Over the years my salary increased steadily but I kept my spending under control and so my % savings rate rose right along with it. So I promised myself that I’d keep my spending level at the same level no matter how much I made going forward.Īnd that’s exactly what I did. Since my career as television producer was starting to pick up, that seemed doable over the next 25 years if I was careful. So I got started on The Path.Īt the time I was only spending about $30,000/yr living in Los Angeles, which meant I’d “only” need to save a cool million (plus inflation) to reach FI. īut was it too late for me to start at the age of 42? Well they say that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and that the second best time is now. And MMM’s blog painted a picture of hope as The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement was, well, shockingly simple. Jacob’s incredible story was easy for me to relate to since I had lived austerely during many periods of my life. I knew I’d have to get educated about money or be a victim of my own ignorance forever.Ī couple of years of bumbling around with complicated investment books left me tired and all the more confused until I came across both Early Retirement Extreme and. For the first time ever I ran a retirement calculator, only to see clearly I would be eating cat food in my old age. For the first time in my life I was financially in the black.īut I panicked, because I knew next to nothing about personal finance–let alone investing–and I was already 40 years old. After splitting the account with my sister, I paid her half of the value of my dad’s 2005 Honda Civic ($6,500) and cleared my debts once and for all. But being a careful person around money he also managed to save $150,000 besides, tucked away in a Vanguard fund, which became the basis of my inheritance. My dad was a math teacher (apparently his talents didn’t rub off on me), and so the bulk of his net worth went to my mom in the form of his pension. But clearly things weren’t quite working out the way I had hoped. some day I’d hit it big and would wake up magically rich. I had what I call “the lottery mentality” i.e. And in debt.īy the time my dad died, I was still carrying $40,000 in student loan (at 9% interest!), and a few thousand dollars on credit cards. Like most actors I was good at being broke. I always wanted to live the “artistic life,” and for most of my life I did just that: pursuing a career as a performer. The question of the role of money was made urgent for me by my own financial status at the time. What is the role of money in constructing a meaningful life?.Knowing life is short, how do we ensure it’s meaningful? and.Losing a loved one is hard but it can also be accompanied by profound insight about the path we find ourselves on. In many ways, that was a turning point for me. About 10 years ago my father passed away from Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS).
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