I come to the FIRE movement from a different starting point and that’s what makes my story different. It’s been a wild ride since we left California for our Mini-Retirement. Different doors have opened since then and I am chasing down other opportunities. New struggles have also surfaced.
I want to share my story and what I’ve learned. Currently, I am trying to do it through a different medium. Primarily speaking & podcasts.
If you visit my goals you can see what I am working on this year. Here are the biggies
- Buying our first home, with a goal to house hack. I am looking to buy a multifamily home and I am taking Paula Pants course Your First Rental Property so that I make a smart purchasing decision.
- Helping more people with my story , through speaking engagements and podcasts.
- Financially we are still maxing out 401Ks but because of the house goal we dropped our IRA contributions. Always revisiting our finance goals to make sure our money is going to the right place. We are still working towards Financial Independence.
- Learning how to earn more outside of a traditional work environment. A flexible schedule was a priority.
Follow along, subscribe and reach out to me through email. I would love to hear about your questions or struggles. Or follow me on Twitter @travelingwallet where I am the most active.
The top part was the TL:DR but if you want the long version read on.
2018 LIFE UPDATE , ECUADOR, UNEMPLOYMENT, STARTING A NEW LIFE IN MICHIGAN
The easiest way to give you a rundown of the past bit is to do it in context of my 2018 goals. So lets talk 2018.
At 12:00 a.m. in a cold rainy midnight. We welcomed 2018 in Sangolqui, Ecuador. It was still our mini-retirement and we decided to let our kids stay up this year. In Ecuador they have a tradition of burning El Año Viejo. Fires blaze as effigies of the old year physically encourage you to let go of the past. To make room for the new year. I remember seeing it when I was about 6 years old.
The wonderful cultural experience almost got rained out in the frigid cold night. Luckily my cousins weren’t going to let our aunts, uncles and grandparents stop us. One of them ventured out and discovered that there were plenty of loonies out still trying to burn their effigies in the pouring rain. So we said what the heck and headed out to throw ours on the fire.
Not really the cold wet experience I had in mind but the kids still got to see it.
So the start of 2018 saw us In Ecuador. Participating in our first family four month mini retirement. Even in the rain it was a dream come true.
Mid January we flew back to Chicago , with a layover in Panama.
Looking for work, Starting from scratch
I foolishly thought a month would be enough to secure a job and a place. In reality it took until March for Mr. Roamer to find employment.
That means our 4 month mini retirement stretched out to 6 months.
New adventures?! You can’t be sure everything in going to work out. We planned conservatively so we had a years worth of saving. This extra time off didn’t hurt financially and we tried to pay for our stay but Mr.Roamers parents where insistent on hosting us. It was a great learning experience for me. I finally see that even though you might have somewhere to sleep not having your own place can be quite an unsettling thing. Even if you are in no immediate danger. People really need a home to call their own. In retrospect we could have just moved out once the delays started.
Jr. started going back to school once we realized we were staying longer then anticipated. It was a fun experience for him and my mother in law who is a teacher. He got to attend her school and they carpooled together in the morning.
It wasn’t until the middle of the year that I finally sat down and made some goals. That is very unusual for me but with so many unknowns and changes I was lost in the ever moving parts.
2018 GOALS
Career, Relationship, Financial, & Lifestyle
- Get a fulfilling job by September ( part-time? for family flexibility)
- Re- Launch blog with Email list ( new design, new pillars) (earn income)
- Read more Parenting books
- Practice Gratitude with kids at night
- Practice gratitude personally every morning
- Max out 401Ks and IRAs(29K-47K)
- Have 40K for a house
- Take care of my health by having a yearly check up ( check Mole and OBGYN)
- Pay to consult a nutritionist
- Pay for a work out coach( butt and belly goals)
- Go Camping at least 4 days
Get a fulfilling job by September: Success
In October I started working for the Elementary school my kids attend. It was my first job in 3 years with a consistent paycheck and my first time earning minimum wage. It feels kind of ludicrous that I am earning a lot less then I have ever made in my life. But this job had a lot of benefits.
First off, I was actually starting to get scared of ever getting a job again. It’s not in engineering , but this job was a good ice breaker. I needed to get the fear of putting myself out there again, out of my head. It was low stakes. It was also flexible. I only worked during the time my kids were in school. Which meant we didn’t need to worry about childcare on snow days, holidays or the summer. At 3 hours I still had time to focus on my own projects. So while it pays poorly, and I am not in the field of my education, or even in the field I want to transition to, I have been very happy to get back to work. I get out of the house daily, and get paid to see my kids. Not too shabby.
Financially I don’t need to work. Mr. Roamers paycheck covers all our expenses and some of our savings goals. Yet, I needed to have a job because I am still trying my hand at this entrepreneurship bit and that stuff costs money. So I am happy to bring in a couple of dollars to at least cover my costs.
Relaunch blog: Fail? Progress?
(raise hand, slowly angle it down)(sssspppshhhhhppuuuhhhhh)
Those are the sounds of an explosion, Epic Fail.
I paid for a course on how to start a YouTube channel, have yet upload my first video. Mr. Roamer says I might have a course buying problem. Its the shiny object syndrome most entrepreneurs have to contend with. As in I buy, I start, but I don’t finish. Sigh. Being a self starter is a hard job.
