Our Financial Journey

“Why fit in when you were born to stand out” – Dr. Seuss

I, Adam, first came across this quote about twenty years ago while sitting at my desk at work. As soon as I read it, I knew it was special, though it took me years to fully understand its meaning. I even set it as the background on my work computer so I could see it every day.

To me, if I follow the path society has laid out—doing what I’m “supposed” to do—I’ll likely end up with a similar life and outcome as everyone else. But if I choose to be different, I risk being judged, labeled as crazy, or even seen as a rebel. Still, what might happen if I embrace that path? Where might it lead?

One Halloween, I took the Metro (the subway system in Virginia) to work dressed as the Grim Reaper—complete with a tiny American flag tie, super nerdy glasses held together with tape, and a scythe made out of black tape and cardboard. I called myself the “Nerd Reaper” since I worked in IT.

Here I am, surrounded by people in full business attire, sitting on the Metro in this ridiculous costume. I spent the entire day walking around the city, pushing carts of computer equipment into various office buildings, helping people, and just having fun. After work, I kept the costume on as I took the Metro to the mall, got a haircut, had my glasses adjusted, and then rode the train all the way home—over an hour-long ride. It was, without question, the best day I’ve ever had at work.

From there, I embraced being different in bigger ways. In the years that followed, I wore a Godzilla costume, a squirrel costume, and a Mario costume to work. I even wore the Godzilla costume with reindeer antlers to a winter holiday party, because, why not? These experiences led to other leaps: high-fiving strangers in grocery stores, starting a challenge blog (now retired), launching a personal YouTube channel (also retired), trying obstacle courses (where I even placed first in one event and ninth in another), and ultimately finding myself on the improv stage. I trained in improv for two years and performed dozens of shows, ranging from ten minutes to ninety minutes.

Having the courage to stand out led to all of this. What could happen if Anna and I applied this same non-traditional mindset to our finances?

Posters from two of my improv shows.

Goal

Being retired by the age of 45 and free to pursue whatever makes us happy—whether it’s fun, silly, meaningful, or even meaningless—ultimately doesn’t matter, because we’re free from the constraints of a traditional job and the worry of money.

Why

The first question that comes to our minds—and maybe yours—is, why? Why should you invest your time in following our journey, and why should we even document it?

Our official journey to retirement began five years ago when we were over $35k in debt and on the verge of divorce.

It was a dark time in our relationship, and one night, I said something I deeply regret (we’ll talk it in a future post). But that one sentence completely changed the trajectory of our lives and our relationship. Now, in less than ten years, we are aiming to be retired.

Throughout this journey, we’ve often kicked ourselves for not taking a more money-focused approach to our decisions earlier in life. Instead, our mentality was:

• We’ll figure it out later
• We’re still young
• There’s still time
• The minimum is good enough
• The company match is all we need
• Other people and companies have our best interests in mind
• We’ll have more than enough money when we get old and retire

We were 100% wrong—not even 99% wrong. The more time we spent learning about money and financial strategies, the more we realized just how many poor decisions we had made. Those mistakes cost us hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of potential dollars and at least a decade of our lives. We firmly believe that learning more about health and money can have the greatest impact on the overall quality of life.

What can you expect

Anna and I are excited to publish a new blog on the 1st of each month. I will be the primary writer for this series, but Anna will pop in from time to time to share her perspective. Some of the topics we’ll cover include:

• How we got ourselves into debt
• Facing our money mistakes
• How minimalism helped us retire early (it encouraged us to look at the value of everything)
• Cutting thousands of dollars in expenses
• Calculating our FIRE number (the amount we need to be Financial Independent and Retire Early)
• Generating money while we sleep

The reason we’re choosing to publish once a month is that we feel it’s a schedule we can maintain. We’ve been running a YouTube channel (Anna D and Adam) for over four years and have experimented with different posting schedules—from multiple Shorts and vlogs a week to once or twice a month. We’ve learned that we can comfortably manage one or two vlogs a month with the occasional Short thrown in. Anna also has a cycle fitness YouTube channel (go2spin) and the same thing. We’d rather stick to a consistent blog schedule than aim for an overly aggressive one that leaves us overwhelmed, stressed, and burned out—ultimately leading to us giving up.

In our next blog, we’ll share the story of how I massively pissed off Anna by ignoring her for months at work—until one night the two of us were stuck together for four straight hours. She turned to me and said… Spoiler alert: it’s our origin story.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, and we hope you enjoy joining us on this journey!

Anna and myself after hiking to the top of our first 14er (Mount Bierstadt in Colorado at 14,065 ft/4,287 m).