With the extra time, I had hopes of using the extra weekday to focus on the blog (instead of evenings and weekends) as well as getting a more balanced life where we could visit friends more, exercise more and do more of the things we love. COVID had other plans but even if we could be going off on long weekends away, or even a meal at a restaurant with friends, things have been crazy busy and no-one’s fault but my own.

In last two months I’ve only managed to get one blog post written. With the extra time I:

• Presented at the Dublin FI meetup on our mini-retirement experience
• Co-hosted 2 Cork FI online meetups
• Wrote 2 articles for the Smart Money Series
  • 8 investing tips
  • 4 money saving tips
• Presented at the first online FIRE event on the quickest path to FI for a PAYE worker – the event was recorded and still available to purchase if any one is interested, it was a super interesting event with something for everyone to learn
• Was interviewed on the Superb Diamond Range Podcast
• Completed 7 client consultations including 5 analyses on how best to invest lump sums and quickest paths to FI and 4 one on one Q&A sessions (I know that adds up to 9, 2 clients did both the analysis and one on one sessions)
• I also got involved with the Irish Savers Action Group on Facebook who focus on improving investment options for Irish savers and I’m excited to work with them to advocate for better, more accessible savings options for the every day worker.

As you can guess, this didn’t fit neatly into my one day a week as planned. Many (mostly all) nights and weekends since my last post were blurred into and it’s starting to catch up to me.

All work and no play makes Meagan a dull girl.

It got to the point where the blog started to feel like a chore and I even contemplated stopping the blog and going back to work 5 days a week. I certainly would make more money for the time I put in and would have a clear cut off between home and work.

But, giving up all together feels drastic when all I really need is to put a bit more structure, balance and boundaries into place.

So, I’ve decided that I will only take on one blog related effort per week. Be that consultations, interviews, presentations, articles etc. This will allow me to keep things balanced.

Anyway, what’s all this got to do with FI?

I guess it’s got me thinking about the what life would look like once we no longer need a day job.

One of the couples that presented at the FIRE HQ event was already retired since their late 40’s and they commented that they don’t know how they ever fit in full time jobs. They live full, rich lives and are never bored as they thought they might be.

My sister in law also mentioned in our last visit that she thought that COVID would be the perfect opportunity to catch up on reading, something we both said we love to do but never seem to have time, and that try as she might, other things just kept creeping into her schedule.

These two points got me thinking, maybe no matter how much “free” time we have, we will always find ways to fill it, and if it’s in our nature, over-fill it.

My need to say yes to everything and set my own expectations to deliver as quickly as possible to the highest quality is a habit that will be hard to kick.

***Google’s self help for over achieving people pleaser ***

I also feel the need to be productive even in my down time. Watching a movie is tough going as it feels like I’ve wasted precious time that I could have been doing something productive – as long as I have the energy.

This is something that I would like to work on BEFORE I reach FI, so that once I get there, I will already have the balance right, and stop myself from burning out before I get there.

I also read a really great article recently from the guy that wrote Financial Freedom. He has been financially independant for the last 5 years and reflected on his journey and what he could have done differently to make it more enjoyable and effective. Two of my key take aways is to schedule in down time and prioritise health.

If we don’t guard our own time and make space for our priorities, or the things we’d like to be priorities but always seem to take the back burner (hello exercise), then we will never get around to them, no matter how much time we have.

So, I write this in the hopes it will keep me accountable.

Today I made a start and scheduled in a long walk with a friend of mine. This ticked a few boxes: down time, catching up with friends, exercise and getting time in nature. I came home in a much better mental state than when I left and will try to prioritise something like this for myself at least once a week.

The path to FI is a long one, we must make sure we take care of ourselves along the way, and enjoy the journey as much as we can. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. It’s not about the destination. It’s a worthwhile goal but not the be all and end all.

On the regular day-to-day life, the change of pace has been wonderful.

