July 30, 2024: Reading, Watching, Playing, Double Benefit of Cutting $100, International Phone Update plus Community Wins

What I'm Reading, Watching, Playing

Reading: My reading issue right now is that I’m juggling about 10 non-fiction books including some books on Stoicism by Ryan Holiday, Crypto Confidential by Nat Eliason, The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky and Not Nice by Dr. Aziz Gazipura.

Unsurprisingly, I’m making very little progress on any of them since I’m grazing on all of them.

That said, I’ve been blowing through some fiction recommended mostly by readers of this newsletter.

The three most recommended fantasy series when I asked 2 months are were:

• Red Rising by Pierce Brown

• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

I finished the first book in each of those 3 series and am really enjoying them, so thank you!

I also loved The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. The Amazon description does a great job summarizing:

“Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?”

One of my favorite quotes from the book:

“Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations…”

This reminds me of one of my favorite Taylor Swift lyrics from the song ‘the 1’:

“I, I, I persist and resist the temptation to ask you

If one thing had been different

Would everything be different today?”

Watching:

• Welcome to Wrexham (season 3): Even for non-soccer fans, this is a feel-good series that I highly recommend.

• Looper: I saw this sci-fi movie on a list of movies leaving Netflix on July 31st and watched it while I could. Time travel (‘looping’ in this case) can always be a bit confusing, but I enjoyed this one.

• Can’t Hardly Wait: I hadn’t seen this movie in over 20 years and caught it on the flight to Barcelona. It was as hilarious and oddly heartwarming (and raunchy, be warned) as I remember it. One of my all-time favorites.

• Deadpool 1 and 2: Not sure how I missed seeing these movies over the years, but I binged them both this past week as I wanted to be up to speed for the new ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ movie that just released.

Playing: No board games again this past month for me, but the rest of my family has been playing a lot of Rummikub, the old school tile-based game that is like the card game Rummy. Easy to learn and play and a lot of fun for sure!

The one thing I’ve been playing with is getting started back with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. This is something I loved doing about 7 years ago at the start of ChooseFI, but I got injured a few times and stopped.

I am cautiously optimistic that I can stick with it this time as it is something I truly enjoyed.

Double Benefit of Cutting $100 Per Month

“The little things are the big things” is a quote that accurately reflects my view of the world, and this is especially true on the Path to FI.

Since FI is the one reliable way for middle class people to get wealthy, we often talk about the benefit of cutting $100 from your monthly budget (a little thing) and its (big) impact on your FI Number.

For every $100 you cut out of your monthly budget, you need $30,000 less in your net worth to reach FI.

[Calculation: $30,000 multiplied by 4% withdrawal = $1,200 annually you can withdraw = $100/month]

But for all the times I’ve mentioned this essential fact, I’ve neglected the most important part of the calculation, which is that $100 per month is then invested for decades (hopefully in low-cost ETFs like VTI) and continues to work and grow making you wealthier.

Using a compound interest calculator, I plugged in $100 monthly savings at an 8% return. After 30 years, that alone will grow to nearly $150,000.

Using the 4% rule of thumb, you can then draw $6,000 out of that $150,000 that first year to offset your current expenses. And just like that, you’ve essentially created a $500 per month income stream!

Now imagine if you did something bigger like cutting out your two $500/month car payments and drove old cars, thus saving $1,000 per month in payments.

After 30 years, you’d be sitting with nearly $1,500,000 which would allow you to withdraw $60,000 using the 4% rule.

Mint Mobile International Update

I’ve had a ton of people ask me how well my Mint Mobile service worked in Barcelona and London using their inexpensive ‘Minternational’ Pass and I wanted to pass along a quick update:

It worked wonderfully for a mere $20 for my entire trip, with one major caveat that I learned the hard way that I want to shortcut for you:

Read this troubleshooting article and at the bottom you must go through and update the “Verify APN Settings” in order for your phone to work internationally.

If you have Mint Mobile, you can do this right now, as it’ll take about 2 minutes, and then it won’t be an issue in the future when you go to use the phone internationally.

My phone was essentially dead until we got to our Barcelona Airbnb and I miraculously figured this out.

[Note: Yes, there are plenty of ways to get phone service internationally, like getting a local SIM card, etc. that are quite inexpensive, but I really wanted my own phone number and 2FA, especially since I had concert tickets on my phone that I needed to access]

ChooseFI Community Taking Action This Week

After reading "Mom and Dad we need to talk..." based on the podcast, my wife and I were able to sit down with my parents and go through their estate planning including what accounts they hold, property, location of wills, passwords, etc. Thankfully, they had mostly gone through and collected this information (due to the mess of their own parent's estates) and had it in one place (a great gift to us kids).

They also fall into the category of parents who are ok with talking about their finances with their kids, and I was able to put together a google sheet to share with my siblings with most of that important information. Overall, it took us a few sessions to go through it all (and that is after all the work they did to collect it, which is a lot!) but I feel much more prepared now if something were to happen to them in the future!
- Philip

I opened HYSA for each of my boys. They moved all their savings in to these accounts. They got their first small interest payment and were excited to see it!

I also opened Roth IRAs for them. Now I need to talk to my husband about matching their contributions. They both are in high school and work part time so they do have earned income.

I read the Simple Path to Wealth and annotated it. I told both boys I want them to read it too.

I started tracking our net worth 3 months ago, and was amazed to see how much gain we had on top of contributions!

I shared our retirement account balances with my younger son so he could see how the growth works. He said he wants to save 100% of his money! I told him he can still spend some and save most of it and still do really well. He's 15 and super excited to start saving and buying VTSAX.

- Monica

Exactly a year ago today (July 10) I got laid off. After the initial shock wore off, thanks to living a FI lifestyle I didn't panic. Instead I said yes when friends who live in LA said I should come visit. So I got in my car (the same one that got a shout out at the end of episode 126R [my 2007 Corolla is still going strong]) and drove from NJ out to LA.

The trip took me six weeks, I touched land in 35 states (and two provinces), drove over 9,000 miles, and made it to five national parks. It truly was a trip of a lifetime. I never would have taken this trip if I didn't get laid off, and it wouldn't have been possible if I wasn't living a FI lifestyle.

In January I started a fully remote job at around the same salary but with a 10% bonus and significant equity. Who would have thought getting laid off could be a good thing?

- Larry

My 1% better is actually a bit more, at least that's how it feels. I've been working an office job this last year with a goal of finding a remote position within a year. It has been tough, but I've gone through several interviews with other companies and never got any offers. However I kept going and felt super excited about this remote role and the company and decided to shoot for it thinking it'd be a long shot.

I interviewed and felt really optimistic and while on my European vacation (bought tickets with points) I received a call offering me the job. It's fully remote, has way better benefits and I negotiated for higher pay which is a 50% raise from my last role. When I account for time saved and gas money saved commuting, it's even more. I'm so excited and grateful for the other people in this community sharing their wins which has been really motivational on this journey!

- Savannah

I just added weights to my exercise routine to be healthier in retirement.

The other thing I am blessed with is the amount of dividend income I get every month now. I received $4000 last week and I can make a couple of buys to increase next year's dividend total by over $200. Each month a few thousand of dollars really adds up.

The 1% was almost not measurable in the beginning, but now is now really paying off.

- Mike

Back in March my 1000% better was quitting a soul-sucking job and career (which I could do because our family made big life choices to let us survive on one income). My 1% better this week is that I've followed up on several leads for writing financial literacy/education content for various organizations!

Finally taking action to make money doing the thing I love. Oh, and you'll appreciate this - I also rejoined the CrossFit gym I left back in 2017, and it's honestly been like coming home.

- Maddie