Early Retirement - Three Month Update

Hurricanes, zombies, inflation, and the uncertainty of life

Something wicked this way came

September is in the books. Financially speaking, it was a fairly boring month. We’re pretty grateful for that.

It could have been worse. Much worse.

We weathered our first hurricane since 2018, fortunate once again to escape unscathed. Living in central Florida, we’ve been through 5 of these, with little impact beyond losing power for a few hours. I don’t know how long Lady Luck will be on our side. It’s hard not to feel a little like a cat using up its nine lives.

We’ve spent a lot of vacation time on the island of Sanibel, which was completely decimated by the storm. It is a unique and fantastic island community, and we can’t wait to return to support local businesses as they rebuild.

Musings on recent inflation

It is finally beginning to feel like fall here. Halloween is approaching. Pumpkins are already gathered on front porches. On lawn after lawn, inflatable ghosts and zombies now spring up from the ground each morning.

Editor’s note: Dad joke warning in 3… 2… 1…

October and December are traditionally months with high inflation.

It has been a thing for Halloween and Christmas for a long time, but now it seems there are inflatables for nearly all of our holidays. We fully expect to see massive blow-up turkeys in about 30 days. I personally look forward to celebrating Arbor Day with an inflatable tree in the front yard.

Life doesn’t care about our budget

Hurricane Ian reminded us once again that life doesn’t care about the plans we’ve made. Life, with all of its uncertainty, just happens. This is never more clear than when we compare our actual spending for the month against what we had planned.

Some things cost a little more than expected. Some things cost a little less.

Some things blindside us completely, no matter how much time we spend reading the tea leaves. It seems like every month, there is something unexpected to pay for.

And every month, we tell ourselves "well, at least that was just a one-time thing."

"To whom it may concern, 

We have all new "one-time things" waiting for you when you arrive. 

Sincerely, October, November, December, Et al"

As much as I would love to blame the uncertainty of life, these one-off things are not entirely out of our control. We choose to own an older home. We choose to have older cars. We choose to live in a state with one of the highest costs of living in the nation. Yeah, I guess it’s not all life’s fault.

September Spending

In September, we spent $5,493, up roughly $160 from August. Our Needs (Long Term), up nearly $400, continue to be the largest spending group.

One other observation at the macro level is that spending on Our Passions went down month over month.

We like to see lower spending in Our Needs. That is largely emotionless spending on uninteresting things like utilities and insurance. Whoop-de-friggin-do.

We love to see increased spending on Our Passions. That is emotion-filled stuff that we love to do, like traveling or spending time with friends.

Budgets aren’t always about reducing your spending across the board. Sometimes they are about helping you allocate money to those things you care about the most.

This month, Maile and I used travel rewards points for a couple of trips up to Maine to enjoy some hiking, puzzles, and good quality time with family.

Using our Delta Sky Miles to pay for travel helped us offset the increased costs elsewhere in the budget, while still allowing us to do something we love. We got about $700 worth of free travel just by being a little more intentional with how we pay for things. Travel rewards are really valuable if you are careful and organized.

Zen and the art of auto maintenance

September was an incredibly satisfying month for auto maintenance. Cars are expensive to buy, maintain, and drive, so any time we can catch a break and reduce our transportation costs, it feels like winning.

Our minivan needed new front brakes. The auto shop told us a couple of months back to budget around $300 for the work. So we planned for that.

In the “life happens” department, our daughter’s car needed new front struts and shocks. We knew that maintenance was needed down the road, but things degraded faster than expected and we were worried about safety. That’s another $1000 to the auto shop. We hadn’t planned for that.

I haven’t done a lot of DIY auto repair, and tackling brake and suspension repairs was intimidating, but I somehow convinced myself that we could do this. Confident (delusional?) that it would somehow work out, we attempted the DIY repairs ourselves.

I’m not going to lie, when I got the wheels off and found myself surrounded by parts and pieces everywhere, it felt a little scary.

“I wonder if I’ll remember where all these screws go?” - Me

Other than me accidentally leaving wrenches and screwdrivers in the engine compartment and then driving the car for days, everything worked out ok. The two projects cost us about $500 in parts and tools. As a bonus, we even incorporated some of Our Passions.

Learning new skills

We are lifelong learners, passionate about acquiring new skills, and so we tried not to look at this as a chore, but as a way to strengthen our car repair muscles.

I’m not going to toot this horn too loudly. We did manage to turn a 15-minute Youtube tutorial into an 8-hour repair job. Obviously, there is still much to learn.

On the bright side, our second brake pad replacement was much faster than the first. Our second strut replacement was also much faster than the first. We’re improving, and that’s good enough.

Quality time with family

We are passionate about spending quality time with family. Jobs like this are easier with 2 people, and I got some quality time with my son as we learned these skills together.

My son (14) strengthened his car repair muscles. Here, reattaching the front wheels after the strut replacement. He is learning all the right curse words.

About that trip to Maine

On an early Wednesday morning, I caught a plane from Tampa to Newark to meet up with my brother for a long weekend together in Maine. A day earlier, Maile’s plane had just returned.

Normally, Maile and I would load up the whole family for the trip to her grandmother’s cottage, but our kids are busy back in school. Instead, we staggered our trips, with Maile going up the week before.

The sun rises over one of the many inlets in Casco Bay. Around this time, you start to hear the lobster boats (a.k.a. the pickup trucks of coastal Maine) chug-chug-chugging out to the bay.

In the past, it would have been easy to just put this trip off until we could make it work for everyone. But time is precious and opportunities are sometimes fleeting. She needed this trip. I needed this trip. So we found a creative way to make it happen just by questioning what we’ve always done.

We can sometimes get swept away in the business of living life. We establish family norms, doing things the same way because it’s familiar and easy. It’s life on autopilot. It was great to disrupt some of that. We have a lot of norm-breaking goals in retirement, and I’m excited that I’m on this journey with someone so willing to pursue them.