I’ve been kind of quiet lately. I haven’t had a ton to blog about recently, not because we are reprioritizing our personal finances, but rather because they are pretty much on autopilot. The only part of our personal finances that isn’t on autopilot is our continued desire to buy a rental property. I tried to pull the trigger on a couple different houses but lost out to the veteran real estate investors.
While we haven’t been successful buying a rental property, we have been quite successful in “staying the course” with our finances. We continue to increase our retirement accounts, reduce our mortgage balance and invest for our daughter’s college. Back in the old days, I would have itemized out every little detail of our finances on the blog but as our accounts have ballooned and my blog has been discovered by friends and family, I’m just not comfortable sharing all the gritty details. I can tell you we are meeting all of our goals and are well on our way to retiring millionaires.
On a completely separate note, I was at the beach with my family last weekend and started chatting with a friend of my sister’s. I had previously heard that she and her husband were known as “frugal” so I was excited to sit down and talk to her for awhile. She was also excited to talk to me as she found out that we have similar views on personal finance. She and her husband have paid off their house (in the Seattle area, that’s no small feat), have absolutely no debt, and have their kid’s college funded. They are shooting to retire at about 50, which is what I’m hoping to do as well. It was great to compare notes on strategies and to share information back and forth. We even talked about things like whether to take a reduced pension so that their spouses could receive their pension after they die, or whether it’s a better decision to buy life insurance to protect from the income loss. I’m sure most people would have fallen asleep during our conversation, but it was fun to find someone else that shares the same financial interests! Needless to say, I’m looking forward to the next conversation!
First time to the site and its good to hear that you will still be posting in the future. Thats the great thing about budgeting and doing well with your finances it can for the most part be on autopilot. I am also looking to get into real estate but more of the flipping for now. I need more capital to be able to buy homes cash since right now I just started my own biz and I wont be able to get a bank loan until I can prove two years of income.
Keeping on the course to financial independence and early retirment isn’t easy by any yard-stick. Congrats. I think there are valuable lessons to be gleaned from your journey and I am thinking sorrounding yourself with like-minded people and sharing ideas and urging each other on does help (however boring the conversation must have sounded!) Look forward to future posts.