Burning Desire For FIRE

Financially Independent, Retired Early(ish) at 57.

Category: The ‘why’ of FI. (Page 35 of 40)

Monkey see; monkey do… or do they?

September 1, 2019 / / 6 Comments

This morning, a few minutes ago, a little thing happened that made me think about the effect we have on the people around us. We don’t realise it but in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, the things we do and say often rubs off on those around us.

I’ve mentioned on this blog before that I always put at least one ‘Dad joke’ up on the board at the start of each lesson. I started doing this a year ago and the kids love it. If I start the lesson and forget to put them up, they always remind me. Admittedly, my year 9 class have asked me to stop doing this before the corniness kills them… but they never fail to ask for the Dad joke when I ‘forget’ to do it. They’ve already asked me to email them next year with a Dad joke a day when I’m not their teacher anymore.

After a few months of this, some kids have started emailing me with Dad jokes that they’ve found. A typical email might read, “Hi Ms Jones. I was away today and I was wondering what work I missed. To make up for it, here’s a Dad joke: ‘I saw a magician yesterday that turned audience members into wind turbines. I immediately became a big fan.’ See you tomorrow!”

I love it, especially when it happens in my own house.

Ryan24 called me into his room to read a Dad joke he stumbled across on a website. He said it was two Dad jokes in one. Seeing as it’s a joke on finance, I thought I’d share it with you. Are you ready for the glory of the Dad joke…?

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‘I’ve started buying heaps of stocks. Chicken, beef and vegetarian stock cubes. One day, I’m hoping to be a bouillonaire…’

I hope no one strained a muscle from laughing too hard.

It got me thinking though. People pick up on what you do. If they think it has value, they’ll copy it for themselves. Because Ryan24’s joke was a financial one, it got me thinking about how the boys are running their financial lives.

When they were growing up, we were living on a financial knife’s edge. You might not think it, but it takes a long time to claw your way out from the pit of starting a new life with 4 kids under 5, $60 in cash and a mortgage just under 100K. I wrote about it here.

Those boys grew up watching me living within the financial rules I set out for myself:

1. NEVER borrow anything. Always spend less than you earn. Actually, the only exception was when I landed the first teaching contract at my current school. It was for 9 months of full-time work and I knew we could afford to get a new(er) car. The Tarago we were driving was as aerodynamic as a loaf of bread and the skylight leaked every time it rained. Whenever I made a right-hand turn, a trickle of water would run down the back of my neck. When I traded it in for a 5-year-old Ford station wagon and took out a 20K loan, I said to them, “I don’t know if I’ll have a job next year, so I’ll be paying this off before my contract finishes, just to be safe.” The kids were Tom13 (now Tom27) down to Evan9 (now Evan22). They watched me do it.

2. You should have everything you NEED, but only some of what you WANT. This translates to their after school interests. I knew that with 4 kids and only my income, we’d never get ahead if I spent lavishly on everything that the boys might have wanted to do. So I got them to prioritise. They were allowed ONE after school class a week each. It could be anything they wanted – sports, music, art, dance, whatever. But only one thing at a time. David25 was David2 when he first asked for piano lessons. He stuck with those and is now putting the finishing touches on a Music degree in piano. Other kids tried a few different things before settling on what they liked. It was ok. They had to decide what they really wanted to explore and then focus on that. I think that’s a good thing.

3. Your money is a finite amount. Don’t spend on things you don’t value, but spend on the things you do. An example of this is overseas travel. I didn’t want my boys to miss out as I had. (I planned a big trip to Europe with my best friend when we were 15… but I didn’t get to go until I was 51; after the boys were old enough to be left alone.) When the boys were younger, I took them on holidays to Bali, Thailand and Singapore and also sent the 2 middle boys to the US with the school’s band. I had to forego a lot of coffees, new clothes and other fripperies to afford to do this, but to me, it was worth it. They watched me saving and planning for all of this.

4. ALWAYS have an emergency fund in place. This one’s pretty self-explanatory. When the boys were very small I had a few years when I literally had no money at our backs if a real emergency happened. I’ve touched on it a bit in my ‘About’ page. I don’t think they have any strong memories of those hand-to-mouth times, (I should ask them!) but what they DO know is that Mum always has some money put away for when we need it.

5. Christmas is important. Always make it a special day for everyone. I insisted that the boys always had Christmas Day with me. As Mum said to me, “You have all of the hard days – you deserve to have the fun one.” A. always used to pick them up at around 6PM that day, after we’d had Christmas lunch with my family. One day soon I’ll write about my strategies for Christmas Day when we were so poor. The boys didn’t miss out on a thing.

So given all this, what are the boys doing with their finances now they’re in their twenties?

At our “We’re out of debt (again!) celebratory dinner 2 years ago.

NEVER borrow anything. Always spend less than you earn. Interestingly, none of them uses credit cards, only debit cards, even though I’ve always used a credit card. I run all my expenses through a credit card, but I run it like a debit card so I rarely dip into the ‘credit’ part of it. They’ve seen how being free of debt has helped our family to become financially independent and I think they realise the importance of it. When we sold the old house to the developer and I was finally able to pay off the bridging loan of 750K that I was carrying on The Best House in Melbourne, I took them all out to dinner to celebrate.

