Tag Archives: money

Career

Do something meaningful or just make money or FIRE

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I’m not sure what I want to do with my life, but it feels as if I’m running out of time to do it, whatever “IT” is. I always felt like in order for life to be worth living, you need to do something worth doing. But then I also acknowledge that life is fleeting no matter what, and even the most accomplished of individuals are forgotten, if not in generations, than at some point the the sun dies and humanity disappears forever. It’s a bleak way of looking at things, but it also is freeing. Nothing I do matters from that perspective. Nothing at all.

What does matter, at the moment, is paying the bills. Giving my kids a good life for the few years they get to live when it does feel like life has meaning. Giving my family a life that I can look back on, on my deathbed, and think, I gave them all a good life. We had fun. We laughed. We spent quality time together. We saw the world as much as we wanted to. We ate good food that we made or bought. We had some memorable experiences. My kids are well-adjusted, as much as possible with our DNA, and we’ve been generally good people.

How much money does THAT cost?

Well, right now we’re spending anywhere from $12k-$15k a month, and it doesn’t get us that lifestyle. Not here. Not in the Bay Area. We can have some of it. I’m getting better at learning the basics of cooking (taco night FTW) and honing in on managing my Amazon addiction.

But everything adds up.

New tires.

Special doctor’s appointments for my autistic kiddos, now with a $50 co-pay per appointment on my $1200 a month already-subsidized Obamacare plan.

What’s happening with the plant outside?

We should check on the house insulation as our PG&E bill is $600 a month.

Our car is on its last legs. We can manage with just the minivan for a while, but then we’ll have some uber costs to take us places and can’t take the kids two places at once.

My mom on the east coast is only getting older, and eventually she won’t be able to fly out here to see us. It kills to think about not seeing my mom at least two times a year, even though she drives me nutso. Family is family.

The kid’s school is having a fundraiser, again.

And so on.

Life is just expensive. People clearly manage on less. A lot less. Even in this insanely expensive part of the country.

But — to life the life I want — we need to earn. I need a job.

We can maneuver our savings and investments as such that I probably don’t have to earn a crazy amount to be CoastFI at least. That’s nice to know. It’s incredible to have a serious cushion at this point in my life. I’m not sure how I got here, but I did. I still remember saving my first 50k, 100k, 250k, etc, and thinking — wow, that’s a lot of money. So it’s all relative. I’m in a good place. We’re in a good place. But I can’t not work. Not here anyway. And as my husband refuses to move (and I don’t really want to) I need to figure it out.

He makes $110k a year with no benefits. We’re bleeding anywhere from $50k-$100k or more a year with his income alone. My goal is to make $150k a year minimum.

The job market is shit right now. Add to that my wonky employment history and not clearly fitting in any one position I’m a bit scared.

I’ve applied to 300 jobs, give or take. I have some interviews here and there, but nothing is sticking. This week I have two first round interviews, one second round, and one second round that appears to be a final round because it’s five hours(!) long. Remote at least. It’s good I don’t have a job because who has time to find a job when they do?

I know, I know, I’ve been daydreaming of a career change. I’m not against that either. Just scared. I’ve been starting to learn some very preliminary coding. Ok, I watched a few YouTube videos and have been conversing with ChatGPT about where I should start and my 6 year old son knows more Python than I do. I have a few app ideas, but haven’t jumped in yet. It’s difficult to focus with ADHD and 3 kids including a 3-mo old who needs to nurse every 3 hours or so. My brain is a big pile of mush. And I’m supposed to work full-time again, how?

The jobs I’m interviewing for are all over the map. I had a call for one that paid $80k-$100k. That was a horrible interview and they decided I wasn’t worth following up with to even tell me they passed on me, I guess. Most of the roles are senior IC or head of the small department and paying $180k-$200k. A few are $120k-$150 IC or some are head of in small startups where they think that range is acceptable. Then others at bigger companies are higher than $200k but odds of getting those are teeny tiny non existent (though there is one I’m applying to that seems like a possible good fit, so fingers crossed there.)

It’s just… I wish I could have a job that inspired me to do my best work… I feel like I need that. Something I wake up in the morning and I’m all like, wow, I get to do THIS with my life? But is that realistic? How many people actually get that kind of life?