There is no rushing around to drop off or pick up from creche, no sickness or COVID testing to keep our son in creche (all of our friends with kids in school have already been sick at least once and many needed COVID tests or extra time to allow their kids back to school), we have dinner together every evening (mostly made by Mr. MH by the time I finish work), I’m trying to pop out for walks alone at lunch time, I get to cuddle my son during the day when I come down for tea breaks and lunch or when he struggles from separation anxiety near the end of the week. All in all, I can’t complain.

We have so much to be grateful for: we are not at war, we have our basic needs and comforts covered, we are able to work and have our health, I have a loving and supportive family but even though I am conscious of this, the monotony of pandemic life does weigh on me from time to time. Especially when I was working almost every waking hour.

I miss my friends and family. We have been avoiding meetups now that kids are back at school as it’s too risky for our kids to intermingle when Mr. MH is a higher risk. We still have video calls at least.

I miss being able to just go into town, to be among the community, to bring our son to events, and play dates, to go the the cinema and restaurants without the worry of getting a potentially life threatening virus.

I know this is what everyone is feeling and many are in much worse places than we are financially and/or mentally and I’m not sure why I’m sharing this really, maybe just a way to be transparent that everything is not rosy and highlight that although we’ve reached partial financial independence it’s not the solution to all of life’s problems. If you have life work to do, no longer needing money will only give you time and space to continue working on them, so long as you make them a priority.

Personally, I’m hoping now that I’ve come up from the fog, I will be better at protecting my time and actually fitting in the important things.

You may (or may not) have noticed a lack of blog posts. I certainly have felt guilty for not writing! A lot has been going on in the last number of months and the blog had to take a back burner. I’m hoping that with our new lifestyle choice, that will change.

I really struggled with the title of this post. I wanted to put something really catchy for google search terms like “We partially retired!” but funnily enough Mr. MH came across a critique of FIRE bloggers often saying they retired early but that this is disingenuous as their online platforms are earning them more now than they ever made working a day job and that they still put in a lot of hours into their business. The critique said they should be more honest and say something like:

“I’m a former retiree. I came out of retirement to share my advice on saving, investing, and frugal living. I make good money doing it.”

or

“We quit our jobs to do what we love! We now travel the world and share the investment strategies that have worked well for us. We now work at what we enjoy doing and make money from sharing our advice with others”.

And in our case, it’s no different. Plenty of families choose to live off one income and have one parent stay at home (though maybe less so nowadays). The only difference I’d argue in our case is the choice was afforded to us by the financial freedom we have worked towards.

Snapshot of the last 4 months

Each of these points could warrant a full blog post and may do in the future but this gives you an idea of what’s been going on on our side:

• End of March:
  • I went back to work (remotely) from maternity leave on a 2.5 day/week contract. Mr. MH was still off on unpaid parental leave.
• Beginning of April:
  • I went up to 5 days a week due to project demands and trying to get as much done before Mr. MH went back to work, I also continued to take on blog consultations.
  • We un-officially listed our condo in Canada for sale, got an offer in 1 day but had to decline as the tenant could not remove his belongings due to COVID travel restrictions.
• Beginning of June:
  • Mr. MH went back to work on a 3 day week, I went back down to 2 days a week. We juggled swapping between working from home and childcare.
• End of June:
  • We attempted to find childcare in time for end of July when Mr. MH was due to go back full-time. Could not find any availability in creches and childminders were going to cost 2,000€/month for a 3 day week.
• Beginning of July:
  • We officially listed our condo and sold within 2 weeks. The relief of selling was overshadowed by trying to figure out tax liabilities for disposing a property from abroad.
• Mid-July:
  • Decision made for Mr.MH to hand in his months’ notice
  • Mr. MH went back to a 5 day week, while I worked a 2 day week by doing an early morning shift before resuming caring for our son.
• August:
  • Mr. MH finished up work, I’m now on a 4-day week
  • I worked on a number of blog consultations, was on a podcast and prepped for some upcoming presentations in Sep
  • Our condo sale officially closed and taxes are filed
  • We took a one week holiday and are now thoroughly enjoying our new work-life balance!

Considerations

Going down to one part-time income and essentially delaying our time to financial independence was a weighty decision but definitely feels like the right decision for our family, at least for now. Many angles were considered when making the decision which I will go into below.