Whenever they’ve needed to buy things like cars, they’ve either paid for them themselves out of savings or they’ve come to me for an interest-free loan. This month, Tom27 decided that he needed a new car. We talked about what he could afford, given his wage, so instead of buying a tinny but shiny new car, he bought himself a 5-year-old Prius. He was spending 18K, which is bigger than the Bank of Mum is prepared to lend. Initially, he applied for a loan from the car yard’s financing, but after getting home and doing some research and some Maths, he realised that getting a loan from someone else will save him over 2K in interest, so that’s what he did. Interestingly, the car yard tried to entice him by saying, “If you get the loan through us you can have the car tomorrow!!!” Tom27’s response? “I’d rather wait a week and have the two extra grand, thanks!”

You should have everything you NEED, but only some of what you WANT. I guess this follows on from not having access to credit, but they seem to be quite good at prioritising what they spend their money on. If they need cash for something, they’ll either sell something to free up some money (which is David25’s go-to), or they’ll tighten the belt and wait until they have the means to get what they want.

Your money is a finite amount. Don’t spend on things you don’t value, but spend on the things you do. Poverty and student life has forced Evan22, in particular, to take this on as a survival mechanism. If he spends all of his Austudy allowance on wine, women and song, then he doesn’t eat for the rest of the fortnight. He lives in Ballarat, so he can’t pop home very often for a free feed, so he’s had to learn to be very self-reliant and to balance his money.

Tom27 is an accountant, (yeah… I don’t know how that happened either…) and he plans out his expenses months ahead to ensure he has enough to do what he has to do, such as rent, petrol car payments etc, before he does what he wants to do, such as recording a new album, travelling overseas and going out.

David25 has a girlfriend and at first, a lot of his money went on eating out, flashy dates etc. Now, nearly 2 years on, he and Izzy spend a lot of time at each other’s houses, watching videos, composing songs and popping up to Coles to get a litre of gourmet icecream as a treat. Ryan24 is the king of slashing expenses to make his money go further.

Christmas is important. Always make it a special day for everyone. Well, everyone’s onboard for this one! David25 doesn’t spend as much on dates anymore, but when it’s their anniversary he pulls out all the stops to make the date a memorable one. He’s learned the art of prioritising in this regard.

We all put thought and effort into Christmas, probably even more so than birthdays. No one’s allowed to buy anything for themselves in December in case they muck up someone’s gift for them and we all sneak around buying and making things that we hope will really hit the spot. I love seeing the boys plotting and planning gifts for their brothers and grandparents – I feel like I’ve passed the baton onto the next generation.

So, given that they’re following all but one of the financial things I modelled for them as they were growing up, I guess you could say that the “Monkey See; Monkey Do” saying is pretty apt. Also, I’m putting it out there that when they get a bit older and start pulling in some real money, the Emergency Funds will come.

This wasn’t what I started off intending to write about – it began with Dad jokes – but I guess it’s a useful exercise to step back and observe the people around you and see what’s rubbing off on them. It seems my legacy will be a love of the Dad joke and a leaning towards the thrifty!

But sometimes – you get what you need.

August 26, 2019 / / 7 Comments

Sometimes the nicest things happen, just when you need them to.

Yesterday I had the last two periods of the day free, almost certainly for the last time this term. It’s the mid-point of term 3 and after this is when all of the English assessments begin to pile in. Given this, I thought I might slip out and see Mum and Dad for a half an hour, come back to school and then I’d be able to go straight home at the end of the day.

As I was walking to my car, I passed by a garden on the corner that I’ve always admired. I’ve been parking in the same street for over 15 years and I’ve never seen anyone working in it. As I rounded the corner to get to my car, I saw a woman around my own age near the front door, cutting some jonquils.

I called out to her, “Excuse me! I just wanted to say that I’ve been looking at your garden for years and I really enjoy it.”

She smiled, said thank you and we started chatting. I said I was a teacher at the school across the road and when she asked if I was finished for the day, I made a show of looking over my shoulder and said, “Ssssh… I have some spare periods so I’m sneaking off to see my mother. She fell and broke her arm 3 months ago and it still hasn’t healed, poor thing.”

She immediately held out the jonquils she was holding and said “Take them. Tell her I hope she feels better soon.”

I demurred, but she said, “No, I love to share them. The houses up and down the street all get bunches when they come into flower.”

Well, after that it’d be rude NOT to accept. We kept talking. When she said she retired from work 3 years ago I asked about what retired life was like. She used to be a radiographer and she and her husband retired together. He’s heavily involved in the SES, but she’s chosen other ways to fill her time.

“I found that I missed the people I worked with the most”, she said. “The social aspect of work especially, because when I retired most of my friends were still working. I had to look out for things that I could do on my own. “

OMG!!! This sounds exactly like what I’m going to have to do when I pull the pin.

“I think that you should do something for the head, something for the heart and something for the soul,” she said. “So I do classes at U3A, I go to the gym and I take myself out to art galleries and the theatre. I have a lovely time!”

I could hardly believe my luck. Just when I’ve been all in the swithers about whether or not I’d enjoy retirement, along comes a woman who has designed the very same sort of retirement I’d thought about – and she loved it. It was so reassuring to hear. And to think, if I hadn’t have snuck out to see Mum and Dad, I wouldn’t have met her. After all, I’d been parking in that street for over 16 years and this was the first time I’d seen her.

Talk about Fortunate Frogdancer striking again!

We spoke for about 10 minutes, then I raced off to see how Mum and Dad were doing. It felt lovely to go in with the bunch of jonquils and tell them about our conversation.

Isn’t it funny how life sometimes delivers exactly what we need?

‘Playing with FIRE’ review.

August 25, 2019 / / 4 Comments
(Screenshot from the trailer.)