The reality is that I have 25 years or so left to work. Which is a long time but it’s also not that long of a time. If I stay in a job 4 years, that’s 6 jobs or so between now and retirement. Six opportunities to do something meaningful or to just hold my breath and pay the bills. And if I do FIRE, then even less time. How much do I need to care? What if I just find a job I can do blindfolded with my hands tied? Why does it HAVE to be hard OR meaningful?

I just want to feel like I can do the job. Even if I can convince these folks that I can in the interviews (I doubt it), when I start working how do I actually do a good job? I never know where to start. If someone hands me a project I’ll get it done to the best of my ability, but these roles are all so much more ambiguous. Which, tbh, I like — as I get to be more creative and strategic — but then I just have trouble actually figuring out what’s worth doing. I see the big picture and all the things we should be doing, but of course there aren’t enough resources to get that done (esp when the only resource is me). And, so, I flop. When I have an agency or team to do the actual work and I can set the strategy it’s better. But I always run out of time. Some due to procrastination and panic, some due to overcommitting, some do to righting the course too late.

I really don’t know what to do. I know what not to do. What not to do is don’t get fired again.  I mean, I can’t avoid layoffs — which are more common than not these days. But I can’t get FIRED. So I need to figure out how to do things right from day one. Which includes during the interviews because that’s when I actually provide an overview of my plan for the first 90 days usually. I need alignment where I’m not overselling myself to get the job but also getting the resources I need to make a big difference fast. I made it 4 months in my last role and that’s because my first 90 days I didn’t get enough done. I would have handled things differently if I could do that all over again, but no matter what I think it wasn’t a fit.

I’m really struggling and scared. I know I’m not going to be on the street tomorrow. But I just don’t know what I’m good at. And I’m tired. And don’t have the energy to fight right now. I need a job that I can do and do well and earn ok money at and actually feel some sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Is that job out there? Is it one of the roles I’m interviewing for this week? Will I ever find it? And when I do… how da fuc do I keep it?

Other

CoastFI: How do I make $150k a year doing what I love?

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(I should probably start by saying I have no idea what I love.)

At this point with my portfolio I am pretty much CoastFI which means that as long as I don’t dip into my savings/investments I should be fine to retire (and probably retire early but at the least to retire at a normal retirement age.) That’s nice to know. It gives me some relief… but not enough… because I know how quickly I’m decimating my savings without a job.

My husband makes $110k a year, but that doesn’t include any health insurance. My estimate for our monthly expenses is $15k ($7k of that being our mortgage, another $2-3k being cost of home ownership). So $5k on life outside of our house. That alone is a reason I want to move, but my husband refuses, and I’m still torn on that since it feels like owning a home in the Bay Area is probably a good financial move long term (after we’ve made $600k in value in 4 years it feels like it might be… plus we have a 2.6% loan locked in for 27 more years on another $1.2M that we owe and taxes only go up 2% a year here.) Still… it’s frustrating to be so “house poor” when we don’t have to be. I imagine a life living in a MCOL city where we have money to take trips and all that on a lot less. Sell our house, walk with $900k cash, and basically buy something outright or with a small mortgage.

That isn’t happening, though, so I need to figure out how to make money so we can Coast and not flop.

Husband’s after tax is probably around $6k a month. So I need to make up $9k a month… or about $155k to break even. If I want to take vacations that involve airplanes (and islands and hotels) with my family of 5, I’m really needing $200k income… but for now I’m just trying to hit $150-$160k.

I haven’t had a lot of luck getting interviews and I know that I might have to settle for $100-$120k for the short term… if I can even get that. It seems not the worst to do that for a year or two as long as by year 3 I can be back up to at least $150k. It feels crazy writing this as the last time I earned less than $160k was in 2015! And that’s not inflation adjusted or anything. Salaries are so low right now and it’s an employer’s market. I haven’t shared how I got fired from my last job which was paying $200k plus bonus in Feb, but it was killing me and I wasn’t a fit for it… I’m sad it didn’t work out but really I needed the time off for my mental health while pregnant with baby 3. Now I’m not sure wtf to do. Job applying is getting me no where and my self confidence is at an all time low, at least work wise.

Some days I wish I had cuter feet, you know?

Aging, Anxiety, Networth

I’m Back! And my financial life is as confusing as ever.