Money

The first consideration was, could we make this work money-wise and still have money left over to build towards financial independence? Short answer: yes.

Lower housing costs

Long answer: With the sale of our Canadian property freeing up some equity the decision remained around how best to use that money.

1. Do we leave it in Canada and invest it there where there are more tax-efficient vehicles?
2. Do we transfer it to Ireland, incurring additional capital gains tax (CGT) on remittance and invest it here? Or
3. Do we transfer it to Ireland and use the funds to pay down our mortgage here?

After further analysis, I discovered that paying down our mortgage would take the same amount of time to get to financial independence as investing it in a more tax-efficient Canada (full post on this pending). Even though our net worth might be higher in the long term by investing it instead, this is not the main goal for us. What is important is the financial freedom to buy TIME and paying down our mortgage will get us to the same end goal in the same time while also reducing our expenses now and reducing the risk of the market not performing (which is questionable in the next number of years).

Lower childcare costs

As mentioned above, if we could get a place in a creche it would costs us about 800€/month for 5 full days a week but in the current climate, we could not secure a place. This left childminders, who in our area are charging 10-12€/hour, so for a full day, 3 days a week this would cost us 2,000€/month. While this was less than our lowest income, the reasons for us both working full time were dwindling.

Social

Leaving the workforce would be a major social change for Mr. MH. So much of our social network is the connections we have at work. Becoming a stay at home dad could present its own challenges in terms of keeping engaged with other adults. We will play this by ear. We have a few friends on maternity leave and so Mr. MH can meet up with them during the week and with me being off on Friday’s we can take turns going on social outings with friends if we feel we need more social outlets.

Although men are starting to become primary care givers more often, it’s still not commonplace. We considered the social impacts of this and reached out to a friend who also took this decision. They said they are definitely enjoying the added time for things that are important to them like preparing better food and being able to eat all together but mentioned that their husband needed to make a conscious effort not to be bothered by frequent questions about him being off work while at the playground or library during business hours – at least Mr. MH can be aware to expect these comments and be prepared to not let them bother him. Another great tip was to join a gym with a creche so they could get some alone time while their kid gets to play with other kids.

As for our son’s social side, he gets time with other kids at the playground and with our friend’s kids when we visit them. We would like for more social outings for him but trying to balance reducing COVID risks with the need for him to socialise. We may book him into some day care sessions at some point or hold off until he is in the early childhood care and education (ECCE) scheme where he’ll get 3 hours of free schooling per day once he is 3.

Loss of earning potential

One of our concerns in either one of us temporarily leaving the workforce until our son is in school was our loss of earning potential. We both felt like we had reached a decent level of earnings and that taking a leave from the workforce could take us 5 years to get back to the same level of pay we are on now.

Some of this is unfounded as we had a similar feeling when we left our jobs in Canada to start over in Ireland. We felt like we were earning more than we ever had and couldn’t see how we would maintain that level of earning in a new country where we had no local experience. Fast forward 6 years and we are earning almost 60% more take home than we were then (before going to one income).

Anyway, we think we’ve found a way not to worry about this. Our latest path to FI analysis includes Mr. MH never needing to return to work. Should he wish to return to work when our son is in school to fill his time, it will be of his choosing and the pay will not matter. We can maintain this lifestyle of me working a 4 day week until we reach full FI and then we will both have enough invested to cover our expenses.

Health

Being off with our son enables Mr. MH to stay a lot more active than if he were working. He usually aims to get outside twice every day for a walk in nature wherever possible. And with me being off on Friday’s we will have more time to start taking turns going out on more strenuous exercise outings.

I recently watched an episode of Zac Efron’s Down to Earth on the research into Blue Zones where there are large populations of people over 100, and the key findings to a long life are: low stress, active lifestyles in addition to genetics, environmental factors and diet.

I feel like the decision to go down to one part time income will certainly help tick a few of those boxes.