A few days ago I went to see the Melbourne premiere of the ‘Playing With Fire.’ I was asked to be on the panel for the ‘Q and A’ afterwards, so there was double the reason to go along. I love a good chinwag! There have been heaps of showings in the US and UK, so I’d heard a bit about it, but there’s nothing like seeing the finished product for yourself.

I met up with Girt, one of the 3.5 readers of this blog, for dinner and then we dashed to the venue, meeting up with latestarterfire, Mr and Mrs Hack and another couple of blog readers. It’s always fun when people come hesitantly up to you, saying, “Um… excuse me… are you Frogdancer?” It’s not exactly a common thing to call someone!

For those not in the know, the basic storyline is that a young couple finds out about FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early) and decide that they want to make some changes to their lifestyle so that they can gain more freedom and get to spend more time with their infant daughter. The husband, Scott, is waaaay more gung-ho about this than Taylor, his wife. The film shows a year in their lives after they make the decision to sell their incredibly expensive house in (I think) California and move to a lower cost of living state in order to kick-start their FIRE plans.

I enjoyed the film, particularly the cameos of famous FIRE bloggers which were interspersed along the way. I’m pleased to see that the concept of financial independence is inching its way towards becoming more mainstream and projects like this can only help.

This film is obviously designed as an introduction to the FIRE world. People who are totally unaware of it or who have just dipped their big toe into the waters are the target audience. Overall, I liked the film very much, but there were a couple of niggling things that I’ll get off my chest before I dive into what I liked about it.

Obviously, the film’s structure of showing one couple’s year diving into FIRE meant that while some things were duplicatable for most people, other things they did weren’t. Strategies like living with both sets of parents for a few months, Travis leaving his job to set up a vague, unspecified ‘entrepreneurial gig’ while his wife still worked and leaving their home for a totally new state are things that were very personal to this couple. However, there were other things that I thought might be very valuable to viewers in the target audience.

The most interesting thing I found about the movie was watching the slow transformation of a short-term thinker into a long(er) term one. Taylor started off being very reluctant to make any changes to the lifestyle that she found very comfortable. She wanted to free up more time to spend with her baby daughter, yes, but she also used her baby as a knee-jerk reaction excuse when she didn’t like what her husband was suggesting.

When Scott suggested trading the expensively-leased family car over to something older and more affordable, her instant come-back was, “But will it be safe?” When he put up the idea about moving from their expensive beachside townhouse in order to move to a cheaper, landlocked place, she didn’t like the idea, saying that she didn’t want to move their daughter away from such a safe neighbourhood and good school district, as if this was the only place in the world where such a place exists. Plus, the baby is around a year old… plenty of time to worry about school districts. It was interesting to see rationalisation in action!

Slowly, over the course of the movie, her attitude started to change. It wasn’t all beer and skittles – working all day while she could hear other people interacting with her child was hard, but she had to do it because her husband wasn’t working; and driving the older secondhand car after giving up her new one clearly wasn’t a good day – but by the end of the movie she said that she was happy with what they’d put in place.

Will she keep going with it? If her husband starts pulling his weight with the income situation, then I think she probably will. Someone after the movie said that his new ‘Side-hustle” was actually making the movie, (which I’m pretty sure wasn’t actually stated in the film – let me know if I’m wrong) so I hope for her sake that it’s making a healthy profit!

I also really liked the graphic that would flash up every now and then, showing the couple’s current savings rate at that point in the movie and how many years they had until they reached FI if they continued at that savings rate. Obviously, they weren’t going to live with their parents forever, which is when they were making a 70% savings rate, but it showed in a concrete way how reducing your expenses (or raising them) can make YEARS worth of differences in the length of your working life. This is something that everyone can take away with them and apply to their lives, unlike some of the other more drastic strategies Scott and Taylor used.

Of course, the little cameos of various FIRE bloggers and podcasters were a highlight. After reading these people for years, it was nice to see them pop up on the screen. It was almost like seeing old friends. This feature also gave balance to the whole movie, showing those at the other end who are reaping the benefits of making the sort of choices that Scott and Taylor were beginning to grapple with.

I pinched the next 2 photos from The Bludger’s twitter feed. I forgot to ask anyone to take pictures. I was Living In The Moment!

The audience in the Melbourne showing was far smaller than that in Sydney and a big proportion of us were FI bloggers, readers and practitioners. The film was preaching to the converted to us. However, there were a few people who’d come along with friends and who were being introduced to these ideas for the first time. The FIRE might be spreading!

Here’s The Bludger introducing us. I’m in the middle, with Mark and Sophie either side.

Being on the Q and A panel was fun. The other members were Sophie Elsworth, a financial journo for Newscorp and Mark, who along with his wife is making huge strides along the FI trail using property. Mark’s also a teacher, but in the Maths area *shudder!* We fielded many questions, with Sophie being able to comment on the bigger picture areas as she’s interviewed LOTS of people over her career, while Mark and I were able to talk about our personal ways of reaching FI and how we did it. Mark’s wife was in the audience too and she gave some useful insights. They started early… the lucky dogs!!

All in all, an enjoyable night. I’m glad to have finally seen the film for myself and I’ve met some lovely people from the FIRE community. Thanks to The Bludger for organising the screening. Hopefully, this will be the first of many in Melbourne.

Getting the pizzaz back.

August 13, 2019 / / 7 Comments
Getting excited about making this bad boy for Izzy or myself… or maybe I’ll make 2 of them in different colours?

I’ve decided that part of the reason why I’m a little scared about leaving work entirely is that I haven’t been creative lately. Sure, I’ve been writing on the blog and gardening, but I think that I need to be making something that’s tangible in the real world to feel completely happy.

The following pictures are from my Pinterest feed. So many quilts! So many ideas! So little time!

