#The shockingly simple math behind early retirement reddit plus#

#The shockingly simple math behind early retirement reddit plus#

I threw myself into other things, mainly quilting ( 2.5 finished plus a couple of placemats), reading, ( only $400 or so to go on the ‘Earning my rates back’ challenge) and getting the veggie garden ready to slumber over the winter.Īnd that’s where I learned something new about transitioning to retired life. After my little holiday up in the high country I wasn’t feeling the urge to write here, so I didn’t. Honestly… no one cares! It’s been a month since I posted here and no one’s sent out a search party. Never fear, I’ll put a post out on Thursday instead. You know, it always makes me smile when I see a blogger tweet something like, “Sorry everyone, I haven’t released my usual Wednesday blog post. In the middle of the second lockdown last year, I asked myself the question – “How long can you keep this silver week streak going?” It’s also handy when you want to check things like when the dogs’ vaccinations are due, how many weeks since you’ve had a haircut, and it’s invaluable when filling in my ‘Annual Spend’ chart each month. So why on earth would I stop using it? It’s proved its worth. This chart was one of the things that helped me to get there. People need little wins when working towards financial independence and this was a technique that works brilliantly for me. Every day you get to colour in the chart is a little achievement something to mark the fact that you’re putting in the effort along the way. The chart is one of the ways to make the hard slog in the middle of the FI/RE journey fun. She’s on a similar path to me, on a quest to pay off her house and retire early(ish).Īpparently, at work they now call it “doing a Frogdancer.”

She’s one of the people at work who talk finances with each other. I explained about the winning streak and she laughed and agreed to come to my place for lunch instead. But if it was just us… then I could serve lunch here instead and my silver week would be saved!

I knew that if there was going to be a group of us, then that was it. “Will it be just us or will there be other people?” I knew this would be the end of my silver streak, but I knew it had to finish someday. I’m going to get all my marking done before Friday – damned if I’m going to work on my birthday! – so do you want to go out for lunch?” We caught it early.īut maybe it was always fated to end on this day? A couple of days before, a friend from work rang me and said, “It’s correction day on Friday AND it’s my birthday. Having an ulcer on your eye is never a good thing. Jeffrey’s eye is improving and really, that’s the important thing. Anyway, I think that 61 straight weeks was pretty good. My 61 week silver streak had finally run its course. Ryan26 noticed something was a bit wrong with it late Wednesday … Thursday it looked as if it might be getting better but on Friday morning we woke, I looked at it and rang the vet. Sometimes they get a bit mucky but they clear up in a day or so. What could go wrong?Ĭavaliers have such big, beautiful eyes. This meant that Friday had to be a ‘no spend’ day. We’ve just come out of a 2 week lockdown and I was overdue for a visit to the hairdresser. We were meeting on Thursday, so that was going to be a definite ‘spend’ day. I was having lunch with Simone, the old school friend that I caught up with after 40 years when I was on my holiday in South Australia, and another school friend who I’ve stayed in touch with over the years. We’d run out of onions and a few other bits and bobs, so I told him to take my credit card and stock up on a few things. It all started when Ryan26 went to Aldi because we’d run out of tinned tuna.

So what happened last week? Jeffrey (front) and Scout. After 61 straight weeks of keeping my spending to 3 days per week or below… along comes a 4 day week. The first lockdown kicked off the streak of consecutive low-spend weeks, but last week was when it all came to an end. I wanted to keep my winning streak of low spend weeks going for as long as I could. I still spend money, but never mindlessly. The chart makes me concentrate on when I pull out my credit card. When I added the EXTRA column – the one where, if I spent money on 3 or less days per week I get to colour in a silver square, that’s when my spending ratched up a level. This worked ok at first, but it lacked an incentive. Every day I don’t spend money I get to colour in a square. I never dreamed I’d get to 61!įor the TL DR version: I have a chart set up from Saturdays to Fridays. That last one was funny because I was congratulating myself on an 18-week streak of silver weeks. I’ve written about the nitty gritties of the ‘No Spend Days’ chart HERE, way back in 2018, then HERE in the middle of 2020.