36m, $2m, Last Day of Work Today. Lessons Learned from a 12 Year Road to FI

I was debating if I should post/celebrate this here, but after seeing /r/fierymillennials lessons learned from a break, and after posting here in /r/fi for the last 4 years, I thought I'd share some of my lessons from my career (and maybe sneak in a few questions while I'm at it).

Where I Am Now

As the title (and my flair says) I'm sitting right around FI now! Our household consists of me, my wife who's a year younger and our 11-year-old poodle mix, living in the western US.

I'm a software engineer (full-stack web development) turned Product Manager working a career in tech - but never in what I'd "high tech" cities. Orlando and Salt Lake City have a great tech presence, but they're not exactly in the top 5 (or 10?).

With around $2m saved up and yearly expenses somewhere between $60-$100k, it's looking like we're in decent shape! Over the last 2-years, our expenses have risen as we got married, fixed up a house, went on 2 honeymoons, moved across the country, furnished a new place and settled in. I'm optimistic it'll drop down closer to the $60k side now.

Today is my last day at my job of almost 8 years (!). My wife is continuing to work at this time, with me on her insurance We've talked about it, and she knows she could leave as well. Her working right now makes this much more flexible as we test out our spending levels with one of us not working.

How I got Here Financially

Luck. Hard work at times for sure, and lots of planning, but no one retires in their 30s without luck (windfalls or high income) or cutting expenses so deep that your lifestyle borders some hobo-chic.

My luck came in a few specific fortuitous financial events:

• Had parents that raised me with a ton of self-control. Learning to have money (even if you're not rich) but not spend it from an early age is a huge benefit.
• Went to a state school for college and graduated with no student debt. Scholarships and parents paid for everything for the first 2 years, then started working to take over all expenses by the end. I was soooo lucky to not get into the expensive colleges I applied for and have parents who could chip in that $1k/month to live on.
• Started working on side projects non-stop starting in high school, which helped my marketable skills continue developing (even if they didn't make money).
• Received an inheritance of $100,000 at age 24 when my mom passed away. Add to that another $150,000 from selling her house. That was in 2007, and the $250k promptly dropped to $150k a year later during the great recession.
• Worked, without gaps and saved at least 50% of my income each year from age 24 on.
  • Also increased my expenses significantly during that time.
• Went from startup to startup, eventually landing at one where I worked as hard as I could (sometimes 90 hours a week).
• That startup was eventually acquired, which was a nice $400k windfall.
• The company that acquired us went public, which was a nice $800k windfall.

There's a lot of luck to this. I was on my own FI path before this acquisition with a higher FI date in mind (40 if things went well, but probably closer to 44 realistically). Luck and events completely outside my control brought that date down 4-8 more years.

What's Next?

After years working at startups, I absolutely love creating things and providing value to people. One thing I'm most excited about is the time to learn and build things without the need for them to make money. I've done some side projects, but hope to do many more now.

Other than that, the usual winter recreation! Playing Red Dead Redemption 2, rewatching all of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, going skiing and traveling to see family.

Long-term though, time will tell. If our spending is low enough, then we won't need additional income. If it ends up being higher than we expect and we decide we'd rather now lower it, I'd like to find a way to make a little side income without a job through side projects. Luckily there is no rush on that today. We have options, and time to find a passion that makes a little money is one of the best ones.

I do have a few things that I'm trying to do immediately. I'd be curious to hear how others have handled these:

• Stop identifying myself by my job role, accomplishments or work.
• Stop setting unachievable expectations for myself.
• Stop trying to optimize every day and be OK with progress.
• Start setting boundaries between side projects and personal life.
• Being OK with the idea that there are days I'm going to wake up where I don't want to do anything.

These are the immediate things I'm working on in my head right now.

What Did I Do Well?

For things that I had control over at least, here's a few that stand out:

• I think the number one thing was making myself invaluable to companies I worked for. I did whatever needed to be done strategically in the companies - even if that meant changing roles or learning new skills.
• Stuck with low-fee index fund investing for 95% of my portfolio long term. I made investing mistakes (oh, hi Bitcoin), but they were limited to at max 5% of my portfolio.
• Tracking spending quarterly.
• Didn't try to over-optimize investments. Just let time do their thing (helps that this was the best bull market ever).
• Developed a strong sense of what I wanted out of life outside of work. I have no shortage of things I want to do.

What Could I Have Improved On?

• I didn't max out my 401k for about 5 of my working years. I didn't have access to a 401k for another 4 years.
• My spending grew way more than I thought. I should've been looking at my spending monthly.
• My wife and I have been together for almost 12 years, but we didn't fully join our finances until year 11. We knew about each other account balances/debts, but not as much each others cash flow. Would've been useful in planning to know each other's total spending.
• Tracking spending monthly would've helped see trends faster.
• Creating another source of income would have been really nice.
• Thinking too much about FI at times was a distraction from other, more important goals and parts of life.

Whew, that's a lot. It's been 11 years since I started investing and 9 years since I opened a Vanguard account. Without additional lucky (in the form of those windfalls) I don't know how FI would've been possible without drastically cutting spending during my earning years far more than I did.

That might not be the most optimistic takeaways, but it's an honest one. There's a sliding scale between compromise and luck for retiring in your 30s. I was able to lean more on luck, but that's not a reproducible takeaway. If you do what you can with what you're given that's all you can do - just do your best and be OK with the results.