So I dragged out the trestle table that I bought for Christmas dinners and the like, when we have heaps of people over, and I put it up in the spare room next to mine. I found my neglected sewing machine in my walk-in wardrobe and placed it on the table. Then I hauled out the big plastic tub that contains the blocks I started 18 months ago for a quilt for Tom27 (back when he was Tom25).

I’m setting myself up for success.

I’ve always had a fondness for wonky blocks.

My thinking is that I’ll be far more likely to do more creating when the machine is already set up. Instead of unearthing everything from the depths of my wardrobe, dragging it all out, setting it up on the dining table and then putting it all away when I’ve finished for the day, I’ll be casually strolling in, flicking the switch of the machine and leisurely quilting for 10, 20 or 30 minutes before putting the cover on the machine and strolling out again. In fact, once I had everything set out in the one space, out of the way of the rest of the house, I made another square.

Tom27 may get that quilt before he’s Tom77 yet…

How cool is this one?

I firmly believe that humans aren’t happy unless we’re creating something. Something that we can point to and say, “I made that!” Some people get that glow from baking, some from drawing and some from making jewellery, to pick just a few examples. It seems that personally, I get the creative glow from making practical, beautiful things that tend to keep people warm. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it’s leftover from the year I didn’t have enough money for heating oil, back when the boys were little…?

You can also do fun designs like this one. Easy to do. Or, if you’re a more ordered person, you’d do the block without cutting it in half.

Before I put the sewing machine away to work on my side-hustle for 5 years, I made over 20 quilts, most for family and friends. I’m a nervous sewer, but I figured that quilting was only lots of little straight seams all put together and I could surely do that! I made sure I could by making 4 quilts for my sons first, before branching out to make quilts for adults. You know, people whose opinions I really care about. After all, kids have to be useful for something…

Love this pop of colour. This would be great to make as a gift – just find out their favourite colour and off you go!

As I was scrolling through the page where most of my quilts are made, I’d forgotten some of them. I loved the look of some, while wrinkling my nose at others. I’d forgotten just how productive I could be when I got excited about a project and pushed everything aside to Get It Done! The Sister Quilts, for example, were both finished in the 3 days before Christmas Day. Obviously I wasn’t hosting Christmas that year, so I was able to push absolutely everything aside and meet that deadline. It was a crazy thing to do, but gee… I knew I was alive!

A half-log cabin quilt.

Now that I’m coming to the end of full-time work, it’s time to start dusting off the old hobbies and maybe trying out some new ones. Moving the sewing machine and dusting off Pinterest has got me looking forward to all the projects I can do. It’s going to be good to get my hands making things again!

The best part of financial independence is having options.

August 1, 2019 / / 13 Comments

Yesterday I walked into the staff common room after period 4, looking forward to the beef stew I’d brought from home for lunch when I saw a familiar face. “Russ”, (short for Ms Russsell), was standing there. She’d retired last year at 63, after a long and illustrious career at the school and we’d always had our desks in the same staff room.

It was lovely to see her. She was a very popular member of staff. We laughed over a clip I posted on FB a couple of days before, others joined us and then I left to go find lunch.

A few minutes later she joined me in the staff room. She was standing behind me, chatting away with everyone, then all of a sudden she felt dizzy. She had to sit down. After a few minutes she tried to make it to sickbay to lie down but even with help, she couldn’t make it to the door. Someone called the nurse, who arrived with a wheelchair while someone else called an ambulance.

Turns out that once she lay down she felt better, but earlier this year she’d suddenly collapsed and had a triple bypass, so no one wanted to take any chances.

After she left the staffroom, a few of us who are looking forward to retiring in the next few years got together.

“Do you think she left it a few years too late to retire?” said one.

“When she suddenly sat down, I started to wonder the same thing,” said another.

“Wow. So it wasn’t just me that was thinking this!” I said.

“It really makes you think,” said the first person. “A few years ago she was the healthiest person you could ever find. But when she came into the room I thought that she looked older.”

“She said last year that heart disease runs in her family,” said someone else.

I thought of Russ in the sickbay and hoped that she was feeling better. I thought of my Mum who’s going into hospital tomorrow to see if her broken arm has finally healed enough to take the brace off. So far, her arm has refused to heal after a certain point, which is a real worry. She’s now using a walker and a wheelchair to get around. I thought of Dad, bleeding internally for who knows how long, who was incredibly lucky for it to be picked up just in time.

I shivered. I was suddenly very glad that I’m cutting back on my hours next year to go part-time. YOLO!

To all intents and purposes, I’ve reached FI. It doesn’t feel like it, as the actual number I want to hit is still a little way off, but in all honesty, I could retire tomorrow and I’d more than likely be ok. It’s not as if I’m retiring in my 30’s and I have to make my portfolio last for 50 years or so. I’m in my 50’s so my ‘golden years’ will be far fewer. Usually, that’d be a downer, but in this instance, it’s actually good luck!

This money stuff is so important. I wish more people realised this when they were younger. Earlier on the same day, at recess, the young teachers were talking about how much mad money/discretionary spending they gave themselves each fortnight. It averaged out that each young woman was spending around $400/week on eating out, clothes, gifts etc.

I was literally gobsmacked. That’s a LOT of money each week. That’s an even bigger amount of money each year. Even someone with my rudimentary Maths skills knows this.

I just pulled up a calculator and worked it out. Just over 20K/year.

