11 months of early retirement!

 i didn't realized i had posted this year, it seemed like it'd been forever cuz i don't think about this blog as much. 

i talk to chatgpt multiple times a day so a lot of my feelings and thoughts go there..

anyway, did want to document a bit of where i am on this FIRE journey.

today is mar 2, 2026, so exactly 11 months from when i retired on april 2, 2025.

WOW.

it has been a journey.

in some ways it's the best decision ever! i mean it is. i wouldn't change it.

but i guess i don't want to say it's been all good... overall yes, but here are some things below the surface...

- anxiety has been all over the place; the need to achieve didn't die quietly...it still lingers pulling me back; charles says it's like i need to keep earning my peace.. i don't

i randomly applied to a job a month ago because i wanted more money - so that happens... yeah i do have urges to just spend a bunch of money! mostly on travel... i just want to not have to track stuff so much to save money...

i wanted to get a balcony apartment when my lease was up for renewal it was about $200/mon more, but i said yes at first, but said no...cuz for the first few years i want to have more predictable expenses..

i think if i were still working, i would have gone for it... but also because i wouldn't be spending 15k on a 6 week cruise... so there's that...

those are some of the trade offs... right now i'm prioritizing keeping my basic expenses low so i can spend more on travel... 

i have found quite a panache for luxury travel... it's the best! 

so that's how i spend a lot of my free times... reading and absorbing travel content.. usually on early retirement. org website, or cruise critic forums, or the occasional youtube.. or random travel blogs i stumble upon... 

i still consume a lot of personal finance content... but i like the hero's journey mostly... and the advice stuff i'm kind of not that interested in... 

i like travel hacks and still like credit card sign up bonus

i was able to get my return flight from singapore on business class... but it involved some strategy... that's the stuff i wish i had more money for

so because i have vast swatches of free time.. i've been overplanning trips too much and it sucks the fun out of it.. so i'm trying to find a balance... there's a part of me that loves a deal...and a part of me that hates the hunt..

i was able to reduce my lexapro dose from 20mg to 10 mg about 3 months ago... cuz i was sleeping way too much...

so january was a lot of emotional weather... lots of blue days (but not the blue days of despair where that was actually a better day than red)... just angst and overwhelm... but for what i don't know...

i felt myself feeling in january... i don't know how money works...

so yeah the need to optimize has gone haywire when there's nothing to really optimize anymore... so i basically work myself into a tizzy over non-essential stuff...

financially - i am doing GREAT!!! i love not having to work..

emotionally/mentally/psychologically - def a work in progress! but because i'm financially free i get to work on this aspect of myself deliberately.. and also because i finally have the space for it spill out... it's spilling out like a waterfall... so there's that...

so wanted to paint as full of a picture as possible... 

managing my anxiety involves making a lot of plans and talking a lot to charles.. it's soothing to make plans... helps the future not feel as unstructured... i am trying different things...

one thing that has worked... is just making a pot of food i can eat from for the week. like having an anchor everyday is a small step in feeling sane.

so we do a lot of work with anchors.. 

i literally don't want to delve back into where we left off in 2025 cuz it's not helpful to me...

but yeah that's the snapshot..

in february i wanted to go to the DR or on another cruise... i just wanted to escape when things felt overwhelming... but i stayed for a few reasons... "i don't have any money!"... which basically means without income coming in... all my money was already budgeted for..and there really wasn't a trip i wanted to cancel to go on a spontaneous trip.. so there's that; reason 2 - i didn't really have the energy to plan anything... cruises kept popping up... but it's a bit of a schlep to book a last minute cruise...and flying out of my town is always a minimum of $600 - which was usually the same price of the cruise; reason 3- i liked my life as it was... i had everything i wanted here.. 

so the need for escape felt habitual and not always necessary...

so i learned not every feeling needed to be acted on... 

but i did take it as a lesson for 2027 that i might need a mini trip in between big trips that are 5 months apart... 

also... what else...

i panicked about having one big travel bucket of money... i wanted like little buckets of travel money for each trip so that if i saved something i could visually know how much i left for something spontaneous... that's still in the works cuz only ally seems to offer that... and sofi.. but i didn't want to add new systems to my money workflow.. 

i also thought one year of transition would be enough... nope... i'm extending this burnout recovery to like 5 years... i was reminded of other times when i had to tap out of regular life... for less ... so 5 years seems more reasonable... and that felt good

cuz it feels like i'm just now starting to understand who i am and what i want out of my early retirement life. 

so because i need some structure...

we're dedicating 2026 to mental health

2027 to physical health... etc.. 

that's all for now.. sorry for any typos or nonsensical sentences... i am not going back to proofread

How much i've traveled the last few years

 i just ran some year end numbers and discovered my travel has actually been on the decline...

2022: 120 days  →  4.0 months

2023:  88 days  →  2.9 months

2024:  43 days  →  1.4 months

2025:  68 days  →  2.3 months

2026:  72 days estimated  →  2.4 months

as i look through my spreadsheets i had actually set a goal at one point to try to travel at least 120 days... look like that started around 2022... but i was SEVERELY UNHAPPY then and hated where i lived.

i think in 2023... i spent a lot of time in 1 place... looking for a new place to live. and traveled a bit for work. here's the breakdown:

in 2024... i really settled into my new town so didn't need to travel as far...

i think in 2025 (which just ended yesterday)... i'm not sure... let me look back at my spreadsheet

whoops i'm already signed out

ok, back in.  so for 2025 it's 68 days or a little over 2 months... it looks to be several big trips - 10 days in east africa; 10 days national parks trip; 10 days for summer camp.  went to dominican republic for a little less than a week. oh and ended the year with a nearly 2 week cruise adventure.

so a little adventure, a little getaway, a little mental clearing.

