Stephanie’s mom Chris has a childlike fascination with carrot cake. It’s a taste she associates with the United States, something she tried for the first time over 35 years ago while recovering at a hospital. Now, whenever she visits, carrot cake is on the itinerary. She’s not picky—a humble square from the grocery store will do. But this year, since she arrived from France on her birthday, I made her carrot cake cupcakes from scratch.
Last year I started tracking all of our monthly expenses against our income to put a number on how much we had leftover to save. Considering that we’ve tried to curb unnecessary and excessive spending since Stephanie quit her job in 2014 and went back to school in 2015, I was still shocked to discover our total cost of living at the end of 2016. After taxes, 29% goes to the mortgage and related expenses while another 38% supports our lifestyle, which leaves 33% to save. We are fortunate to be able to save a third of our net income for retirement—a rate I’ve deliberately worked to increase over the last 3 years—but when measured against the “financial independence” yardstick, not-so-early retirement sits over 20 years away. Update: I revised the percentages and the graph below using more accurate values available after I did our taxes—and it shaved 3 years off of my working life.
That said, early retirement is not my goal. I’m not sure what my goal is. Periodic retirement? Work hard for a handful of years, step away, and then return—unconstrained by prior comforts, habits, and expectations. When viewed from that perspective, those unfathomable 20 years start to look more attractive: a series of several jobs (seeking that ever-elusive purpose), punctuated by sabbaticals of adventure and self-discovery.
So you just got a new job, or maybe your first job ever, and one of the benefits is a 401(k) retirement plan. You’ve been trying to come up to speed, but now you’re being asked to make a bunch of complicated investment decisions that will have an impact at the end of your career—before it’s even begun. Here are 4 simple steps to get you started:
We bought a Jeep. When I tell people this, I forget that I have to clarify. A Jeep Wrangler. The One True Jeep. We call her « La Jeep ». She was born in 2006 and traveled 93,000 miles to find us. She’s the last year of the TJ generation. Sport trim with a 6-speed manual transmission, midnight blue paint, and 30″ tires. We got her to go off-road.
Hot Ones is one of the best shows on YouTube. The simple, sophomoric conceit—10 well-researched questions deftly delivered by the iron-tongued Sean Evans, paired with 10 chicken wings of increasing Scoville units—turns out some of the funniest material I’ve seen in a long time.