Imagine if, instead of spending all of this money, they instead chose to invest a half (or even a quarter) of it in a boring old index fund or as salary sacrifice into their superannuation? They’re all in their late 20’s. Even if they did that for the next 5 years, assuming they don’t have children first, then they let that money quietly compound for the next few decades, they’d be SO much better off than I was when I reached 50.

When I turned 50, I was locked in. I’d paid off the house, so I’d established absolute physical security for myself and the boys, but that was pretty much it. I had just over 100K in super and no other investments. I knew that unless a miracle occurred, I was going to turn up to full-time work at the school until I turned 70. I wouldn’t be able to afford to retire before then.

Like most teachers, I like my job. The kids make you laugh every day and I like the people I work with. But that being said, teaching is a job that takes a lot out of you. If you’re doing it right, it’s high-octane, high performance and whenever you’re in front of the kids you need to be switched on. Not all that many people are capable of that sort of sustained effort when they’re elderly. People get burned out.

That’s hard to visualise when you’re young. I know that when I was a young teacher working out in the furthest western suburb when I was a DINK, I’d look at the burned-out older teachers dragging themselves to work and think, “I’ll never be like them. I’d find another job if I felt like that.”

I didn’t stop to consider that these people were locked in. They had families to support, mortgages to pay, probably credit card bills and who knows what else? It’s easy to say blithely “I’d get another job” but when a particular job is all you’ve ever known and you need to provide a secure base for the people you love, it’s very hard to switch things up.

I wish these young teachers could look ahead and see that they’re selling themselves short. One of them said, “I know this’ll shock you Frogdancer, but when I see something I want, I buy it.” I laughed because I remember those fun years – I did it myself before kids – but I know that when they get older they won’t remember most of the clothes and shoes and dinners out. If they cut those things back, just a bit, they can still have their fun and at the same time put some money away to quietly work for them in the background, they’ll be very glad that they have an extra pile of money that can give them options.

I don’t know if Russ worked a few years too long or not. That’s her business and I’ll never know. But I wonder if she had her time over again, whether she would have pulled the pin a little earlier than she did…?

Putting infrastructure in place for retirement #3

July 28, 2019 / / 5 Comments
Un-netted veggie garden bed.
Naked veggie garden bed. A danger to worms.

Veggie gardens. A must for any retirement.

Well, ok, maybe not for everyone, but they fall into the category of setting up interests and activities for retirement before you actually reach that golden time. I spent a fortune getting the paving and wicking veggie beds installed, then I spent some more cash setting up the composting system that’s steadily improving the soil quality. Added onto that, I bought some worm farms that sit in the actual garden bed to also help with the soil.

What I didn’t factor in was the church at the back of my house. I approve of God looking after all the animals and birds and such, but why He allows them to nest in His roof and then use MY worms as tasty tasty snacks is something that I just can’t fathom. Something had to be done.

Short of bribing the local pyromaniac to burn the church down – and yes, we seem to have one of those in the suburb and he hasn’t been caught yet- it was obvious that I needed to do something to save my skinny slimy friends. I needed to put something in place that would be cost-effective and easy for a more elderly version of me to use.

Clamp on the side of the wicking bed.
This cost about 25c.

I saw a post by Late Starter Fire showing bird netting above her garden beds. A couple of twitter messages later and I had the gist of it. She’d had everything installed together, but I was coming late to the party and I had to work things out for myself.

A trip to the local hardware store and I had everything I needed. Clamps. Screws. 50 metres of hose pipe. Cutters to cut the hose pipe. All up? Around $60 or so.

Thus proving that not every project to improve the house for retirement needs to cost a bomb.

It's working! Hose pipe in the clamps.
So far, so good.

Thank goodness for adult sons who own a cordless drill and who don’t mind helping out around the place!

We cut 3-metre lengths of hose, stuffed them through the clamps and arched them over. Worked a treat.

All finished.

It didn’t take all that long before the job was done.

This is a very flexible system. I can take the lengths of hosepipe out if I want to grow a particularly tall crop like beans or tomatoes on a section of the garden beds, but in general, the height will be perfect for most crops.

Honestly, I’d prefer to have the beds without the netting, but aesthetics can’t win out over practicalities. The birds were throwing mulch all over the place and digging up not only worms but seeds as well. Old Lady Frogdancer doesn’t need to deal with that in her retirement!

This little job is an example of getting something done now, while I have the cash-flow, rather than waiting until I retire and then having to pay for it out of savings. Yes, it’s a little thing, but I know that Old Lady Frogdancer will be using it for decades. This is a job that only required a small bit of cash and an hour or so of time, but it helps make my home just that little bit more practical for retirement.

I just wish that my next project was as economical…

The naked paved area.

The last thing that I need to get done in the backyard is to put a verandah roof over this lower paved area and get some furniture for it. I’ve been getting quotes for the verandah over the last couple of weeks and I’ll be signing with a company on Tuesday. I feel a bit lop-sided because everyone seems to charge an arm and a leg for jobs like these.

My list of things to Get Done before I leave work is slowly shrinking, which is good.

Along with my savings…

Maybe we should keep our big mouths shut?

July 21, 2019 / / 16 Comments

I don’t know if I’ve blogged about this goal here, but one of my dreams for years was to be able to afford to buy 2 sets of subscription tickets to the Melbourne Theatre Company, then take a different person with me each time to see a play. We’d meet in the city, have dinner and catch up, then see the play and talk about it afterwards. I thought it would be great!

For the last two years, ever since I did the whole Geoarbitrage thing, I’ve been able to do it. Those tickets don’t come cheap, at around $90/seat, but for years I was starved of seeing live theatre and now I can finally share it. My kids, my sister, my niece, my parents and various friends have all come with me and it’s been lovely having one-on-one time with the people I like and care about.

