Off Our Budget Groove

Recently I was listening to the Frugal Friends podcast and one of the cohosts said something profound, “some seasons just get you out of your groove with budgeting”. This hit me because I am in a season where I’m out of my groove. Two years ago, we were cruising towards FIRE while saving 50% of our incomes with specific goals in mind. Then, a year ago, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and my world took a turn. I entered a season of life where my mental health took the forefront of my focus.

Our days of saving 50% were behind us while I took a paycut to go part time and stopped paying as close of attention to our budget. Although Mr. Fipolar is naturally frugal, I am a natural spender. I do most of the buying and budgeting and our expenses started to increase. I should mention that we had also recently bought a house and while modest for our area, our mortgage and utilities were much more expensive than we realized they would be.

I attended therapy and I continued to heal. Finally, after 10 long months, I emerged from my haze and found the right dose of medication that allows me to lead a stable life. During my time focused on my health, I lost sight of how to budget. Our lifestyle increased and with it came a larger mortgage, a car payment, and a few more creature comforts. At 27, we’re tired of living like we’re in college even though we recognize that we don’t have the means to live like we’re rich. Instead, like most, we fall somewhere in the middle.

So, long story short, I took ten months to focus on my health, and when I got back to paying attention to our budget, I was out of practice and off of my groove.

We found ourselves in a situation:

  1. We were simply not bringing in enough money to save more than 20% of our incomes. Our expenses have permanetly increased and even though we were both saving 10% into our 401k’s, the left over 10%-ish didn’t feel like enough to achieve our goals of reaching FIRE.
  2. We were unwilling to start living like we were in college again. Niether of us wanted a roommate and we were unwilling to trade our new hybrid car in for a more affordable one. (Plus, car prices are crazy right now!)

So this left two options:

  1. Coast and keep saving what felt like minimal amounts of money while bing frustrated that we couldn’t save more.
  2. Do something about it.

I chose the second option. I was already thinking about leaving my previous position when I saw a different engineering position listed online. I interviewed and negotiated the pay so that I would be making $15,000 more than my previous 36 hour per week job. I made the switch from structural engineering to civil engineering. It was bittersweet but I knew that it was the right decision for us and our futures.

I’m only two months in but so far, this new job is less stressful than my previous one, pay very well, and allows us to increase our savings rate.

Now, onto the real challenge – reigning in our spending. Ever since joining the finstagram (financial Instagram) community, I’ve been inspired to get back on my budget groove and save and invest as much as we can. It inspired me to re-establish our goals of FI and also find a few shorter term goals to chase.

Goals:

Of our goals, how do we want to prioritize them?

We want to:

  1. Reach FIRE
  2. Pay off our car loan
  3. Install solar panels
  4. Buy a teardrop trailer for camping
  5. Fully fund our IRA’s every year
  6. Travel
  7. Etc, etc, etc

There are so many things but we don’t have the money to do them all at once. Instead like most, we need to prioritize them.

After lots of discussion during a recent road trip, we closed in on a few:

  1. Pay off our car loan within two years
  2. Travel to Europe (with travel hacking)
  3. Each earn $75,000 yearly
  4. Get solar panels (we’ll most likely take a loan out for this)

These goals feel doable and realistic. I’ve already achieved #3 and Mr. Fipolar is working on it. We realize we have limited time left in our twenties (thanks Pandemic) and we want to spend it actively getting out of debt and traveling before the next phase of our lives is upon us.

Long term, we want to hit FI but we don’t have a fixed number or age. With inflation like it is, the stock market down for the year, and not knowing what our lives are going to look like, we just don’t know how much we’ll need or what age we’ll get there.

So, how do we save for an unknown retirement while achieving our short term goals?

  1. We contribute into our 401k’s and 457b retirement plans. At my new job, I’m contributing 15% into my 457b and at his job, Mr. Fipolar is contributing 10% into his 401k.
  2. Trying to fully fund our IRA’s.
  3. Getting out of debt. Once we eliminate our car payment, we can allocate that $311 monthly payment ro investments or saving up for the next car that will need to be replaced.

We have a solid plan in place, revisited our goals, and have been finding our budget groove again. Although my mental health will always take a front seat, we can learn how to balance our budget at the same time. It’s also okay that there are some seasons in life where finances are not a priority. I have high hopes that we’ll continue to save and achieve our goals.

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