Early Retirement - Four Month Update

The curious case of our October spending and how it all went KABLOOEY

There was a time before I had this really awesome newsletter when I just stared at a blank page and wondered, “what should I write?” It took some time before the tiniest voice deep inside of me responded.

Write things that are true.

As I write about our financial journey, I always want to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly. No sugar-coated embellishments about how amazing we always are at frugality or money management.

The truth is that many times we just aren’t that good at this saving money thing.

October surprise

October is in the books and we spent $10,891, DOUBLE the amount we spent in August and September. What the hell happened? Let’s break it down.

Our Luxuries, which include discretionary spending on things like Netflix and Spotify, bumped higher because I made an annual payment for blog hosting. More on the blog later, but I consider it a luxury item for now.

Our Needs (Long Term) spending went kablooey; up more than $3,000 month-over-month. This blew up because we made our annual homeowner’s insurance payment, which itself was about $500 more than last year. We were expecting a large bill. In fact, we sock away a little each month so that there is money in that bucket when it comes due.

We weren’t expecting the price increase; however, we probably should have. As of this writing (2022), Florida is having an insurance crisis, with many companies pulling out of the state. Many Floridians are seeing huge increases from those companies that remain. This is primarily attributed to an excessive amount of roofing fraud, but the occasional hurricane likely doesn’t help matters.

We like Florida, but it will be difficult to call it home in years to come if home and auto insurance prices are not reined in.

We lessened the sting of this insurance bill by using a new credit card with a rewards sign-on bonus. We received about $750 worth of free travel rewards in return for just paying our insurance bill.

For the rest of 2022, we have two more large expenses upcoming. Our property taxes (~$2,000) and our auto insurance (~$1700 for six months) are coming due in November and December respectively.

To offset some of these costs, we are taking advantage of a rewards bonus on another new credit card to pay for those expenses. This will yield an additional $1,000 or so in free travel in return for just paying our bills.

Note: We always pay our credit card balances in full. This strategy makes no financial sense otherwise.

“Allen, doesn’t your credit score take a hit by opening all of these credit cards?”

We were worried about this, but as it turns out, our credit has actually gone up from the high 700s to the low 800s since we began rotating travel rewards cards.

Our Needs (Short Term) budget also ballooned out of control, up nearly $1800 month-over-month. $500 of that was for vet bills to catch Magic up on his immunizations and ensure he continues to be a healthy pup. Money well spent.

Another $1200 was spent on fear. I have written in the past about how expensive fear can be. In this case, we made an annual payment for an umbrella insurance policy, which covers us above and beyond the liability limits of our auto and home policies.

Umbrella insurance was supposed to be a simple $300 annual charge according to the interwebs. We shopped it across multiple companies, however, those conversations typically went like this:

Hi, I would like to quote Umbrella insurance please.

“We require you to carry auto and home with us before we will write Umbrella.”

Um, ok, can you quote the bundle then?

“I’m sorry, we aren’t writing new home policies in Florida.”

The conversation either went like that ^^^, or the newly quoted bundle was priced at $3,000 above what we are paying for home and auto insurance individually. We finally found a reputable company that would write a policy based on our existing home and auto.

We value having umbrella insurance at this stage of our lives to cover those things that auto and home liability do not. We chose a bigger policy for the time being, but expect to reduce the policy size once our kids reach adulthood.

Retail Therapy was $37. It is tiny relative to the rest of our budget. So why do I care? Because it is up more than 7x from August. The data don’t lie, I was stressed about something. Maybe it was the unexpected insurance rate increases, or maybe it was an acknowledgment that the holidays are fast approaching. In any event, something triggered a few extra moments of weakness that only Popeye’s spicy chicken sandwiches can heal.

Allen Overshares

My first goal in early retirement is to write more. I never had the time, energy, or creative juices to write consistently while working a full-time job. I want to strengthen this muscle and see where it can take me. Hopefully, it will lead me to write really cool fiction one day. For now, I consider it a win that I’m consistently writing, even if it’s just about how much money we waste.

My second goal in early retirement is to work on some kind of side business. I’ve always been a BigCorp worker, so being entrepreneurial is a new skill that I need to learn.

To that end, I have created my first real blog: allenovershares.com

“Allen Overshares?” → Yes, I have this tendency to usher thoughts directly from brain to mouth without first considering if it’s TMI. May as well lean into it.

I’m not super thrilled with my logo, but perfect is the enemy of good.

Finally Time To Live will continue as a newsletter, with a bit more structure to feature new content on the blog; as well as, to round up interesting news, posts, and topics from other really cool creators in the community.

The first really interesting creators I want to introduce you to are Brent and Michael:

Brent and Michael Are Going Places

Why We Like It: There are many subcultures within the broader personal finance community. The slomads are some of the most fascinating. Brent and Michael picked up their lives and decided to travel the world full-time. Their newsletter is a must-read if you are looking for new, off-the-path places to spend time. They take amazing pictures and are quickly expanding our minds about what’s possible (in addition to expanding our list of places to slomad).

Whereabouts Update

With our kids in school, we don’t have any international travel plans in the near future. We have to live vicariously through Brent and Michael and other slomads. But here are a few interesting things that we do have planned for next year.

CampFI

We will be at CampFI Southeast in Hawthorne, FL on January 6th. CampFI is like a summer camp for money nerds. This is a fantastic way to sit around a campfire, learn about personal finance, and connect with a community of like-minded individuals. My first CampFI was an absolutely transformational experience.

EconoMe

We will be at EconoMe in Cincinnati, OH on March 17th. This will be our first EconoMe conference, and we’re excited to report back from this “party about money.” We also love visiting new cities. We’ve never been to Cincinnati, so we’re excited to explore what it has to offer.

Mammoth March

We will be hiking 20 miles over the course of 8 hours in Central Florida’s Mammoth March on April 29th. Maile and I intend to hike the Camino de Santiago one day soon, but for now, we have to take advantage of longer day hikes closer to home. This will be our first Mammoth March.

Summer Travel

Summer is still up in the air, and the kid’s activities and academic schedules are monopolizing more and more of their time. We are running out of opportunities for big family summer trips like we did when they were young.

I had heard or read somewhere that as soon as your kids leave for college, you have already spent more than 90% of the face time you ever will with them as a parent. I don’t know if this statistic is true, but we will be fighting hard to ensure we get a trip in over the next couple of summers.