The first month of the year is over. We finally got rid of our very high health insurance premium. The expenses for this month reflected that. We are also on the “waiting for baby #2 mode”. I’m now passed 37 weeks as of this writing. Although 37 weeks is still consider early, it is safe for the baby to come out. I worry less now. My doctor gave me a green light to get out of the modified bed rest. We started going out for walks, but I get winded quickly and have to take it slow. MBP is enjoying it though. We’ve been to the pond and he likes seeing all the ducks. He also likes playing around the puddle.

In January, we spent 2,471.50

Insurance $0

I’ll start with our $0 insurance cost. Investment income which includes dividends and interest is our only form of income. We have at least a year of our spending budget and I don’t expect to realize any capital gains for the year. Because of this, our income is “low”, per Washington state guideline. We thought about moving it up in order to pay for the marketplace, but the Apple Health through WA state plan has a better coverage. It has our whole family’s provider. This insurance cover both health and dental.

Food $641.73

Our biggest expense now is food. We spent $519.43 on groceries and $122.3 on restaurants. Our restaurant’s expense includes 3 trips to Costco, and 1 trip to KFC for my birthday dinner. There are 2 more establishments that can actually qualify as restaurants. Back in the days, pre baby, we can easily spend $60+ on brunch. which usually occur every weekend with friends. Going out is really where I see our expenses go down. We shop at WinCo and Costco for our groceries. Costco is closer to us and we think that we will most likely move most of our grocery purchases. We’ve been really good at eating all the produce. MBP has been obsessing with strawberries and blueberries. We serve fruit everyday with breakfast with some “soupy oats” during the weekdays and eggs/pancake combo during the weekend. There are still some food that go to waste, but we’re getting better and figuring out what we actually eat.

529 College Fund $400

I decided to include this as our expense. I know that it is not a cash outflow. It is still part of our net worth and has grown – thanks to Mr. Market. We started contributing $400 after his 1st birthday. Our decision to fund this will warrant another post. We will most likely open another one for baby #2 with the same monthly funding ASAP.

Tax Software / Licenses: $334.24

I am a license CPA in state of WA and plan to keep it. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to pass this exam after graduation. I plan to launch my own business at some point. I spent $230 for my CPA renewal that is valid for three years. I also spent $104.24 for HR Block Software. There was a glitch while I’m buying the software and I mistakenly bought 2. I purchased the premium + business downloadable software. This let me file for 5 federal tax returns. I prepare taxes for our family. The software will let me file for (1) ours (2) my sisters (1) my brother and (1) my parents. Total comes to just a bit over $10 per tax filing. I’ve used HR block and Turbo tax before. I like HR Block than Turbotax. I like that I can actually see the forms in HR block. It also tends to be cheaper than Turbo tax.

Utilities (Electric / Gas and Sewer): $216.33

This month doesn’t include water and garbage which is billed every 2 months. It is still fairly high because it was a cold January. We’re also running the washer and dryer almost everyday since we are potty training MBP. He has a habit of pulling his diaper out while sleeping and he wakes up in the morning soaking wet.

Baby Supplies: $176.82

Baby Boy #2 is due in 2.5 weeks. We bought an infant car seat since our last one that we got for free expired. I also got some adapters for our Uppababy stroller so we can use the bassinet and the seat at the same time.

The rest of the expenses are routine/ boring. Our YMCA membership wasn’t canceled. I missed the cut off from last month. It finally canceled this month. This should be the last month with the gymexpenses. We bought some wipers for our Prius in Costco, dog food and other household supplies in Costco. Our internet is still around $50 and our mobile phones from Xfinity clocked in at only $11.93 this month for 2 lines.

We don’t optimized on all things. Items like “shopping” and even “household supplies” are somewhat unknown. We will keep an eye on it, but will not sweat it for now.

And here’s our expenses for January 2020. How was the start of your 2020?

It has been 6 months since we officially quit our W2 employment, called ourselves “retired” and moved out of the city. We are financially prepared and has been very conservative with our estimates. I’m not worried about the financial aspects going into retirement, but I was / am worried about the emotional toll that it could bring, mainly the boredom and the feeling of being unproductive. During the last 6 months, here are some things I learned about myself.