You know whats funny? Not funny at all. I have an extraordinary track record of accomplishing big things. Uh hello? no one told me to pay off my student debt in 5 years. I picked that! Then crushed it by paying off all our family debt in 3.5 years. All $100,000 of it. Nobody told me to plan my own affordable wedding. I started that and NAILED IT. No one told me that I need to take my family on a 4 month mini retirement, that included a 21 day cross country road trip, followed by a one month stay in El Salvador, then a one month stay in Ecuador finally ending with us relocating to Michigan. AWWW HELL NO. I pick that and I got it done.
But starting and online business and seeing some freaking ROI.
WOW! I just suck at that!But here I am giving it another shot.
hint hint its on my 2019 year goals. So last year in the realization that I have no clue what I am doing. I decided to pay for mentoring.
So $1500 in October ( that was a busy month) I started a 6 month mentoring program. So no relauch, or launch but I am still investing on my growth and potential business.
Read more parenting book: Success
I read 2 parenting books in the first quarter. Mr. Roamer joined me in this quest for parenting knowledge. He read 3 other parenting books. Together we have 5 new books worth of knowledge. It isn’t until now that a realize he surpassed me. Honestly I thought if I read 1 book a year I’d read over 15 in my life time. Way more then most people do. A great example of how just trying a bit harder gives you out of proportion results, because most people don’t do anything.
Practice gratitude with kids at night: Success
Not sure when we started. In July I wrote a little update that we were doing well. It’s become a nightly practice to our bed time routine. It helps our kids acknowledge that their lives are not horrible. We don’t practice main stream parenting so we get a lot of complaints from our kids that they don’t have said toy or play said video games. Which is one side, but this year with all it’s transitions and all its unknowns was more challenging then we had anticipated. Thing arose that we hadn’t expected and this practice really gave us all a chance to look for the rainbow in the storm.
It’s also been good for us parents.
Practice gratitude personally every morning: Progress
Sporadic at best. Mornings for some reason were the most painful times of the day. I feel like I am always waking up to the voices of my kids arguing. To not have frustration be the first thing in my day I wanted to include this practice. As a whole, mornings have started to become more calm. Thank goodness.
Max out 401K and IRAs: Success
These financial goals are on autopilot, maybe I should stop including them. I mean if you brush your teeth everyday why would you put on your goals to make sure you brush your teeth everyday. You wouldn’t. Finances can change quickly. Since we moved: new state, new job and new pay. I wanted to make sure we still pushed ourselves to aggressively save. We didn’t know how our finances would really be affected by this change. Plus the fact that we would have a bunch of start up costs since we moved to Michigan with no furniture. Just the stuff that fit into our Civic and Corolla.
Have 40K for house: Progress
This is a horribly worded goal, seriously! I wasn’t talking about saving 40K. It was to make sure we had enough money to put that much as a down payment. Our cash cushion at the start of the year wasn’t enough to do that and maintain our desirable safety net. There should have been an actual saving goal number. We did save and increase our cash cushion by over 33%.
Health, a yearly check up: Success
I am really good at making sure my kids have a yearly check up. Mr. Roamer and I also had one in 2017 because of our upcoming international travel. Other then that, I’ve done a bad job of doing my wellness visits.
It’s silly when you think about it. Most insurances include “free” wellness visits. They aren’t really free because, hello monthly premiums, you are just using the service that you already paid for. So take advantage of it. The goal then is: wellness check ups every year. Mr. Roamer and I didn’t get seen until November. Which is pretty last minute but at least it got done. I would prefer this to happen in June.
Pay to consult a nutritionist :Fail
I did not pay to talk to a professional. Other then rent a book in the library about raw eating. So This is important to me because I want to be healthy. I don’t like drinking milk. I don’t want to take fake things like vitamins and supplements. I want to get all my nutrients through the food I eat. So how do I get my calcium? Women suffer from osteoporosis. I don’t want that. It’s why I want to talk to a nutritionist. Does any one here have any recommendations?
Pay for a work out coach: Fail
So how about a bit of non essential goals once in a while mixed in with all this other good stuff? What? I’m human, I don’t like make up but I want to have a strong, curvy body. This goal is strongly motivated by pride and vanity. I loved wearing midriff as a young woman. I want to be able to do that again. While I have lost the weight my skin hasn’t tightened up. I feel like I need to consult a professional. As a Latina I like the big booty look. Clearly though vanity is not that high on my list because I did not make the time or money to address it.
Camping at least 4 days: Success? Yes
So technically this was a fail, because I was talking about tent camping. We had such a great time in our California road trip that I wanted to make sure we got out in nature this year too. We did not do tent camping. We did spend time in one family cottage, then another family cabin. We had friends introduce us to some nice little lakes for day trips. Finally as a family we attend a big wedding that went from New Jersey to California. We took a 10 day trip. Got to go to 2 new states we’d never been to, New Jersey and New York. I decided to say this was a success because at the heart it was travel related. We did travel, we did spend time in nature, even if it wasn’t quite what I meant.
Out of 11 goals I had 5 successes, 3 see progress and 2 fails.
2019 is more then half over. What are the big goals you want to accomplish this year? Have you done a check in, how has it gone?
While my posting schedule is in the air you can always reach me through email or twitter and I still keep on top of new comments so let me know what you’ve been up to below.
Ciao
