Freed by 50

I’ve been tracking my goals for years now and overall it’s been a good experience. I feel like lately I’m hitting too many major goals, which means I’m throwing too many softballs to myself. So this year I’m going to try to set some stretch goals that may not be attainable. 

This year I’m going to try to focus a lot more on learning and expanding my skillset. I also have some more health related goals, and I’d like to revisit some old goals I either missed on, or need to tweak for the future.

Major Goals:

Reach the next stage of FI – I spent a lot of time one day doing fancy math, using calculators, testing scenarios on FICalc and at one point building my own calculator with the help of ChatGPT. I’m in an interesting place between CoastFI and actual FI. If I never save another dime for retirement, I’ll have more than enough to retire between 56 and 58, but I’ll have to work until that time. What I found was that with luck, favorable market conditions, and a lot of hard saving/investing I could manage to sock away enough in my after-tax brokerage account to live off of until my retirement accounts would be needed after 58. This is not my ideal retirement scenario, but I would be able to ride my after-tax account long enough if I had to. I’m estimating this could happen by November of 2024. I wouldn’t call myself fully FI, but I would also be able to say I don’t exactly need to work anymore. To hit this goal my after tax balance wound need to go up by $275k. 

Complete the final major home renovation – It’s been a long and expensive road bringing my house out of the ’90’s and into the 2020’s. I had hoped to push for another year before we remodeled my master bathroom, but it’s just been death by a thousand cuts. First the shower started leaking, then the pump for the jetted tub died, then the cleaners broke the hinges on one of the cabinets, then the toilet started running endlessly. All of these are little problems I could, and have, just fixed. But the shower is doing everything it can to really leak no matter how much I caulk it. The pump is dead, dead, and inside a wall that I’m not ripping open in my son’s room. The hinges took half the laminated pressboard with them and the cabinet can’t be fixed. And the toilet, along with all of it’s proprietary flusher parts, was discontinued years ago. I give up. This starts in February and I saved enough to do it last year.

Get in shape…again – I work out for at least 45 minutes every day, but it doesn’t offset my late night consumption. With that in mind, I’m returning to last year’s Carnivore Diet experiment and targeting the month of January (and possibly February) to eat nothing but meat/animal products. I’ve responded very well to this in the past and it will absolutely kick start my goal heading into the new year. I’ve started adding 15 minutes of stretching to my workouts, bumping them up to an hour of morning activity before breakfast. On Friday’s we’re supposed to spend the day learning something at work, so I’m adding at least an hour of treadmill walking while reading.

Minor Goals:

Learn, learn, learn – I was gifted subscriptions to MasterClass and Blinkist through work, and I’ve long since wanted to get back to daily Duolingo. Add this to the fact that I read 2-3 books at a time and I’ve got a recipe for getting overwhelmed. I’m going to set this goal to be completing two MasterClass sessions per month, three Blinkist books per month, and using Duolingo daily. 

Establish a new multi-year plan – Many years ago I set out to be debt free. I laid out a path to that goal and developed the habits to reach it. When I reached my goal I felt a little lost, but I had a separate career plan. That plan was to build a product and a department at my company. I would build my team and promote people to manage each of the smaller teams. Perhaps I’d get promoted for my troubles. Last February I did get promoted and that three year plan ran its course. Now I have no plan and it’s not my favorite place to be.

Start a new business or side hustle – Maybe it’s because I’m 45, or because I don’t have a huge multi-year plan right now, but I’ve found myself questioning my career lately. I don’t feel like I’m excited and building cool shit anymore. I’m mostly maintaining. I don’t see the path the way I used to. In order to address these and many other creative needs, I am going to explore things I can do on the side. I don’t care if it’s focusing on this or my other blog, starting a YouTube channel, or even a local business. I need to create something new and that something needs to generate income for me to care.

Insane Stretch Goals:

I said I need to challenge myself more, and that’s what this section is for. As I’ve been thinking about my life and career, I realize I’m not challenging myself as much as I have previously. I’m feeling complacent. These are three insane goals that would take a lot of hard work and effort, and I have done nothing to date to reach any of them.

Pay off my mortgage – Here we go again. Another year another plan to pay off my house. Well now I have an absurd motivation to do it…I’m sick of caring what I pay for cars. Yup, my other obsession rears its ugly head. I’m resigned to the fact that my wife and I are never going to see eye to eye on car ownership, and that I’m surrounded by repair shops I don’t trust. My main motivation for being mortgage free at this point in my life is so that I can just drive whatever I feel like (and I really hate cars so this is just boring SUVs). It would take $265k to hit this goal and would mean I would not be able to reach my top line goal of increasing my after tax account balance by $275k.

Buy a car in cash – Due to unfortunate circumstances with supply chain issues I find myself in need of two cars this year. I had always planned to buy, not lease, my next car, but now I’m thinking I’d feel a lot better about paying for it outright. The problem here is that I still require a decent sized SUV, and my wife insists it’s no more than three years old. I’m putting the price tag on this around $60k.

Double my income – This is the most insane of my insane stretch goals. My income is already more than enough and I’m very happy with it. But I’ve come to feel that I’m playing small ball when I could be in the major leagues. I am very capable and driven, and I have spent the last couple of years focused on my young family. I suddenly find myself with more time since my kids are in school, and I’m very focused on my career and any potential business opportunities. Yes, I want to start a side hustle, but I want to swing for the fences on this one. I want to set the bar high and know that I’m going to have to work to get there. I don’t have a clue how I’m going to do this, but anything is a start.