I have a friend who I’ve known for 20 years. His name is Leo and we met when I was newly out on the dating scene after leaving my marriage. We dated briefly, but that was over a decade ago and we agreed we’d be better off as friends. We see each other every few months for lunch or dinner and it’s good for both of us to be able to talk about what’s happening in our lives and get another perspective from someone not actively involved.

We talk about everything, including finances. Coincidentally, as I was embroiled with the property-developing and geoarbitrage thing, he was also investing in a property venture… but unfortunately his didn’t turn out as well as mine did. He’s now looking at retiring overseas in a few years in a low cost of living country like Thailand or Cambodia, or maybe Bali, where the Age Pension can go a lot further. Anyway, last week it was his turn to come and see a play with me.

He had to leave work later than I did, so I grabbed a table in the restaurant next to the theatre and sent a photo of the menu so he could decide what he wanted to have. He selected the lamb, then a few minutes later he sent another text: “U paying?? Add winter veggies.”

Woah!

I don’t mind admitting that I was rocked back on my heels a little. I don’t mind paying for my own meal if money’s tight for him, but considering I’d already paid for his theatre ticket… Wow.

As it turned out, he paid for both our dinners, which was nice of him, but by the time we reached this point in the evening, there was more.

Twice during dinner he made a remark about how much money I must have now, which was weird and made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t in a complimentary, “Look how far you’ve come, Frogdancer, that’s fantastic!” way. It was more of a ‘what would you know? You’re made of money’ sort of tone. I inwardly raised my eyebrows but let the comments slide.

The last remark he made, though… that one made me mad.

We were in the queue at the theatre to get in and I gave him his ticket. He said, “You must’ve seen a lot of plays lately. How many have you been to this year?”

I said, “I’ve been to a couple of plays with my Theatre kids, plus Harry Potter and I think this subscription is for 7 plays.”

He glanced at his ticket, which has the price ($91.00) on it, whistled and said in a sardonic tone, “Gee. What does it feel like to be rich?”

I was gobsmacked.

At the end of the night, after I dropped him home, he thanked me and said, “If you’ve got any more theatre tickets I’ll be happy to come with you. I love these things.”

As it happens, I have one play that I haven’t asked anyone to come with me yet, but he won’t be getting it. The main reason is that the whole idea of this is to share the love around and catch up with a range of people, but the other reason that I won’t be asking him is that I drove home feeling sad that my good fortune has changed the dynamic between us.

Well, I say ‘good fortune’ but the reality is that he could have been in a similar position to me, but his life has been all about the wine, women and song, whereas mine has been pretty different. Bringing up 4 kids on your own necessitates a more frugal, stay-at-home-more-often way of living.

I’m left wishing that we didn’t have those conversations when we were both making our moves in the property market.

I don’t want to be made to feel guilty or to apologise for my deal working out. It could so easily have gone the other way and, knowing this, I lived on a knife-edge of stress for over eighteen months while the whole thing played out. I took a calculated risk and it paid off. Leo knows all of this – after all, he was around during the days when I could barely keep food on the table and the bills paid, back when the kids were little. I guess the reason why I’m left with a nasty taste in my mouth is that this snide, envious attitude is coming out of left field when they are coming from my old friend.

Sometimes I see people in the FI world saying, “We should talk more about finances. We should make discussions about money more normal and open.” Well, maybe we should.

But on the other hand, maybe it’s better if we keep our big mouths shut?

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

July 16, 2019 / / 17 Comments

These past two weeks have proven the words of John Lennon. Two weeks ago I was blissfully planning for two weeks of school holidays – granted, it’s in the middle of winter, but I was still dreaming of two weeks of unencumbered bliss… and then the phone rang.

I’ve blogged before about how my Mum’s health is not the best, particularly since she fell and broke her arm a couple of months ago. Two days before the holidays began, I got a call from my sister.

“Dad’s been taken to hospital with suspected internal bleeding. Mum can’t be left on her own, so I’m staying with her tonight. I can’t stay with her on Friday night, can you?”

I told her I’d pack a bag for the weekend and I’d be over there after work on Friday. Not the way I was visualising spending the start of my holidays, but how lucky that it happened when I had the time free to look after her for a couple of weeks, if needed!

Then the worst thing possible happened…

I leapt into the shower at 6 AM the next morning and found, to my horror, that our hot water system had broken. Nooooooooooooo!!!!!

I’d always thought that when this happened I’d upgrade to a continuous gas system, which is far more expensive because you need to install a bigger gas line to the house, but on the plus side you never run out of hot water and you can program it to the exact temperature you want. We had this at the old house and I loved it. So I decided to go through with this, but it wasn’t exactly a convenient time.

But then again, when is your hot water suddenly cutting out ever going to happen at a convenient time?

I was lucky. I’d be at my parents’ place for at least over the weekend while Dad was in hospital, but the boys would have to bear the brunt of it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with getting plumbers out until the next week. So I trotted off to the last day of term and then went over to look after Mum.

It’s funny how you might intellectually know something, but when you actually live with it you realise the reality. I knew that Mum needed 24/7 care, but it’s not until I was walking her to the toilet and helping her with all of that, getting up in the middle of the night to take her to the commode, washing her in the mornings and walking beside her, supporting her with every single step she took that I realised just how much Dad was doing.

It was constant. She’s totally dependent. And if Dad was seriously ill or popped his clogs, we’d be in a seriously bad place with Mum’s care.