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My site has been down for a while. It apparently took a quick chat with my hosting provider to fix it, but my anxiety kept me from trying that until now. I finally decided I missed writing here enough to attempt getting this fixed. I didn’t realize it would be quite so easy.

I have no idea if anyone will still find this blog. Maybe some of you have my updates in your feeds and will see this pop up. If so — hi!

I don’t have time to write my entire life update tonight, but here’s a quick summary…

  • I’m now 40(!) years old (can you believe I started this blog when I was 22???)
  • I have three(!) kids. My oldest is about to turn 6, and my youngest is about to turn 2 months old.
  • Over the past 2 years I’ve lost two jobs and left one after 10 months. I was let go from my last role earlier this year while pregnant and haven’t found a position yet. Things aren’t quite dire (thank goodness for having a big cushion) but I’m pretty down about job prospects, my abilities, and what the hell I should do with the rest of my life before I retire.
  • Life is fucking expensive. Someone kick me for moving to the most expensive place to live in the country 20 years ago and not leaving.
  • It isn’t all a shit show… the house I bought in 2020 (for more than we could really afford) is worth about $600k more today. We could sell our house and walk with $900k+ in cash, which would set us up for a pretty good life most anywhere else.
  • Our total net worth right now is hovering around $3.3M (I stopped tracking separate because that’s a pain to figure out, but a lot of that is from my income and investments). We still owe $1.2M-ish on the house (ouch) with a $7k a month mortgage (double ouch), but things aren’t dire… yet.
  • Did I mention our net worth is $3.3M? This isn’t a humble brag… this is still me waking up every day thinking how da fuc did we get here (from $28k in 2007 plus the few thousand my husband had saved then).
  • Most of that is tied up in investments, the aforementioned home equity, et al, so the no job thing is still a mega issue.
  • We are bleeding cash right now. Our outflow is about $13k-$20k a month, depending on how sad I am and how much I am buying on Amazon on any given day. Or how much our house is breaking. Aiming to keep spending down but with a $7k mortgage an 3 kids there is only so much we can do…
  • I’m looking for a job. Contemplating a major career pivot but everything feels terrifying. I don’t trust myself to invest in myself even now. I’ve managed to bounce from one thing to the next where I let other people tell me what they think I’m good at… but I’ve never actually figured out what I’m… actually… good at. And my career history is a sad smorgasbord of fuck ups with the occasional project that cemented my next role or next next role as people forgot I’m not actually qualified for much.
  • I want to be qualified for… something. So I’m on maternity leave, luckily getting some pay through state disability, and thinking hard on what’s next. I’m also working with a psychiatrist to try to fix this brain of mine once and for all, but limited w/ what meds I can take because I’m nursing so it’s rough. I need to survive the next 22 months and then I’ll be done nursing and can take whatever. Drug me up.

Anyway, I’m back. Hello. If you see this feel free to drop a comment. Would love to know if anyone is still out there. Let me know if you have any questions on the above!

ADHD, Adulting, Career, FIRE, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

When is There Time for Enjoying Life?

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Another Saturday. Another October. Another fall. Wasn’t it just two years ago when I was going absolutely batshit in the middle of an undiagnosed mania, which was enjoyable only during a week in London when I wandered around and manically documented fall leaves against cobblestone on Insta? And mostly un-enjoyable when I was thrust into this alter-ego self who isn’t particularly acceptable by any standards of normal socialization. And now, back into fall, two years later, a world later, a pandemic still pandemic-ing later, an infant to toddler to pre-k’er and a new baby who is about to be a toddler later, $1.5M in net worth later, a house purchase and a health scare and a clean MRI later, here I am,  new place, same place, trying to be grateful for everything because I know nothing lasts forever, and failing miserably at embracing gratitude over guilt and grievances. So, same old, or same new.

Fall is a monster of melancholy. Autumn air exhausts exhaustion. I could easily lie in my bed for the following months and not notice how long I’ve been in hibernation despite how mild west coast’s seasonal changes are.

