Engineering Your Financial Independence

Welcome to Engineering Your FI! We have MUCH to discuss.

Here are some questions we’ll tackle:

• What is Financial Independence (FI)? Is it the same as Early Retirement? What about this FIRE acronym I saw in a news article once?
• How do I get me some of that FI stuff?
• How can I use awesome numerical and plotting tools to make the best possible decisions that will deliver me to FI ASAP? For example: Should I refinance my house? What health insurance option should I choose?
• How do I change my mindset and lifestyle to achieve FI ASAP? AND be overall much happier with my life, even while spending far less money?
• How can I travel for (almost) free around the world?
• How do I raise kids in the FI universe?
• How do I save a ridiculous amount of money doing DIY projects like home repairs?

My wife and I achieved Financial Independence at the ripe old ages of 33 and 35, using a ton of great guidance and motivation from some of the early FI bloggers like Mr. Money Mustache, Mad Fientist, JL Collins, and the Frugalwoods. Read our story here. So now we’d like to “pay it forward”, and hopefully inspire many others to take this life-changing path to ultimate freedom.

Freedom from what? Great question. FI buys you freedom from:

• Mandatory work
• Restrictive vacation and sick time allotments
• A great many marital conflicts mostly likely – it’s well established that most fights in marriages are about money
• Lots of other stress

But guess what? You gain a huge number of benefits very shortly after starting down the path to FI, with the power of those benefits growing every day you stay on the path:

• Huge stress reductions about whether you’ll be able to pay your bills, especially in an economic downturn (or something crazy like a global pandemic, though I think we can all agree that’s pretty unlikely)
• Huge confidence gains at your work, as you no longer worry whether you’ll lose a promotion (or your job!) if you speak your mind, or advocate for what you want, or take a good chunk of time off
• An incredibly powerful and unifying life goal that can bring you much closer to your spouse, children, friends, and family

Sound good? Ready to get going? Alrighty, let’s go!