Beginnings

As an introductory post I want to explain a little bit about the title and mission.  I am not aiming for a particular category per se, but there are a few themes you will likely encounter.  I am an aspiring FIREer currently in accumulation phase.  FIRE stands for “Financially Independent; Retired Early”.  Accumulation phase means I am still working as a necessity.  I will briefly discuss the financial part at times but the more important, to me, is really thinking about what retired life looks like.  So I suppose the theme of this will really be more of a lifestyle aspect of a wannabe retiree.  

So a little about me, I am in my early 30s, I am married with 1 toddler going-on teenager.  I work in healthcare with a unique schedule that allows me to be both the bread-winner, and a part-time stay-at-home-dad.  My wife is a full-time stay-at-home-mom.  I like this perspective because while I am the breadwinner, I also get intermittent glimpses of what life after work looks like.  I think I am funny, wife says I am not, so I’ll let you be the judge. 

While doing research on personal finance in my early and mid-20s I discovered the FIRE movement via Reddit’s r/financialindependence.  They broke down all the nitty-gritty numbers on the FI part for me.  However, doing further research into the RE part, I noticed that too often retirees (even regular 65+ retirees) fail in retirement because they failed to define what “not working” looked like.  So, given that, what is the point of hoarding piles of money even faster just to quit working and wonder “now what?” 

So, my goal here is then two-fold: I want to flesh-out my own life and make sure retirement will actually work the way I envision it (and also writing is therapeutic for me).  Secondly, want to show a picture to others who maybe have retired (early or not), or want to stop working, what not working may look like for them. 

So you can expect to find some tidbits on frugality, random books I’ve read, my hobbies, my random goings-on about town, podcast recommendations, etc.  There will really be a grab-bag of topics as the posts flow in.  There will from time to time be some dirty numbers talk for those who like to get freaky in the (spread)sheets. 

Hope to see you around! I am on Twitter @MinervaFIRE

Oh yeah!  As for the Minerva thing.  Minerva was the Egyptian goddess of wisdom.  I think it requires a bit of soul-searching wisdom to discover what you actually want your life to look like.  A bit of self-actualization, if you will.   Achieving Nirvana is the ultimate goal in life according to Buddhist doctrine.  But I couldn’t exactly make that my title, so I tweaked it a little bit.  Full disclosure, I am not buddhist.