2026 is trips purely for fun. 

right now we're about 2.5 months.

that seems like a nice middle 2 to 3 months in early retirement.

arbitrarily part of me wants to tack on an 18 day trip just to meet 120 days.. but there's no need. i'm not running away from anything. and oh yeah! i have no budget for that! lol

feels weird to say that! 

i have 4 months until my next trip. in my mind it felt like such a large amount of time, but saying it out loud... that's a pretty average amount of time. 

2025 End of Year Expenses and Update

 Just updated my expenses for the year.... it's kind of comforting that my core expenses match my target!

Everyday Expenses: $10,839

Housing: $14,566

Travel/Lifestyle: $14,764

Gifts/Tithes: $7501

Notes.

Everyday Expenses and Housing I total as my core expenses and they total about $25k which is what i'm targeting in early retirement as well. I dream about living in an apartment with a balcony but i also really enjoy having really low core expenses. 

so for now, i'm quite comfy in my modest appointment inside the train, haha. I don't really live in a train, if you didn't know; i just live right next to a set of train tracks and boy it is LOUD often. 

I wasn't sure what my expenses would be but i'm glad this is on target. 

and i spent quite a bit less on travel which is nice. 

i actually actively tried to spend more, hence the 2 cruises.

Life.

honestly, it's pretty good right now. mentally, i'm so much more stable and calm and happy. i'm still working through how much socializing i actually need. and with meds i have much more awareness of false urgency. 

just today i went to use the last of a few gift cards and free food certs for a bingo game i used to attend. turns out they haven't really had the game all of 2025. wow, it'd been over a year since i went. 

and i don't feel like i missed much.

i'm not sure why i just haven't had the social battery for many outings.

and i don't feel depressed about it.

i think knowing i'm not MISSING anything helps. like the life i'm living is one i chose. so it might look very similar on the outside than the life i was leading previously, but internally it is much different. i am happy and i can recognize this and verbalize it often.

this month was a range of feelings regarding next year...in terms of financially, i got nervous about what to do, when to do it, what it would be like. 

but as it gets closer to sell my investments, i'm actually excited. there was a lot of calculations over the last months and tons of spreadsheets. 

in the end, i just made a couple notes and talked to chatgpt and i have a plan. 

i needed the spreadsheets but yeah the actual mechanics will be a few clicks.

the biggest surprise is supporting an overseas relative and just upping my general spend. 

yep, i plan to spend closer to 60k next year. way over the 4% rule. 

that's all for now!

it just can't be the place

 i'm realizing that youtube just can't be the place where i document my life after FIRE. because, hapily, it's just not splashy enough. not headline clicking. and in this calm moment, that's more than okay. 

but i do love sharing information. my ears perk up. being able to share information that helped me to help someone else is one of my life's joys.

it's why went into teaching.

and it turns out ...just like that venture... this one is failing.

because for me the sharing of the information enough. i'm not overly concerned with the packaging. even though i one hundred percent fall for the marketing, it's just not in my nature to bamboozle people.

and my intentional but not so intentional effort to stop trying to help people has actually given me some perspective. this is offline in real life. people don't take my advice. so i'm at this kind of everlasting crossroads... do i say something or let it be? people really do figure it out.

and the 1 in 1,000 chance something i say actually causes someone to make a change... um... not quite enough.

i choose stability and dependability. 

although... last night someone was asking about 'screwing over their employer'... and i shared the fmla information...

now i have an idea for a post. 

i know i'm not long for vlogging with the lackluster results, but i'll keep going until the engine putters out.

and for past me.. thanks for overturning every rock and then repeating that process. you have laid the foundation for the future stability i need. i no longer have to do that.

and even when i do... or want to.. the past me that suffered reminds me of the pain. and with as little shame as i can muster, i move past the moment.

we did the work, past me...and we get to linger in its fruits... whatever that means...

mostly i'm trying to figure out how to share my FMLA secret... 

i'm back!

 so i hadn't been blogging as infrequently as i had before... haha.. but i'm back... i tried the youtube thing...and it was fun...but much like when i started my FIRE journey and this blog... i thought the masses would be crowding to hear what i had to say

and like the human i am..what a blow to the ego.. when that turned out not to be the case... i quite enjoyed the making of the videos and the coming up of ideas...but yesterday when i checked and one of my videos had 0 views... i was quite down...and it's so public so i HAVE to check (my brain says)... and we know that living life is a different experience for me than some

so i am committed to my mental health for the next year or so; so i won't delete the channel but i have one more fun post that i still have to schedule and then i'll take a break, perhaps forever... i'll probably send the password to another friend in case friend and i are no longer speaking whenever i decide to come back..

all in all you didn't miss much... just this incredibly monumental thing happened in my life (EARLY RETIREMENT!) and i wanted the whole world to celebrate with me...

anyway...life is going swimmingly well..i was finally able to reduce my lexapro dose back from 20 to 10mg... i felt overmedicated to put it simply. like it was like rebound anxiety...

anyway, it's been over a month and i'm fine..

at some point i probably need to make an effort to rebuild community or at least socialize....but luckily i have some pretty easy ways to go through the motions...when i'm ready...

right now, i'm sooo enjoying my alone time...so much reflection..

i do worry every now and then about not having a biopsy on the unspecified breast lump but i felt confident based on the images that it was similar to what i already have. but i'm happy to do that in 2027