Selling Shares, Travel Money Saving Tips, EV Tax Credits Expiring plus Community Wins | FI Weekly

Doing Hard Things FI Edition: Selling Shares

I had a fascinating conversation with my friend, Kim, in NYC earlier this month:

Kim reached FI and left her job literally two days before I saw her.

She’s going to live off selling shares of index funds, and she mentioned all the talk recently in the community about FI potentially “not working” because people would be too scared to sell shares when the time came.

While she said it did feel a little odd to finally need to sell shares after so many years of diligent savings, her brilliant point was as follows:

It will only feel weird the very first time.

Once that’s done, selling shares is just what she’ll do as part of life.

We concluded that it’s just like any other hard thing in life. You do it precisely because you know it’s the right thing to do, and that once you’re on the other side of that initial discomfort, it’ll be a cakewalk.

So, we have people questioning the validity of the entire concept of Financial Independence because they don’t think you’re adult enough to come up to that point of discomfort and get past it that one initial time.

I look at the FI Community as the most resilient, intelligent, and forward-thinking people I’ve ever seen.

I fully believe you’ll lean into those 5 minutes of discomfort when the time comes..

You’ll log into your brokerage account and you’ll enter the dollar figure you need to live on that month and you’ll hit the sell button.

You’ll breathe a big sigh of relief at how easy that was, and not believe how nervous you were.

Every subsequent month you’ll just sell your shares, because that was the plan you set in place 10-15+ years prior. And it’s working exactly as expected.

Travel Tools and Tips (to Save Money)

Suzy was my guest on Episode 442 of ChooseFI where we discussed ‘Intermediate (Level) Travel Rewards’ and she runs the private Facebook group SONIC Travelers, which is an excellent resource for all things travel – especially saving money!

I saw this post from Suzy and asked if I could include it here in the newsletter as it has some fantastic tips:

LESSER KNOWN TRAVEL TOOLS AND MONEY SAVING TIPS

1. HiChee.com is a search engine for rental properties. It aggregates inventory from AirBnB, Vrbo, Booking.com, and direct-to-host properties, comparing rates on the properties across platforms. It can help you ensure that you are paying the lowest price possible if you find a rental you're interested in booking.
2. Points Transfer calculator: The Upgraded Points website has a useful page that helps you see all airline and hotel loyalty programs, the credit card programs that can transfer points to those airlines / hotels, the ratio of the transfer, and the transfer time for the miles/points to show up in your airline/hotel loyalty account. I like the way you can type how many points you plan on transferring into a program, and it will calculate how many miles will actually show up, taking into account if there is a current transfer bonus.
3. Do you have TSA Precheck but noticed that your boarding pass doesn't show the TSA Precheck logo when you printed it or downloaded it to your Apple / Google wallet? You can get your pre-check status corrected by messaging @AskTSA on Twitter / X.
4. Daytrip.com: This is a site that helps you arrange private transportation from city to city with the option of adding scenic stops in between. For example, if my husband and I want to go from Lisbon, Portugal to Porto, Portugal, Daytrip shows that a sedan for 2 people would cost $398. For $29 extra, we could add a 1-hour stop in Fatima, Portugal. For $102 extra, we could do a 3-hour stop at the Pena Palace in Sintra. By comparison, taking the train from Lisbon to Porto would cost $92 for 2 people, but it's not private, has no sidetrips, and is not a door-to-door service.
5. Vacationstogo.com: This is for bargain-hunters searching for a last-minute cruise (i.e. within 90-days of sailing). The 90-Day Ticker on the website lists numerous cruise options from many popular cruise lines, showing deals that are as much as 88% off the typical price.
6. Apple subscriptions: I learned about this by listening to Chris Hutchins 'All The Hacks’ Podcast. He says: "If you have a subscription to an app on an iPhone and you made that subscription through the Apple subscription platform, you can actually go into your settings, look at your subscriptions, and you can click this button that says See All Plans...." Frequently, there are promotional plans offered that will give you the same app features but at a significantly lower price. Thus, if you're paying any subscriptions to Apple, be sure to check for cheaper plans that will help you save money.

Electric Vehicle Tax Credits Expiring

I’m getting set to record an episode this week with Sean Mullaney talking about the "Big Beautiful Bill" that was just enacted and how it will impact those of us in the FI community. This is important, and we all need to stay up on these changes (and we’ll also follow up as more info comes to light as people pore over every detail!).

In January I discussed the pros and cons of an Electric Vehicle (EV) purchase with Chris Terrell in Episode 530. With the recent passage of the "Big Beautiful Bill", major changes are coming that negatively impact a future EV purchase.

