What's keeping me up at night?

 It's after midnight and after a few late evenings on the office futon, my buns are sore. I doze off a bit before bed time as a teaser.

But a couple nights this week it hasn't been working. It's warm in the bedroom. And that makes it hard to sleep. 

There's a bevy of activity this week on my small lane. It looks like they are renting the townhomes across the street - all of them. And I'm sure the other ones are rented as well. They're renting for 1% of the purchase price, just like the internet said. I wonder if the builder sold it to his own property management company in some kind of tax avoidant scheme. 

But also it made our home values go up. 

Even at $1500/mon, I was tempted to rent out my place just to get in on the action, but still when I think about it... I want simple. I try and try to make myself want to do the things a lot of FIRE bloggers recommend for real estate, but I'm just not that into it. Side note- more and more I'm realizing all this media content - tv shows, blogs, etc - are just suggestions. They're not representative of someone's real life. It's very easy to forget because FIRE was such a great blueprint for my finances. But now I'm starting to teeter on not even really being able to understand what's good advice anymore. At least what's good for me. I was such a newb and wanted to do everything I was told, but now I'm just kind of over most of it.

Credit card hacking has spun me out trying to make it work. To the point that I feel inadequate and kind of like a dummy.  And I feel almost dumb for not having some sort of income generating side hustle or real estate investment. Like I have to keep convincing myself that my path is good, nay, great! I'm in a great position. And even though I say I keep reading the blogs to see if there are more optimizing strategies, I can't help but feel I'm not doing enough. 

It's just hard to balance logic with what make sense for me and what is sound financial advice. 

This week, I've been driving myself crazy trying to find a way to lower my taxes next year. I just feel so annoyed that so many high earners are getting big tax returns like $15k or $20k that in the end, they are making even more than me! Honestly, ever since I started working, I usually get nothing back. I think one year during COVID I got around $1k back but that was only because I was withholding extra due to my aunt's pension pay out. 

I mean I'm definitely happy I don't owe big balances, who wouldn't be. But I just wonder if there's more I could be doing. I even thought about starting a lifestyle/travel blog, knowing how hard it is to generate income from that, but being happy to expense the losses as a business expense. And thus lower my taxable income. Then I did a calculation today of the $18k I spent on travel last year and using my effective tax rate, I would have paid about $3500 less in taxes if I could've claimed that as a business expense. Which would've been a great tax refund but I think seeing how small the number is and how much I hate owing stuff after the fact, it would really stink to have to pay that back in back taxes if I were audited three years later. 

I think this is just something I have to let go. Honestly these days when I break down this third stage of my life (age 40-60), it's sub parts are 40-45 which are my last years of working; which leaves 45 to 55 of early retirement (so 10 years) and then 55+ of living in a retirement community.

So it just shortens my runway to me in a good way. I don't have this pressure to optimize and make my fortune in real estate. I feel more like I have 5 years left let's try to make the best of it. But I'm still struggling to figure out what that means. Mostly I want to enjoy earning a high income and quote live my best life and do things that cost money; instead of worrying about making every penny count. 

Looking at this shorter runway, the impact of a lot of my financial decisions just seem less remarkable. Which is a better feeling than feeling like I'm making some giant mistake. I think I just worry that I miss out on something like the way I might have missed out on FIRE. So getting used to this level of enough is still a challenge. 

Also, I just realized even if I don't fully retire from full time work until age 45, making it about 15 years of working, that's still 50% of the 30 years I had imagined and that is true for most Americans. Which is awesome!!

So yeah, the last few seasons of fretting about not being completely optimized and taking advantage of all the things; and even trying to simplify my investment holding are slowly becoming a thing of the past. With my investments, I'm just appreciating the fact that they're invested at all. For my novice brain, this is still a pretty great achievement! And for optimizing and other things people do, it's still just a buffet and I get to choose what works. There are no rules! 

In the end, hello, MERJ - you achieved FIRE. And that rocks! These next few years, however long they may be... hey  in a way that's the ultimate optimization - you have a healthy financial cushion and a pretty manageable job in a low cost of living (albeit undesirable) living situation.  I won the game! And really, how lucky to have bought Cheap House when I can look at proof everyday that the same purchase doubled in price just 3 years later. This time, financially, I was on the winning side! 

So yeah, so maybe I'll work on changing my mindset over this next chapter of final working years/ pre-retirement years. 

That being said, earlier today I was thinking...wouldn't it be fun to hit $200k this year?! Yes, it would be fun. I already kind of tried and was sorely beatup about it last year, but here we are again. I applied for a couple more jobs. Part of the impetus this day was just thinking..instead of worrying about paying more taxes than everyone else, just make more money. 

But part of me kind of thinks, it might be fun to get a part-time job this summer, since it looks like a summer of nothingness. Then that spiraled into why make less money, when you can make more. But maybe instead of a lofty goal of trying to make $30k this year...we just shoot for $10k this summer. Still not sure what that is. And honestly, the idea of earning extra money sounds good in theory, but getting up to go to a job sounds kind of awful. Maybe I could do food service.

I think realistically though, since I'm moving forward as though I'm moving to Newtown in September, I anticipate there will be a lot of nervous energy in the 3 months prior. So that's really a bigger motivator than money. If I move forward with seasonal employment, I'll still have to decide some parameters. 

The other thing keeping me up tonight - Orkin visit tomorrow (ugh, 'nuff said); and just some general anxious feelings about the current document I'm authoring; and the meeting on Monday for the other project I'm supporting but have been tasked with nothing. 

On an even happier note. Tomorrow's officially pay day. And I should really capitalize on this emotionally since one of my bank accounts does early pay so I got pay day today and tomorrow!!!