Long story short, Dad DID have internal bleeding from a small tear in his upper bowel, a condition that had obviously been going on for months and months without anyone picking it up. The doctors thought his breathlessness and dizziness was asthma. He just thought that he was eating too much liquorice!! 4 bags of blood to replenish all the blood he’d lost, a cauterisation and he was back home in a couple of days.

Dad dodging that bullet.

The Jones family dodged a bullet. If it hadn’t have been noticed by a different GP to the one he usually went to, we could quite easily have been planning a funeral and racing around trying to find a nursing home for Mum.

It brings home the fact that when people get elderly, their situation can meander along for years and then change in an instant. We have to set things in place now in case we’re not so lucky next time. This is turning out to be a huge learning curve.

So how did the holidays end up going for me?

The hot water system was an inconvenience, not a full-blown drama thanks to my Emergency Account. I got around $700 taken off the cost of the system because I work with someone whose husband works in a plumbing clearance centre. It still ended up costing just under 9K all up, but I had the cash. By Wednesday we were able to shower again. (Before that, I simply made sure I was standing up-wind from the boys… heh heh)

I haven’t had to tap the Emergency Fund for YEARS. But instead of getting complacent and spending it, I let it ride. Sooner or later, I knew I’d need it.

Both blogs have been silent for the last couple of weeks. I thought this meme summed it up pretty well. 🙂

My situation with Mum and Dad is a little more tricky. Power of attorney, being put on their medical and “My Aged Care” accounts, attending medical appointments and dealing with people from their council who are supplying food, cleaning and showering services – this is a whole new ball game. Yes – see how out-of-the-ordinary it is? I, Frogdancer Jones, just used a sporting metaphor…!

I have a younger brother and sister. My sister is very practical and good with things like seeing a need and supplying the solution for it. Things like organising a walker and commode, going to medical appointments and keeping track of what’s going on… that sort of thing. Her schedule is a little more flexible than mine, so she’s going to carry on with these sorts of things. I, on the other hand, have put my hand up to be the ‘Admin person’, helping Dad with all the paperwork that’s piling up with all the new organisational things that need doing.

As you know, next year I’m dropping down from full-time teaching to working 3 days a week to be able to build in time to care for my parents a little more. I’ve pretty much reached FI and this has given me the flexibility to be able to make this choice. A small part of me is wishing that I brought that change forward to this term, but realistically, with teaching year 12s, suddenly changing to part-time just wouldn’t be fair to them.

The woman who came to assess my parents’ eligibility for Respite and Residential Care said to me, “So this is your part-time job on top of your full-time one!” I laughed and nodded, but that remark resonated with me. It’s taken a fair few days for me to think about and accept.

Here in the FI/RE movement we’re told to think about what we’ll do in retirement. We’re cautioned against racing full-tilt towards the goal of early retirement without working out what we’re going to do with ourselves when we get there. Plenty of people pull the pin on their jobs and then wander around aimlessly, unsure of how to fill the suddenly empty hours that head out in front of them.

I had it all planned out. I wasn’t going to make that mistake! Travel is big on my list – at least one overseas holiday a year, going to different places all over the globe (but especially the UK and Europe.) I have the food garden that I’ve set up, my knitting, quilting and writing. My dogs – how I’m looking forward to spending more time with them! In the fullness of time, perhaps my ugly boys will find some kind-hearted/short-sighted partners and reproduce, so I might be wrangling grandchildren.

I didn’t give any serious consideration that I would become a carer to my parents. It’s a stupid thing to admit, but again… intellectually I knew that they’d one day become frail, but emotionally?? That’s just crazy talk. They’ve always been around, looking after themselves and everyone else. Why would anything change?

I guess my over-arching goal in retirement was to engineer a life for myself where I have the freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want. That’s the foundation of it and all of the other things I had in mind to do are just the detail. Things can be added and taken away without changing the basic idea of my retirement – the freedom to spend my days as I please.

The thing I’ve realised over these holidays is that I’ve now chosen to spend a good proportion of my time looking after my folks. Time moves on and changes things and that’s what’s happened with us. I’ll still do all of the other things on my retirement list, but I’ve added another activity, that of Carer, to it.

It’s a big thing to wrap my head around. It’s a bit painful to have to adjust my view of my parents from them being the bullet-proof backstops between me and a cold, harsh world to a view where they’re the ones needing protecting. I know it comes to us all if we’re lucky, but I guess you always think that you’re going to have more time.

Still, things could be a lot worse. My advice to anyone reading this is to get your financial life sorted before any of this starts to happen. I’ll no doubt have stressors and strains that I have no idea about yet, but worrying about how I’ll be paying the bills while putting other things aside to care for my parents won’t be one of them.

Yet another reason why aiming for FI is a great idea!

Doing it tough? Hang in there- it gets better!

June 26, 2019 / / 19 Comments
Woody and Forky.
On Saturday night I saw this movie with my 24-year-old son.

I had a couple of reasons for starting this blog. The one that initially pushed me over the edge and made me begin to write was that I grew so sick of reading posts by 20-and-30-somethings telling people how to become financially free, when they haven’t even done it themselves.

I have.

The second one was that I wanted to let people who are currently struggling know that there’s hope. Twenty-two years ago I left my husband with $60 cash in my wallet and 4 boys under 5 in tow after me. I wasn’t sure how we were going to keep our heads above water but I was determined that the boys wouldn’t suffer for my poor choice in a partner.

We had many years where we were living literally hand-to-mouth, but over time I managed to pay off the mortgage. I did this while working full-time as a teacher and being frugal. I never spent more than I made and I kept the long view in sight, always chipping away at the goals that would make us financially free.

