A confession of sorts

 It's another August weekend that I decided to spend marooned in my room. I'm smelly and sticky. Last night I went to Chipotle (twice because they messed up my order) and I could comfortably drive with the windows down (i.e. No AC!).

Fall is upon us, friends.

Here's a confession, friends. Part of why I delve into all the inner workings of my dysfunctional brain is that I WAS SO SURE this story would have a happy ending. I so wanted my life to be the hero's journey.

I thought surely this would the testimony we all long for. The comeback story. You would get to see this person pull herself out from the depths of despair and live this wonderful life.

There was no way her story just ends like that. 

Isn't that why we love reading all the FIRE blogs. You overcome these obstacles and reach this amazing goal...and obviously live happily ever after. 

Maybe that's why a girl who is afraid of the dark can't stop watching true crime. I can relate to the victim's families. That feeling of WTF. It's never going to get better. The life I planned for myself with this person I loved will never come to pass.

It's like a virtual grief circle. 

What was the point of this.

Re-reading my old sad stories isn't helping me. There is no victory lap. This is all there is, and we die. Unfortunately for me, I'm stuck in this life until something snatches me away from it. Because want as I might, I was unable to actually take my own life. So I'm stuck here with all of you. 

I guess it'll take probably a few more years to actually fully understand what this means. I have to quiet that sense of urgency and timing and looking for answers. There are none. We're all just mindless ether taking up space until the next wave of beings come. 

Anyway, I've been dabbling with keeping a spending journal, like they do on Money Diaries or I've seen done on a couple of blogs. Not sure how inspiring that is for anyone, but sometimes they're fun to read. But it's less about the money and more about the story for me.

My mental state at this point is a broken record - this is not the life I want and there's nothing else I can do about it. Woe is me. 

I'm hoping over the next few months until the end of the year to just transition away from talking much about it. 

I still love a good money problem. Still daydreaming about Seattle, I'd looked up another cost of living calculator and those estimates made a lot more sense.

Basically I think I could live a pretty comparable life in Seattle on about $60k/year (i.e. 2x as much as a comfortable life here in NC; and 3x as much as my FIRE budget; and 4x as much as my COVID budget). 

Here's the monthly breakdown:

Housing: $2500/mon

Carrying my NC house: $825/mon

Student Loans: $800/mon

Monthly Allowance (food/entertainment/misc): $800/mon

So basically, one paycheck would be for housing. And the other paycheck would be for living expenses. 

So from actively trying to reduce my housing costs to moving to a HCOL area where housing would be 50% of my budget! 

I could do it for a year, but anything beyond that, I'd prefer to at least have some side income. 

As you can see my budget isn't all that complicated, it's just a couple of big ticket items. 

Oh notably, this would allow me to max out my 401k (yay!), and save around $10-14k/year additional. So it'd be nice. So remember when saving $30k a year was the default and it seemed like I would never get to FIRE on that much. 

I wonder if I'd be able to save that much on the call center salary? Let's check. 

Well on $80k/year and maxing out my 401k, I'd only have about $42.6k/year to live off off. So a $60k/yr Seattle budget would have been out of the question. But I also wouldn't have the NC house. We'll do some iterations in a second, hold the line. 

I think if I remember correctly my last annual pay at Call Center #1 was 98.5k/yr. Let's check. At that salary, I'd have about $55k/year to live off. So my $60k/year Seattle budget would still not fly. 

So I guess that is a little bit of progress. But this is given that I had a house. When I was still at Call Center #1, I didn't have the house, but I do think eventually I probably was going to commit to reducing my housing costs because I'd moved to Call Center #2 by the time I got this house. 

Okay, let's shrink some costs.

So, let's say no house, so that eliminates $825/mon; and my student loans are income dependent, so let's say, max $600 (even though it was closer to $500....okay let's make it $500).

So that $825 + $300 less a month. Yearly, that's $13.5k/year less for my Seattle budget.

So where does that leave me... a Seattle budget of about $46.5k/year.

Let's go back to the numbers above. 

At a baseline Call Center #1 salary of $80k, I still couldn't afford my Seattle budget.

But at a more actual Call Center #1 salary of $98.5k, I'd be okay. With about $9k to spare. 

Not bad. Somehow it feels sparse. I guess I technically would be around where I would be with the current living situation and Seattle budget.

But that's where the psychology comes into place. I would be less likely to jump ship because according to my projections, I'd just be smack dab in the middle of accumulating and I wouldn't have this stable Death House to come to. I couldn't see myself in the middle of accumulating and wanting to increase my cost of living. At that time, I was wanting to spend as little as possible to get this done as fast as possible. 

So I can hem and haw all I want, but I have bought myself quite the luxurious choice here, friends. 

And if the Death House wasn't...excuse me Hospice House...wasn't already a physical support, I do have that wacky bonus we get at Current Job that was non-existent at the Call Center. 

But spending essentially $30k just to go on an adventure...that is ludicrous!

How will I know it was worth it - I lived. 

Bonus  - I take weekly/monthly mood assessment, and my average mood is less than the dark day.

Other - I made 3 friends. (3 is my special number.)

More later, gotta watch some true crime!