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.
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We are not FIRE either, but I did intentionally cut back on work to 0.6 FTE this year because I realized we didn’t *have* to save as much as we were in order to be secure in retirement. A few things went into this decision:
1) I love my clinical job, but working 1.0 FTE clinically is exhausting and mind numbing
2) I also love my creative work (currently research, but could be something else too), but if I am working 1.0 FTE clinically I am too tired to be creative. At all.
3) The goal is to keep me sufficiently refreshed that I can enjoy both aspects of my life, AND allow me to have a hobby or two outside of work.
4) I also want more time with my family
5) With my mom going into a nu
rsing home, and with that costing $600 per day, my parents are going to burn through their savings very quickly. I started thinking, WHY WOULD I WORK SO HARD JUST TO HAVE SOME PRIVATE EQUITY BRO SUCK ME DRY VIA THE NURSING HOME. Just saying.
6) Working less is a longevity hack.
Would love to hear your thoughts on any of this.
I think it sounds super smart and admirable. We definitely made some choices that doesn’t leave that an option for us (unless we were to change the kids’ school situations) but I think it 100% makes sense if you can swing it, and it def sounds like you guys can!! How do you feel with it so far? Do you love it?
Kathleen Paley (Reframe pod) retired entirely at 45ish from her corporate law job and seems incredibly happy. Re: nursing home . . gah. That is so hard. I would also very much like to avoid what you mentioned.
I don’t know yet, it starts in July.
+1 to not missing the toddler stage – or baby stage! I really like the elementary years so far! The boys will be in K and 3rd next year so I feel like we are entering the glory years of parenting.
I am planning to FIRE. My husband will keep working. My target retirement is 5-8 years from now but that may be shortened depending on the outcome of our lawsuit. I’m leaning more towards 5 years at this point. I like my job but the travel is hard on me and our family/marriage. We are so far off from being empty nesting, though, that I have put zero thought into it! I’ll be 58 when our youngest graduates from high school!!
Sorry again about the monsoon- I had such an easy drive to get there. We will find somewhere in between next time! About the kid thing… I get sad when each phase ends, but then (after a short adjustment period) I realize the next one is fun too, just in a different way. I am freaking out a little about having an empty nest in one year… gulp. It was also fun to talk about all the “un-bloggable” issues!!!
I will very much enjoy following along! And I think that’s one reason it’s comforting to observe others in later stages – you see the good parts as well as the scary/uncertain ones!
Oh that’s Jenny! Always so nice to have a face-to-face blog friend date!
I JUST did a chatgpt/clause analysis of my 403b and then my trade IRA. There was some good insight (too heavy into tech) but I feel quite confident. And yes, the bleeding money is crazy… Summer camp, trips, sports…
First of all, let me say how cool you got meet up and hang out with Jenny! That lovely.
Re: the use of AI: we’ve VERY MUCH encouraged now to use it for everything at work (and I am a little hesitant to do that) but I will also admit that I have employed Copilot and Gemini to research my recent health issues and while I don’t take it as a medical diagnosis, I learned a lot. 🙂
if you can, see if you can use OpenEvidence – I like it a lot!