The other health considerations are COVID related. Mr. MH is an at risk category and so putting our son in creche would increase the chances of us contracting it. We have friends who have already had to get tested after having their kids in creche for 1.5 weeks. The cycle and stress of having our son being continually sick and constantly worrying whether it is COVID, going for testing, taking time off work when our son had to be kept home from creche was all another major tick box against the idea of both of us continuing to work.

Family

One of my main reasons for striving for financial independence is to have more time with friends and family. As tomorrow is not guaranteed, I feel it is important to prioritise this now as much as possible and this decision helps to do that now rather than later.

Whenever I have a chance to call my parents, or my siblings, even if I feel like I should be doing something more productive, I do my best to always chose the call over something else. I think to myself, some day, you might not be able to call them anymore and you will not regret taking every chance you get to call them while you still can.

Having a long weekend every weekend also enables us to go and visit people more often. We have been back in Ireland for 6 years and we saw more of our friends in Ireland when we lived in Canada and would make a tour of the country once a year to get to see everyone. Now that we are here, we take it for granted that we can go anytime and everyone gets so busy that we don’t actually make the time. Now that we have more time, we plan to schedule visits with friends and family around the country far more often. We’ve already been up to Sligo and got to catch up with friends we hadn’t seen in ages.

Lifestyle

I feel like we are already living a partially retired lifestyle. We don’t have to worry about taking work off when our son is sick, organise childcare or camps during school terms, work our schedules around drop off and pick up times at creche. We are building in the hobbies and exercise routines we’d always put on the long finger and hoped to do “when we had more time”.

With the extra time I plan on growing the blog, learning to grow my own food, getting out in nature more, visiting friends and family, joining an exercise class and trying new vegetarian recipes.

For example, last Friday was my first “guilt free blog work day” and it looked like this: Woke up had a slow breakfast, tidied the kitchen while Mr. MH had a lie in, worked on a presentation I am doing in early Sep, came down for lunch, played an hour of playstation, threw on some laundry, worked on a blog consultation, went on a long walk with Mr. MH and our son in nature, worked on another consultation while Mr. MH made dinner and had the evening to ourselves once our son had gone to bed.

When I asked Mr. MH how he was finding the new routine he said he was finally getting back his “Joie de Vivre” which he hasn’t felt since we were back in Canada. This was a shock for me to hear and while I’m sad it has taken this long, I am even more grateful that we can be in this position and has solidified my feeling that this is the right decision.

When we dug into this a bit more, we feel it’s a combination of getting more exercise, being out of a stressful job and knowing we will be ok for money for almost a year even if I lose my job.

Risk

My job is not permanent and my contract only gets extended for 6 months at a time. This is a risk we are taking but we are mitigating this by maintaining a cash cushion to cover at least 6 months living expenses should my contract end and either one of us need to get another job.

The stress of this risk is also alleviated as once we pay down our mortgage with proceeds from the condo, our annual expenses will almost be low enough to live off one minimum wage job so even if we can’t find a professional job quickly enough, we could take a minimum wage job while the other continues to stay home with our son and we’d still have enough to get by, though we would need to temporarily pause our goals for saving towards FI.

Impact on Path to Financial Independence

So how has this decision impacted our path to financial independence? Basically it has delayed our time to full financial independence but I would argue that we are already living the lifestyle we want to live once we get there so reaching FI is no longer the most important goal. We are already building in the lifestyle we want once we no longer need to work for money and test driving options so that we are not shocked once we get there and regret having given up work.

• If we both worked full time and put our son in childcare, we would have been fully FI in 4.25 years.
• If Mr. MH worked full time and I worked 3 days a week, we would have been fully FI in 8 years.
• With our current plan of me working 4 days a week, Mr. MH never returning to work, paying off our mortgage in the next few years and then investing in ETFs, we should be in a position to be fully FI in 12 years.

This of course is assuming I maintain my job and current level of pay but as per the other risk mitigations mentioned above we are happy enough to live the life we want now even though it extends our time to full FI. Should our circumstances change, we are also happy that our expenses will be low enough to still maintain a low stress lifestyle with one person able to stay home with our son and one person working for minimum wage even though it may pause our path to full FI until we can get a professional level job again!