My first lucid recollection of what is fast becoming a reality is about 5 years back. A combination of excitement over a revolutionary idea + a propensity for a story that sells, I announced to friends that Mr.C and I had a plan to retire in 3 years based on multiple streams of passive income. This, of course, was followed by a one word question in all the revelations we made, which was “HOW?”
I didn’t quite have a clue, honestly. In my most upbeat voice I would say: “Well I’m the visionary, Mr.C is the brains. He’ll figure it out”. Swift end to that jaw-dropping story there. Honest, at least.
I wish I could say that Mr.C and I worked tirelessly since then to come up with a sound plan to retire early. We didn’t. We somehow stumbled into our plan through a series of events that in no way could we have designed or envisaged.
Having a Baby is a Life Changer
Let’s fast forward to 2014, 2 years after the dramatic revelation, when we had our little boy. All of a sudden, life’s priorities changed! What was our priorities before that anyway, sock away money for some amazing purchases and holidays? 🙂 Our entire years of existence did not once consider how and what life would actually be like post having a child. We did not think how we would like our days to be spent. The urge to be with our son and care for that tiny little miracle was so strong and foreign. I was torn and I was tired, but that is a different story. Mr.C and I spoke endlessly on the care arrangements for our son and how conflicted I was (Mr.C seemed to have a better grip of his emotions). Men, so emotionally efficient :p
To cut to the chase – we decided I would quit and care for the lil fella. Boy was it a stressful period as financially, we knew we were stretching ourselves thin. Again Mr.C was an absolute rock, I was swinging between loving being with our son to “gosh, I need to contribute financially”. While I was not employed full-time, I had a relatively well-paying contract gig that engaged me on a project basis. This was unstable income as I had no visibility on the pipeline so nothing close to a monthly salary if you looked at it annually from a financial standpoint. Mr.C had set up an e-commerce business platform one weekend and we started a B2C trading in baby related products. More on this exciting journey later! This was, again, unstable income however that feeling when an order came in was pure delight (for our local readers – it was damn syiok!).
There’s a FIRE in Our Soul!
Somewhere towards the end of 2015, Mr.C stumbled across the recipe and the terminology for what we truly wanted, which is aptly named FIRE – Financially Independent and Retire Early. Catchy! Appealing! Life-changing! Between then and now, about 1.5 years of focused savings and Mr.C’s investment wizardry ways – we’re just about halfway into FIRE. That’s a whole lot faster than we expected but not fast enough I suppose (we always want it to be faster!) – it’s just such an exciting fruition of an amazing concept.
With the goal in our minds constantly, we have been making changes to our lives. Changes that are happening naturally and truly by our own thoughts maturing in a way that can only happen by internalizing the goal and living it in every breath.
That’s truly what this blog is about – a lifestyle blog. A lifestyle carefully curated with an appealing goal of being financially independent to experience life in it’s full glory. We want to capture the journey and while we didn’t quite start documenting this from the very beginning, the memories are fresh. We know where we came from, we have an idea where we are going and it’s exhilarating!
Author: Ms.K
Ms.K is everything that Mr.C is, without the natural interest in investing and company financials! The activity planner for the family, the driver of random ideas and soon to be ‘retiring’ in to full time motherhood – Ms.K has no idea what she’s in for but remains super excited!