The truth is I’m incredibly overwhelmed, behind, and unable to figure out how to get any of my Iife in order. Having ADHD with a heaping of perfectionism makes it extra hard. My house is chaos. I’m trying, despite not sleeping much last night, to muster up the energy to clean it. Organize it. Ok, so it won’t be a home as in a home that I want to live in, without a private bedroom and instead a living situation I should have never agreed to but let my frugal house-hacking hat take charge in a decision I can’t go back on. It’s not the worst case. It’s a house. We own it. I don’t like being a home owner. I knew I’d be bad at it given I wasn’t the best at maintaining a one bedroom apartment. But there’s still something good about owning. Not financially good. It just feels like a real accomplishment. I haven’t had any accomplishments. None that felt worthy of being called an accomplishment, anyway. I guess graduating college is an accomplishment. Getting a job is an accomplishment. But they never really felt like much of anything to be proud of. Everything was barely completed. A failure in the making. Maybe home ownership is too. But I feel really good about buying a home for my kid’s to live in. I don’t think it makes any sense but it feels good to own a house. I know plenty of parents don’t own and it’s fine to raise kids in apartments but for me that would be rough to accept. I blame growing up with a mother who frequently mentioned the kids in “the apartments” as being poor and thus bad somehow. Not that I believe that now. But still part of me felt like buying a house made it ok for me to have kids. Saving enough to afford them, whatever that means.

But now I have a house. And savings. Nonetheless, I feel incredibly behind. And every moment I feel like I might be getting ahead life plays a joke on me. Like just now. I put my wash up and was just admiring how nice my laundry room floor looks like without the huge pile of clothes on it. And then a big “bang” shakes the ground and my eyes question what they just saw as a giant container of Woolite my husband placed on top of the washer apparently leapt to its death, with the lid flailing off of it and spilling soap all over the remaining pile of clothes and the chord to the Swiffer. Nothing unmanageable as one thing, but life feels like a big pile up of a cluster where you take 2 steps ahead and 3 steps back.

I wanted to be a full time mom on the weekends, with the in-laws NOT taking care of my children, and yet here I am again, 11am, in-laws watching the kids as I attempt to clean up. I’m always cleaning up but never getting anything clean. I also am so tired. I stayed up late catching up on work because the only time I can focus on work is when my son is asleep on me from 9-1am. Which is when I should also be sleeping. I’m still far behind on work. Luckily my actual work requires about 20 hours a week to manage at this point, it’s just the issue of finding uninterrupted time.  I’d give anything for 6 hours straight with no distractions. But that’s impossible since I either have to feed my son or pump. And yes, I can stop breastfeeding at any time but I’m not willing to sacrifice that for work. There are some things I won’t sacrifice and that’s one of them.

(loud thud on cue. Another bottle leaps from the top of my washing machine. This one seems to at least have its cover on tight and no spillage is observed.)

I keep thinking if only I can just get my life together. Just get my house in order. Get caught up at work. Make lists of everything I have to do. Go through the list. At some point. At some point I’ll be able to breathe this breath of fresh air and spend time with my kids in a way that feels relaxing. I will be able to make the case that my in-laws (especially my FIL who lives with us) should stay in his apartment/room on the weekends so I can be a g-d darn mom. That doesn’t mean spending every second with my kids, they should have some boring down time too. I had plenty of that as a kid. I really don’t like that grandpa is with my son from 9-4:30 straight every day.. I’m glad my son started preschool but that’s only 2.5 hours 2 days a week. And I feel like a failure not being a mom right now. Yes I’m writing this blog post. As a break from cleaning. And now a break from cleaning up the spill of soap on the laundry room floor. Before I need to feed my baby around noon, probably, then breastfeed at 1 and put him down for his nap (he’ll only sleep on me or dad and dad is working today so that means I’m stuck in bed from 1-3 or grandma takes him and he doesn’t sleep.)

There is this overwhelming feeling/acceptance at this point that I’ll never actually be able to live the life I want so why the fuck try anymore. That is what led to this idea to quit work in August. I know I’d be ok for a few months without an income but I’m really scared I won’t be able to find something else or if I do that the job will require even more work and less time with my kids. For all the things I don’t like about my current job it really is super flexible while I can work from home (not sure when I have to go back but eventually) and I shouldn’t given this up, even if my income goes down year after year because I’ve been demoted without a pay decrease but I won’t actually get any stock refreshes so there is no way my income will keep up unless I go to a new company. I don’t have the energy to go to a new company. I can barely keep my eyes open.

I wonder if there’s a way to get my life anywhere near where I want it to be. I ponder hiring a cleaning service for the house, then find out cleaning services will cost $350 to come for a one time cleaning and $200+ a month and it seems like I should just learn how to clean my home.