Of course, we had fun along the way. I didn’t want the boys to miss out, so we went on a couple of family holidays to Bali and Thailand. (It was going to be the Gold Coast until I found out that it was cheaper to take them overseas than to travel domestically. How crazy is that?) The middle two boys went to America with the school’s stage band and they all had music lessons, school camps and the like.

And every now and then we went to the movies.

Now, taking 5 people to the movies isn’t for the frugal-minded, even back in the noughties. It was EXPENSIVE. So it wasn’t a regular thing. When they were very little we saw the classic Disney movies, then the new ‘classics’ like ‘Toy Story’, ‘Monsters Inc’ etc. I made it a family tradition that we’d see every single Harry Potter movie on the first day of release, along with the Star Wars movies. We’d probably go to the movies once or twice a year, so it was a Big Deal.

I kept the costs as low as I could. Before we left the house I’d feed them and water them. No rumbling tummies near that kiosk at the theatre! Movie tickets for 5 were expensive enough without paying stupidly inflated prices for lollies and popcorn. Instead, before we’d check into the movie, we’d take a short stroll to Target. Back then Target had a little self-serve lolly bar, so I’d hand out a SMALL bag to each person, then we were all let loose to choose what we wanted to snack upon.

In everything you do, add a touch of luxury!
David Niven is so right!

I did this for a couple of very good reasons.

The first reason was that going to the lolly place made the trip to the movies even more special. The whole ritual of driving to Southland or Chadstone and being able to choose the lollies they were going to eat with no need to compromise on anyone else’s preferences = luxury!

The second reason was that as four boys so close together in age, by necessity they had to share pretty much everything. This was a little way to give that extra little dollop of pleasure to the treat. When we were seated, I’d look down the row of boys all delightedly dipping into their lolly bags and it’d make me smile.

These movie visits were fun but had a huge amount of stress built into them as well. What if the movie was boring and the kids hated it? It wasn’t as if they see a movie every week so it didn’t matter. (I’m looking at you, ‘Star Wars Phantom Menace‘…) What if someone needed to go to the toilet half way through and we had to miss out on a huge slab of the movie I’d saved up so long for? (For the record, this never happened.) There was always a thin thread of tension until the movie finished and I could hear their reactions.

Fast forward fifteen-odd years to last Saturday night. It was Jordan25’s second anniversary with his girlfriend Izzy and he asked if Ryan24 and I could leave the house for the evening so he could make dinner for her. It felt a bit strange to be booted out of my own house, but we decided that dinner and a movie would be a good way to spend the time.

I booked the tickets to ‘Toy Story 4’ online and we drove into Southland. On the way, Evan22 rang. He and his girlfriend were in Melbourne for a party and he wanted to let me know that they’d be home later that night, around midnight and would be staying all day Sunday. It was turning into quite the family weekend!

Ryan24 and I walked along the line of cafĂ©s, looking at the menus. The first one we looked at ended up being the one we went back to. As we sat down I said to him, “Order whatever you like. “

He looked at me sideways. I said, “We’re here to make a memory, not save a couple of bucks.”

He smiled, then looked at the menu. “Look at the price of the steak!!” he said.

I looked. It was $38.

“Never order a steak from a place that doesn’t specialise in it,” he said. “You never get what you pay for.”

Ryan24’s definitely a valu-ist and is probably the most frugal of my boys. He used to work in kitchens a couple of years ago and he picked up a few things.

We ordered some wine and sat sipping it while we waited for dinner. He ended up going for a burger while I went for the parma. After we finished eating we still had an hour to kill so we ordered another couple of wines and kept on talking. Even though we share the same house, it’s rare that we talk for more than half an hour at a time, so this was really nice to be able to kick back with him, chat about what was going on in our lives and relax without stressing about the bill for the meal in the back of my mind.

Some things haven’t changed though. We saw ‘Toy Story 4’, so the family tradition continues! Also, I bought two bags of mixed lollies earlier that day from Aldi, so that was what we had to snack upon. My financial situation has definitely improved from where it was in the olden days, but I still don’t have to bend over and assume the position when it comes to getting ripped off with cinema food! Old habits die hard.

How life moves on! When the kids were little and I wasn’t working, taking them to the movies needed weeks of scrimping and planning. I’d shave $5 here and $10 there off the groceries and put that money aside. When I loaded the kids into the Torago (God what an awful car it was!) and we took off for the movies, it was an event. The boys were excited that they were going and I was excited that I’d pulled it off after weeks of planning.

Going to the movies with adult children is an entirely different beast.

Nowadays, the cost of tickets, while still what I’d consider expensive, isn’t a real concern. The event is more to generate conversation and to catch up with each other, so we build in a meal either before or after. Three of my boys are still students, so even though they’re in their twenties I still pay for everything, but that’s ok. I can afford it and I love spending time with them.

Again, it’s not something we do all the time. It’s still an event. But I’ve got to say, the warm feeling I felt as I sat in the cafĂ© watching Ryan24 eating that enormous burger as I compared that night with the stress of how it used to be?

SO satisfying. I guess I wrote this post just to say to anyone who is struggling through a financially tough time, especially while bringing up little kids:

Hang in there. It gets better.

‘Playing With Fire’ documentary is coming to Melbourne!

June 18, 2019 / / 9 Comments

I woke up this morning to the news that the ‘Playing With Fire’ doco is coming to Melbourne. Naturally I booked a ticket right away.

The link is HERE. Camberwell’s a fair hike from where I live, but I figure I can always take the next day off – I’m trying to use up my sick days before I pull the pin on the job anyway!

I hope to see some of you there!

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