Giving up control

We decided to add an addition to our family post retirement. I am on a category of a high risk pregnancy, given that our first son was born at 28 weeks. For some reason, I thought that this pregnancy will be easier. I will have the benefit of all the medications and preventative measures that are available to have an easy pregnancy. I pictured myself doing yoga while pregnant. Well, I was wrong. This pregnancy is hard. From the very beginning, I felt so tired. At 22 weeks, I was advised by my doctor to take it easy and was put on modified bed rest. Our plans obviously changed. My husband stepped up and did everything to run the house, while also being the primary care taker of me and our toddler. I tried to help out as much as I can, but I was paranoid on every contraction that I felt during the second trimester. It was such a relief when I completed my 28 weeks of pregnancy, knowing that a good prognosis is on our side if I give birth. I have to be very flexible and gave up control. There are certain things that I wish I could do, but I listen to my body instead. I nap when I needed to nap. I stopped any activity that caused contraction. I stayed still. So in the last 6 months, I didn’t really do anything “productive”. I had a plan to carved out some time start a business, be engaged in my son’s school, get to know our neighbors and be active in the FIRE community. None of it happened. My husband was doing really well hitting the gym everyday, but that stopped when he has to take on all the work here at home, taking care of me and our son.

Psychological effect of “lack of income”

As I mentioned before, we were very conservative on our estimates when we retired. Our paid off house and a rental condo was not even part of our “portfolio” when we calculated our need for the retirement fund. I know this, but it still stings knowing that I don’t have any money “coming” in. Our portfolio grew even more, thanks to the market, but our “cash” is decreasing. We expected this, obviously. There are certain things that helped, like the higher than expected dividend income that we received this year. It also helped that we have a pretty good cash buffer and the fact that we are actually spending less than I expected. After this 6 months, I’m more relax. I even shelled out $900+ for a new iPhone 11.

We really don’t need a lot

My husband and I have some discussions regarding things that we will do if we really have a LOT of money. I’m talking about hundreds of millions here. I’m still not sure if I like living the suburbs so my thought is to go back to the city, buy and live in the house overlooking the water. I then gave some real thoughts about it. We’ve been somewhat there. We lived in a neighborhood surrounded by million dollar homes. Our son attended his first toddler class in this neighborhood. We attended a fundraising event that auctioned an “art” made by a toddler for thousands of dollars. It’s insane! We have a fairly high income and can definitely be part of the crowd, but it is not “us”. After 6 months of tracking our expenses post retirement, I can tell that we are definitely not part of that crowd and I’m happy with that.

I started this new year turning a year older this January. I’m not sure how this will unfold. I do know that flexibility is the key on sustaining this early retirement lifestyle while parenting our two toddler. I’ll still have goals, but I will just be ok if majority of it never happened. That is the beauty of retiring early, having that flexibility to stop when needed.

It’s been 4 months since early retirement, but it feels like ages ago. Our spending still varies quite a bit month per month. There seems to be a one time expense almost every month. We were busy this October with the Halloween festivities. MBP enjoyed trick or treating and we went to 3 events – 1 for our neighborhood, 1 for his Co-op and 1 for the actual night. He won the best costume contest for our neighborhood based on facebook likes and received a $75 Target gift card. He still have some gift cards from his birthday that we haven’t used.

Our October Spending: 8,005.43

Property Taxes

Our biggest line item for this month is the second half of our property tax. This isn’t bad compared to what we used to pay in Seattle. Our escrow officer warned us that the county might not mail our bill directly, since they do it once a year. He was correct. I called the county to ask for the bill. That conversation went like this:

Me: Hi, we just purchased our home last April and I want to make sure we pay our property tax on time so we don’t incur any fines

County: Don’t worry, your mortgage company knows it and will pay it through escrow

Me: We don’t have a mortgage. We paid our house in full so we don’t have an escrow account

County: Oh, uhmm, let me put you on hold. (hold for a couple of minutes). Ok, I will send you the bill.

It’s so obvious that it’s very rare for them to get this kind of phone call. They sorted it out and I got the bill and sent the check the next day.

Pregnancy Related Expense

I got some scary news once I hit my 22nd week of pregnancy. I started feeling some contractions in the beginning of my second trimester. Given that MBP was born really early, I’m trying to be cautious as much as I can and listen more to my body. That week, my biweekly cervix scan showed some bad reading. It looks like there was a funneling in my cervix that also looks like a dilation. I needed to have a consult with maternal fetal medical (MFM) as they specialize on high risk pregnancy. I was probably a bit paranoid that week that I went back to my OB 2 days later because I was really concern with the contractions and my OB was also cautious. That turned out ok. I am now being a couch potato. I also make sure that every contraction stop when I move / change positions to make sure that it is just Braxton Hicks. Unfortunately, there’s very little research done on premature birth. My MFM basically just told me to take what I feel seriously and go to triage if I feel that I need to be seen. Expense wise, since I already hit my deductible I paid very little for my co-pay visit. I am also taking a weekly shot that caused 2K/month. My copay is a little over $250 and I paid for 2 months for that. My husband got a crash course from the nurse to give shots so I don’t need to drive to the clinic every week. At this rate, I’m pretty sure that I will hit my out of pocket expense by this month.

