Last week I received my hosting renewal, and it made my eyes pop. It was certainly enough for me to stop and realise that this is a hobby I’m no longer actively participating in. To be frank, the cost has increased 46% since the last time I renewed 3 years ago. I would be questioning it even if I were still actively blogging. There’s also the ASIC crackdown (which I see as a lazy overreach that will do more harm than good). A few bad apples have ruined it for the rest of us. In the six years I’ve been blogging, and the few more before that when I discovered FIRE, I’ve found the community to be ..read more

It looks like we can retire at 60 on $80,000 a year, so now it’s time to look at our stretch FIRE goal – can we retire at 55 on the same? To be honest, the stock standard retirement calculators did not paint a very happy picture for our retirement, except in the best case scenario of receiving at least 5.9% growth for the rest of our lives. However, the FIRE principles and calculators say differently. I’ve been around long enough now to put my faith in an alternative pathway. There are a lot of people successfully implementing various versions of FIRE, including in Australia.  Our Stretch ..read more

If you are following the traditional Financial Independence Retire Early path of saving a lump sum amounting to 25x your yearly expenses which you will begin to access when you retire, this post isn’t for you. The 4% rule has you covered, as it takes inflation into account. But if you are a late starter, you might have superannuation or some other form of pension pot that you can’t yet access at the time you’d like to begin your retirement. This is where inflation can have an impact. As we are following a SlowFIRE path (high expenses, relatively low savings rate for FIRE), superannuation is es ..read more

Last post, we defined our numerical FIRE goal. In this post I’ll explore whether it is achievable. Is it too ambitious? Or perhaps not ambitious enough? Let’s get to work! Our FIRE goal: to retire at 60 (in 2033) on $80,000 a year. To determine how much we need to generate this amount, we are using the 4% rule. This rule states we require 25 times our expenses ($2,000,000) to access an inflation-adjusted $80,000 a year for the rest of our retired life. Yes, it is simplistic. Yes, it is based on historical returns. No, it can’t predict the future or cover nuances for every person saving for FIR ..read more

It’s time to review our FIRE savings against our goals. We have continued saving on auto-pilot for the last three years. Are we on track? If not, what do we need to do to meet our goal? Initially, we didn’t set a FIRE goal. Rather than reaching for an age when we could retire, I was working backwards. I took the retirement age as the age you can access the pension in Australia (67). Then, knowing we spend $80,000 a year, I was reducing 67 by 1 year for every $80,000 we saved. Using that calculation, we can retire early by 5 years, or at 62. Now, that’s nothing to sneeze at, but there are seve ..read more

I recently realised that we’d lost sight of our FIRE goal, so it’s time to revisit where we are, and where we want to be in the future. Part of where we’d like to be is not just saving, but enjoying our money in line with our values. In this post we’ll review our spending goals.  Going back to the very basics, I started with Pete Matthew’s Meaningful Money podcast Season 2 from 2016. This series was immensely helpful in getting us to actually start investing. One of the first episodes was named “Why Invest”. To be honest, listening back nearly five years after we’ve been investing to reac ..read more

After allowing the practicalities of saving for FIRE to continue on auto-pilot for three years, I feel like it is time to come back, review where we are, and look at our FIRE goal. A Vague FIRE Goal The first thing to note is that I can’t remember what our old goal was! That has to be a cardinal sin for someone reaching for FIRE. I know we want to retire early, but what age is early to us? I’m 48, and we are following a SlowFIRE path (i.e. still spending a lot with a low savings rate). That is where this blog comes in handy.  Going back through my old posts (which I hadn’t done since I st ..read more

Let me start by acknowledging that this is a post of privilege. I support paying tax. Sometimes I’m a direct beneficiary of what those taxes are spent on (health, education, roads). If not, my taxes go to benefit others who are not as privileged or lucky as I have been (pension, disability, unemployment benefits). Growth We have the majority of our FIRE savings in a Vanguard Managed Fund. As most of you know, last year was extraordinary in terms of market returns – over 20% for our superannuation, for example. Mr. ETT and I were astounded to see we had earned $40,000, of which $31,000 was Capi ..read more

Many of us come to discover the concept of Financial Independence due to dissatisfaction with our work. We might be dreaming about the Retire Early component of FIRE, or we may be yearning to find a way of making a self-directed living aligned with our values. In the meantime, generally our jobs are the primary driver of our journey to FIRE. You can see in my older posts that I’d become frustrated with the job I was in. I’ve discovered over the years that if I don’t believe in what I’m doing, if I don’t see value and benefit, then my commitment drops. Obviously it’s harmful to me, but it’s als ..read more

The post below was also mostly written in November 2018. The furthest Mr. ETT and I had ever moved was 5km from each of our parent’s homes when we got married 2 decades ago. This move to regional NSW happened before COVID – it would be an entirely different story today. Enjoy the trip back in the Enough Time Machine. We’re Moving House (November 2018) In my last post, I spoke about getting a new job. What I didn’t tell you is that it is in country NSW! That’s right – Mr. ETT and I are making a tree change.  Why Move? It’s hot, noisy and crowded. Or at least, that’s our perception. When I ..read more