It´s hard to believe it´s been two years since I, Ms. Becoming FI, accidentally came across FIRE, the Financial Independence Retire Early-community. A discovery that was about to change our lives for good.
I never really could accept that some 40 years of our lives, aside from a couple of weeks of vacation a year, would be spent in a cubicle. I never really could accept that the best part of the day was gone when returning from the office. I never really could accept that someone else would decide whether I got to go on vacation or not. I kept asking myself what's wrong with me and considered a career change – until I discovered the FIRE community and understood that there were millions of like-minded out there! I just never realized since everybody I knew was doing the same thing: eat, sleep, work, repeat.
Do I sometimes feel ungrateful because I don't appreciate having a job with a fairly decent salary? Yes, I do. However, two years in on our journey I have realized that no career change in the world will make me like the 9-5 life. There is so much meaningful voluntary work that I can, and will do, once we don't have to work for money anymore. TAnd this will probably have a more positive impact on my community than me working a regular day job.
The first two years of our journey
So what has happened to our simple path to wealth in the last two years? A whole lot, as it turns out. Two years ago we calculated our net worth for the first time and realized we had 11,9 years to go to financial independence. This realisation made me feel pretty discouraged. I couldn´t really accept the fact and kept telling Mr. Become FI that there has to be a shortcut. And as it turned out, there was one.
As we began tracking our expenses we started to make some serious progress. After a year of heavily investing our surplus in one index fund, buying two rentals and cutting our grocery bill by 250 €/month plus other small adjustments, our path had shortened to 6-7 years! Wow! What an achievement! Still, watching your relatively small net worth grow is like Karsten, also known as BIG ERN, from earlyretirementnow.com stated: Like watching paint dry.
Need I say watching paint dry for 6-7 years is a very long time when in your mind you are already retired?
The game changer?
Since we started on our journey Mr. Becoming FI and I have been listening to hundreds of hours of podcasts about reaching financial independence. Often the podcast hosts were claiming that once you get the snowball rolling you will find new ways to both save and make money and that this will shorten your path immensely. That's what happened to many fellow FI' ers.
For some reason I didn´t believe that applied to us as well. Neither myself nor Mr. Becoming FI are the entreprenurial sidehustlers that spend the evenings building new businesses that bring some extra hundreds of euros every month. That´s the scenario that was described in many of our favorite podcasts. I thought we were different than those creative hustlers.
And then we discovered Real Life Trading. One of our favorite podcast hosts, Doc G, with the podcast Earn & Invest interviewed Jerremy Newsome in episode 152 'Confessions of a Day Trader' where Jerremy explaines the different trading concepts.
Don't be fooled by the title, this isn't only about active day trading but also about a more passive swing trading strategy which only requires a couple of hours of work a week. Go and check it out!
Just to be clear, nothing comes easy, a lot of studying needs to be put into this if you want to be a successful trader. But this is true with everything – you don't just become a professional in something over night. Also this is not a get rich quickly scheme.
The discovery of RLT has been nothing but mindblowing and a game changer for us. Instead of looking at 6-7 more years of working we are now pondering over an exit within this year! We´ll definitely keep you posted on how we are doing!
So if you are in the beginning of your journey and your goal seems way to far away, we want to encourage you. Once you´ve checked in and taken off you will most probably be able to rewrite your map completely!
Cheering greetings
Ms. an Mr. Becoming FI