Other spending increase

Aside from the property taxes and health care, out utilities also increased given that we started heating. Our thermostat is set at 68 during daytime and 56 at night. I also started eating more, and get hungry in the middle of the night and this reflects in our grocery budget. My go to snack at night are cliff bars. We’re discovering more and more of the area and ate out a couple of times. Since we drove to my doctor twice a week the last two weeks, our gas is also fairly high. I also drove to Seattle and paid for parking to attend Cents Positive which has been a great experience!

On Budgeting

We still don’t budget. I never budgeted per line item on my entire adult life. I just really keep an eye on my total expense. Without the property taxes, we are pretty close to our expenses last month.

We track our spending and net worth using Personal Capital. We use credit cards every time we can in combination of Chase Sapphire for travel and dining, Amazon Prime Card for Amazon purchases and Fidelity Investments Credit Card for everything else. I also recently applied for a Costco Visa Card since Costco is our nearest grocery store and we purchased our gas there.

I highly recommend using some sort of tracking mechanism to track your spending. Credit cards are good to use if you can pay it off every month

And here’s our expenses for the month of October

I’m going to start logging our monthly household spending, now that we completed 3 months of early retirement. We track our spending pre-retirement and have some idea of our monthly spending, but it would be good to see the actual numbers, now that we have a somewhat different lifestyle.

Some Background

Our journey to FIRE is short, 1 year and 8 months in total. My husband went back to work after his parental leave. He came home and started talking about early retirement blog that he discovered. That was October 2017. I was excited because I’ve been reading those blogs that he mentioned since I graduated from college. GE Miller from 20Somethingfinance.com helped me pay off my student loan debt quickly. I’m always a firm believer of FI, but never thought that I would trigger early retirement, until I did at age 33. My husband is 37. Our last day of W2 employment was July 1, 2019.

Retiring to something

We don’t hate our jobs. There are a lot of good things about it. My husband met most of his friends in Seattle as an Intern at Microsoft. He stayed at this company until he retired. I was happy at work and was in management position when I left. The year before my retirement was one of the best years. I produced more than I thought, being a working mom. But we know that we are missing the best (or the worst?) years of our first kid. Life move to a completely different direction when he was born. Add another factor that he was born prematurely. We know that we want to spend more time with our son while he actually ask for us. We are now both full time parents, which takes a TON of time and honestly, harder than our previous jobs.

A Very Short Planning

There are pros and cons of short time frame to FIRE. I’ve never read a blog with a shorter timeline as ours. The number 1 pro is that it is short, we’re really just trying to be conservative with our FI number, but we could have retired that same day. The cons, which I discovered a month before retirement, there’s more to early retirement than just a number. Retirement is a significant milestone, mostly done at 60s. There are some data suggesting that folks that retired early actually have a shorter life span. I know some individuals that retired only to go back to work after a year. My hope is that it is not me, but if it is, I’m ok with that. Aside from being a full time parent, and growing our family, I don’t really have a plan. I’m taking this time to slow down, getting to know myself and practicing self care.

Our September Spending: $5,600.33

Healthcare

Our biggest expense, as we expected is healthcare. We are in COBRA until the end of the year and it cost $1,387.24 / month. Talk about a very expensive healthcare. I am also pregnant with kiddo #2, and pay for OB visits, labs, ultrasounds and weekly shots. I’m on a high risk pregnancy, so I’m taking weekly shots and have biweekly ultra sound. I also see my OB every two weeks. My insurance is separate from MBP and my husband, since I already covered my deductible and it would be cheaper to have mine solo.

Annual / Semi Annual expenses

September also hit some annual and semi-annual expenses. I prepaid MBP’s preschool tuition, paid our car insurance for the next 6 months and my husband pay his hockey league fee. We cash flow this expenses and also expect that there will always be one time expense almost every month. It would be interesting to see our average expense after a year.

Food

Food is surprisingly cheap! It’s probably because we are planning our meals, started doing groceries at WINCO and Costco. We haven’t found a decent restaurant near the area. We used to go out or have take outs often. It will be nice if this is consistent, but will probably go up.

On Budgeting

We don’t set a monthly budget. We have some target on our annual spending so we don’t spend more than the 4% rule. However, if we find that we need more, then we will most likely go back to work.

We track our spending and net worth using Personal Capital. We use credit cards every time we can in combination of Chase Sapphire for travel and dining, Amazon Prime Card for Amazon purchases and Fidelity Investments Credit Card for everything else.

I highly recommend using some sort of tracking mechanism to track your spending. Credit cards are good to use if you can pay it off every month.

And here’s our expenses for the month of September