A Decade Until Financial Independence

So I’m closing in on forty four years old and by the looks of it, I probably won’t hit Financial Independence for another decade or so based on current rates of saving and spending. A part of me is amazed that I’m on such a trajectory, but I’m also a bit annoyed that it’s taking so long compared with Scout and what seems like the rest of the Financial Independence community.

So, what am I focusing on right now with another ten years to go? I’ll go into more depth in future posts, but here are overviews of some of the topics currently on my mind regarding the next ten years of my financial journey: 

• Family: Our kids are in fourth grade and second grade. We live near their grandparents and cousins and other relatives, and somehow we all get along well. My wife is in the education system and has the same summer and winter breaks as our kids. I am accruing a decent amount of vacation having been at my job for over eleven years now. So my current hope is that we spend breaks over the next ten years with family and friends, taking vacations, and focus on staying active and healthy. Yes, our kids are going to cost more as they get older. They’ll continue to grow and need more clothes, eat more food, and we’ll continue to purchase frivolous things for them from time to time. We will spend time in and around our community, but we will also go on camping trips, road trips, and I imagine we’ll take a number of flights to different parts of the country. We look forward to prioritizing time and experiences with family and friends. When it comes to cost, we don’t purchase first class tickets at this point, but we anticipate spending a good chunk of change on travel and experiences over the next ten years.

• College: We would like to help the kids out with some of the cost of the first four years of college, if they choose to attend. In ten years, our fourth grader will potentially be in college, and our now second grader will be a senior in high school. We have been contributing toward their 529 funds from time to time. The schools they choose will determine how far our college savings will go.

• Work: I actually like my job, and my wife enjoys hers. I don’t see either of us trying to work more hours per week while the kids are around, but I hope that we continue to check in with each other and consider reducing hours, changing job roles, or trying something else if either of us is not enjoying our jobs. I can see both of us potentially working well past our FI date if our jobs bring us a lot of joy.

• Financial Independence: I enjoy investing, projecting and tracking goals, and talking with others about their journeys to and beyond financial Independence. However, l still have quite a lot of research to do with our own situation. A decade is just an estimate, but there are several factors that we still need to figure out. With potentially higher upcoming costs for traveling, raising soon-to-be teenagers, known and unknown upcoming housing costs, and saving toward college, we may take longer than ten years to reach FI. If/when we finally do leave our jobs, health care is another factor that will involve quite a bit of research. On the other hand, my wife and I will both have pensions and potentially social security to factor into the equation during our sixties, which will change based on how much we make and when we stop working. Needless to say, our FI number is still a moving target.

We’ll be monitoring all of these factors and more over the coming years, and it will be interesting to see when we actually become financially independent, and how/if our lives change up to and after we reach the goal. I’ll be leaning on insight from Scout and others along the way.

Reader Questions

• What are some topics you focus(ed) on leading up to FI?

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