I’ve had the idea for this blog in the back of my mind for several years now, but never committed to make it a reality until now. So hello everyone, welcome to Independent Cents!
I’m writing this post around my 27th birthday, with the goal of becoming financially independent (FI) by the time I am 35. The whole purpose of this blog is to keep me accountable, and to provide others with a window into the process, the ups and downs, on the road to financial independence. I will be as transparent as possible, breaking down the tactics that I’m using and what has worked for me and what hasn’t worked quite as well.
But why this blog?
Like many people who enter the work force after college, I was hit hard and early by the realities of the real world. For the first 21 years of my life, life was very goal oriented. Study for this test, receive that grade, and graduate with your degree. There was a clear process and marks of progress. Any stress or frustration seemed to be a temporary issue, and I just needed to push through and it would all be worth it in the end. There was a target to reach and it gave me focus and drive.
All that changed the second I left college. I started working and began to feel a creeping sense of depression. I had the same thought running through my mind.
Is this really it?
Are we really all expected to work for the vast majority of our waking time, with only a few days of vacation each year (if you’re lucky), for the next 40 years?
How is it possible that we can spend so much time working for money, and yet accumulate so little by retirement?
For several years I tried pushed these thoughts aside, telling myself that this was just how life worked. I watched my bank account balance stay exactly the same, month in and month out. Despite a decent starting salary of $50,000 in Southern California, and being the lucky few with no student loan debt, I was struggling to save anything at all for retirement.
I had made it a goal to fully fund my IRA each year, starting when I was 21, however the very first year I had to borrow the money from my then-girlfriend (now wife). I wasn’t able to repay this money back for five years. I felt like I was playing a game I couldn’t possibly win. I was struggling, and failing, to save 11% of my income. I nearly got to the point where I thought that there was no point in even trying, that maybe I should just forget about saving anything for retirement and just hope everything would work out.
Then my dad got sick.
It started with difficulties breathing while laying down on the couch, with him not being able to catch his breath. We originally thought that he just needed to lose a bit of weight, and didn’t think much of it. This continued on for several months, then his muscles started to twitch uncontrollably. Doctors tested him for everything they could think of; heavy metal poisoning, auto-immune disorders, cancer.
After nearly a year of tests and no answers, my dad could no longer continue his work in construction. His breathing continued to worsen, and he began to lose strength in his legs and hands. Still, no one could provide any answers.
Now forced into retirement, my dad went to see doctors nearly every day as they continued to run tests. The doctors ruled out different causes, one by one, until they were left with one possibility. A final nerve conduction study in 2016 confirmed that my father had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
ALS is a progressive terminal illness in which your motor neurons, which control voluntary movement, become increasingly impaired over time. There is no cure, and very limited treatment options.
My dad’s ALS seems to be relatively slow moving, and three years after his diagnosis he is still walking, albeit slower and with more difficulty. Each day however, his movements will continue to get more difficult, he will lose the ability to walk, and eventually he will succumb to the disease.
Both of my parents put off many of their plans for retirement. They told themselves that once they were retired they would be able to travel, buy an RV, and really start to do what they want. With my dad’s illness however, many of these plans are no longer a possibility.
It was heartbreakingly unfair.
Even if you do everything right and play by the rules, you just never know what the future will bring you. Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way that you planned. It put my own life into perspective, and I didn’t want to look back and see all of my dreams and aspirations being pushed aside for some later date that I may never see.
And so I began to look for a way out. A way to escape the standard story of working 40 years until retirement to do what you enjoyed in life.
But how?
Eventually I stumbled across several Financial Independence blogs like Mr. MoneyMustache, Millennial Money, Mad Fientist, and others. These blogs started to open my eyes to the very real possibilities of financial independence and financial freedom. I can’t recommend these blogs enough, and they absolutely gave me the fire and determination to start my own financial independence journey.
It is impossible to hit a target if you don’t know what you are aiming at. That is what I was doing with my financial life. I had no target, no game plan to save. I was essentially living paycheck to paycheck, without seeing any sort of progress, and wondering why I wasn’t getting anywhere.
Slowly over the next few years, I started to form my own clear target.
Become Financial Independent by my 35th birthday.
I don’t have a road map that my journey will take, but I hope that you’ll join on my path to independence, one cent at a time.
Let’s get after it.