It’s been over 7 months since I’ve written anything on this blog. It’s not for lack of time — I certainly haven’t been so busy that writing one or two posts per month would have been a burden.
For a variety of reasons I’ve decided to recommit myself to this project. Being locked down and working from home for the past 7 weeks has certainly allowed the time for some introspection. Here’s a few of my thoughts:
- I’ve decided to drastically cut back on the amount of time that I spend posting on Reddit and another financial forum. For many years I’ve spent several hours per week mainly offering detailed FIRE/personal finance advice and reading the thoughts of other members. I’m not going to air all my grievances here, but in a nutshell I simply feel like the value proposition of spending time on Reddit and similar sites has declined to the point where it’s almost as low as other forms of social media. It’s good for memes and beginner level discussions about topics, but frustrating to attempt to use for serious or in-depth discussions.
- I enjoy writing, and I’ve always liked it as far back as I can remember. I’m not sure exactly why, but a big part of it is I feel like putting my thoughts down on paper (or a screen in this case) helps me organize those thoughts. I think participating on Reddit and other forums mostly satisfied my desire to write, but now that I’m cutting back my time spent in those communities I’m still going to need an outlet.
- I might as well write for myself rather than being a content creator on other sites. I put effort into starting this blog, so let’s make use of it!
- My original intent in creating this site was to create the type of content that I want to see in this niche, to provide a “living diary” of my own journey to FIRE, and to provide a free resource for sharing the knowledge that I’ve gained on this topic over the past decade. All of those reasons are still valid.
As far as personal updates go, there haven’t been too many big changes in my life over the past 7 months. Just gonna list off the main events rapid-fire:
- November 2019: Started my new job, still in engineering, which was the offer in question for my previous post regarding the savings I’d see from a shorter commute. So far it’s going well, and I’m absolutely loving spending less time in the car and less money on commuting.
- January 2020: My girlfriend and I made the decision that we may want to buy a house in the near future, but lack liquid assets for a down payment due to most of our money being in tax-advantaged retirement accounts. I dropped my 401k from maxing out to the minimum contribution for the full matching amount, with a goal of saving at least $1500 per month in cash towards my portion of a down payment.
- February – April 2020: The stock market took roughly a 30% dip, then recovered a bit such that it’s now only down 15% from the peak. So far this is the biggest market dip I’ve experienced. I viewed it as a mini litmus test of my risk tolerance that I passed successfully. To quote the late Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, “The winning formula for success in investing is owning the entire stock market through an index fund, and then doing nothing. Just stay the course.”
- May 2020: Despite the market volatility, my net worth is still up around $19,000 since the end of September 2019, when I last posted here. Sitting pretty around $135k USD at the time of writing.
That’s about the gist of it. I’m back, with a goal of writing a post every two to three weeks. Quality over quantity!