Yesterday was kind of a full-but-good day! I recorded a (fairly juicy) BLP ep, went to Pilates, FINISHED THE FINAL EDITS on the BLPA2.0 workbook (so excited!) and then met Jenny for a Starbucks date!
I ended up having to drive through a Florida monsoon (like white-out rain) BUT it was monsoon without lightning so I was pretty okay with it. Everyone slowed down and put flashers on so it wasn’t too bad but for a few minutes there visibility was like, minimal.
ANYWAY. I made it and while on that treacherous journey decided I needed a cafe mocha so this session was even enhanced by chocolate. (Jenny got her favorite Earl Grey London Fog!).
We had TONS to talk about – I especially always loooove discussing life with people that are one stage ahead of me — makes me think about the future! Jenny has a son who is in graduate school and getting married soon, plus a daughter in 11th grade. It made me think about all of the years it will just be G at home — I’m honestly sad thinking that far ahead, but I also think it will be fun!?
(I truly do not think I was sad to leave the toddler/little kid years behind — and I know this varies SO MUCH person to person. I feel differently about the current stage! I’m excited to see my kids grow up BUT I’m also exceedingly comfortable here and feel a lot more sadness around every milestone.)
SO THEN I am sure that (okay that, plus the Money for Couples ep I listened to on the drive home) spurned a desire to think more deeply about the future, and I spent a solid hour playing with ChatGPT and Claude doing financial modeling scenarios around retirement, college savings, etc. I know these things are NOT TO BE TRUSTED as full on financial advisors, and so I took everything with a grain of salt, but they ‘showed their work’ and also were pretty in alignment, so I think the exercise was a helpful one.
Without revealing too many personal details, the analysis made me feel pretty reassured about our current burn rate (high, largely related to kid-centric expenses) and savings rate (not terrible, but also definitely not in FIRE zone). With our current lifestyle choices, we have not chosen the FIRE-y path, and that’s okay! I think we’ve generally made very intentional choices, and some of those have been expensive. But at least we do not appear to be on some sort of catastrophic path.
I mean really, who knows WHAT will be happening in 8-10 years? Not ChatGPT, not Claude, not anyone. But it’s still nice to get an idea of what things could or might look like.
No Comments