracing Financial Independence

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Outside of the house’s front window my green Chinese Vespa knockoff leaned over on its kick stand gleaming under the San Diego sun. The dining room table where I sat fingering the label to my beer was full of paperwork. I’d orchestrated a complex and huge logistical masterplan for my months long trip through Europe and Asia. Trains picked. Hotels booked. Flights purchased. Little did I know at the time that this would lead to me to retiring in my…

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The Two Truths of FIRE

The Two Truths of FIRE

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It started with the lawn mower this summer. It wouldn’t start. I changed the spark plug and filter and it still wouldn’t start. So then I tore apart the carburetor and cleaned the injectors. The mower started, albeit reluctantly. Over the holiday weekend the lawn mower died again. After dozens of pulls on the starter, I gave up and rolled the old red workhorse into the garage. I sat there for a while, staring at the machine. Debating internally whether…

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Job. Career. Calling. Which Do You Choose?

Job. Career. Calling. Which Do You Choose?

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After nearly twenty-one years of being an official adult, I’ve lost sight and forgotten many times the feeling one has when finally deciding upon (or settling on) a profession, be it a job, career, or calling. I didn’t go to college, so I never had the sort of free-range buffer of growing into adulthood that many who attend four-year universities experience, but I did join the Navy, which parallels the teen to adult buffer college affords. Joining the military bought…

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Happily Disengaged’s 2021 Expenses

Happily Disengaged’s 2021 Expenses

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It’s January, so now’s a good time to look back over the year 2021 and post about our total expenditures. There was a time when I did monthly expense blogs, but alas I’ve fallen off these types of posts as my blog bandwidth has narrowed and my blog posts have slowed down. Pursuing FIRE isn’t the easiest in an ultra high cost of living area like San Francisco, but it’s not impossible. This is the land of the $8 dollar…

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My Silent Battle With Inflation

My Silent Battle With Inflation

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My mother had a saying when I was growing up and now it’s stuck with me like any good saying does when repeated over and over during one’s formative years. The saying is this: “Lazy people work twice.” It doesn’t take much imaginative work to guess that I probably wasn’t working as hard as I should have been as a youth to have been told this over and over again. Usually, household chores were the culprit. A half-ass job sweeping…

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The Case For Anti-Optimization

The Case For Anti-Optimization

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The phone rang and it was the front desk. In broken English, the woman on the other line told me that someone was downstairs waiting for me. I told her I’d be right down. I’d been waiting months for this day. I let my wife know who it was and that I would be right back and then stepped out into the hallway. The hotel was a time capsule. The hallways and rooms have never known anything other than early…

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