Chris sent me this as a follow-up:

The federal tax credits for EV purchases are ending on September 30, 2025. That includes both the $7,500 credit for new vehicles and 30% (maximum $4,000) credit for used vehicles. So, while you can still leverage the tax credit for a few more months, after October 1 those tax credits permanently expire. (Note that the credit is typically applied at the time of purchase, not when you file your taxes.) If you are considering an EV purchase, these are the income brackets you need to be in to qualify for the credits (Note: you can use either the current or prior year’s Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) to quality): New qualifying vehicles: $300,000 for married couples filing jointly $225,000 for heads of households $150,000 for all other filers Used qualifying vehicles: $150,000 for married filing jointly $112,500 for heads of households $75,000 for all other filers For more info, see the FAQ on the Inside EVs site.

ChooseFI Community Taking Action This Week

My 1% better this week is finally updating our retirement contributions! I bumped my 401k contribution to 8% (also getting a 4% dollar-for-dollar match), and I bumped my wife's 403b contributions to ~12%. We already max out each of our Roth IRAs, and I max out my individual HSA. She also has a mandatory pseudo-pension plan at her work where she has to contribute 4.5% of her paycheck, and her company contributes another 8% "match" on top of that. So all in, that puts us at over 25% investing rate (26.84% to be exact), and if you count our employer matches, then that gets us to 32.84%. We're in our late 20s, so we still have a long way to go until Financial Independence, but I'm excited to be working even more intentionally toward it. And honestly, I don't think we'll even notice the smaller paychecks. Keep an eye on your retirement contributions, folks! And keep an open dialogue with your partner about it!

• Chris

I successfully reduced a medical bill from $650 to $249. When I called about a self pay quote before I had the testing done, they said it would be $249. Well, when I got the bill it looked like they ran it through insurance (even though I told them not to) and were trying to charge me $650. I calmly called, explained the situation, and insisted that I could pay the self pay rate today. They tried to insist they couldn't fix the issue and attempted to get me on a payment plan or see about financial aid. I again reiterated I could pay self pay today, as I was quoted. They ended up escalating my call to another person, where they fixed the issue and I only paid $249! The biggest win though…I stood up for myself and didn't once cry of frustration. I now have the confidence to do this for other medical bills in the future!

• Cassie

My 1% better this week is… forgiving myself for not always getting my FI journey "right." Since discovering FI about 5 years ago, I've made my share of mistakes and haven't always followed through on the steps I knew I should take-for many reasons. Recently, I realized just how much guilt I've been carrying over those missed opportunities. This week, I'm choosing to let that guilt go. Instead of dwelling on what I didn't do, I'm focusing on what I did do-and the fact that those steps, however small or imperfect, still matter. I can be grateful for the progress I've made. Gratitude and forgiveness are freeing me up to look for the next action I can take. Every 1% matters.

• Jeffrey

I made my life 1% better this week by getting out the bucket and squeegee and washing the windows. I literally have a better outlook on life.

• Jill

My 1% better this week was to switch my electric bill from manual to auto payment via credit card. I've missed a few of the emailed bills over the years, causing me small late fees and marginal dings to my credit rating. Simply wasn't worth the mental bandwidth to stress over whether I remembered to pay each month. Another huge win I had recently, albeit not within the past week, was to use the market drop as an opportunity to execute my first tax loss harvest. Last year I decided to de-risk my exposure to my company's stock by executing a 15k sale of my ESPP shares and reinvesting into VTSAX. That 15k + 9k in additional VTSAX investment over the coming months gave me a relatively high basis which post market drop I was able to use to execute 2 mutual fund exchanges (VTSAX>VLCAX), (VLCAX>VFIAX) netting me $4200 in realized losses. I used those losses to offset the sale of the high fee AIVSX (0.56 ER) (left from cashed-in whole life insurance policy gifted from my grandfather) while its capital gains were relatively low ($3100) and reinvest that money in the low fee ITOT (0.03 ER). A staggering 18.67x reduction in fees! All that and I still have $1100 in losses to apply to my ordinary income at the end of the year! I tell this to people in my life and they simply stare back blankly. That's why it's good to have a community like this to share your wins with.

• Jeff

With health costs, another thing I figured out is that not all prices are the same in every state. We took our kids out of state for their wisdom teeth removal and it saved us about $3000 (with four kids, that adds up!)

• Molly

Click HERE and let me know what you did to make your life 1% better this week!