(Another bottle flails off the top of the washer with a loud clunk. Not joking.)

I just want a kitchen table. A non plastic-folding kitchen table. A bedroom with a door. Grout in the kitchen that isn’t brown when it’s supposed to be beige. A refrigerator that holds more food. Sheets that aren’t navy with an olive green comforter my husband bought years ago for camping. A backyard that doesn’t have an accidental tree growing against the wall of my home and breaking the foundation. And trees that aren’t in various stages of dying that need to get looked at for another few thousand dollars.

It’s funny because the more money I have the more I get anxious about it. In investments it doesn’t feel real. But I just know that I need it there as a safety net. I mean, if I were to have $10M I could never work again because it’s impossible for me to spend more than $400k per year if I knew that was something I’d have forever. Not that I need $10M before FIRE, but just saying where I’m at now is not FIRE for me.

A friend I met on a social site for moms in the technology world told me she got hired at a company and will be making 500k a year, and her husband is promoted to a job making 400k a year. They will be making 900k+ a year for the rest of their careers and probably much more as they continue to get promoted. How do I compete with that? I don’t have to compete with THAT but that’s what people are earning here in the Bay Area. Or one-worker families with engineers making like $600k or more. In my current company had I not fucked up I could have been on the high-earner trajectory. I even magically experienced it for a few years (I’ll be making about $600k this year with my stock earnings.) But that’s not forever. That’s not even next year. So just quitting doesn’t seem to be the right answer either. Do I try to convince a FAANG to hire me (they won’t) or do I go back to school or do I give up and convince my husband to move to anywhere else we can buy a house and not have a mortgage so high and where I can actually be awake to see my children on occasion. I don’t know.

I feel really sad is all I know. I should keep cleaning and I probably will. I need to get that soap off the floor. My husband is busy with a project he took on to earn $5k extra a year. That’s good for him. I always complain that he doesn’t take on any extra clients so I should be incredibly supportive. But then I wonder in the extra $5k worth it… $2.5k after tax. For all the work he puts into this project. Especially three days when he needs to be available full time and works into the night. I don’t know. Money is so weird. I know we have more than most people in the country but I’m in this weird bubble of Silicon Valley where money doesn’t make sense.

And I’m just. So. Tired.

 

Adulting

The Depth of this Sadness.

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In all of the time and places of the world to live I’m certainly fortunate. I’m not a woman living in Afghanistan where my rights are suddenly taken away. I have freedom. I am grateful and guilty and all the things that come about living life as a modern white American woman.

Yet even with all of that good fortune, I’m still struggling. Life is passing by and I can’t keep up with it. I have two beautiful children. A house with a ridiculous mortgage. A husband who is, well, a great father and on occasion he laughs at my jokes. I have a job that pays well, even when my stock finishes vesting, I’m still likely to make at least $200k (*with bonus), which is a lot of money, even in a high cost of living area, as with my husband’s salary that gets us to $300k, which is very livable. About $12.5k a month after tax. Or $5.5k after mortgage. We won’t be living a luxury lifestyle on that but we’ll live just fine. If I keep this job. If I make $200k.

I’m tired. I feel disconnected from everything. My family is gathering on the east coast this weekend for a cousin’s wedding shower. I’m missing the wedding in two months as well. In life before kids and life before covid I would have been on a plane to anywhere to get me there somehow. I would never miss a family event like that. But times have changed. And I feel trapped. Like many other people. Yes we went on a road trip a few weeks ago and it seems we managed to not get covid so that was amazing (we went to Disneyland for a day!) But, I don’t know, this life doesn’t feel like my life anymore. And that’s ok, I guess, it’s my children’s life, which is acceptable, if I could give my children the life I want to give them, and the energy I want to give them, but I have no energy, I’m falling apart.

I dream of selling this house and moving to somewhere we can buy a house for $300k. I could pick up some remote consulting work and pay for healthcare and let my savings grow in investments over the years. I don’t know if I’d really be happy in that situation either…

I want to feel like I’m contributing to the world. Building something. Being useful. But I also don’t want to be so focused on my job that I’m not there for my family. And now because I don’t particularly care for my job I am ok trying to detach from it. But what if I loved my job? What if I wanted to give it all my energy? I have a hard time turning off. Being present. Existing in the now.

I remember my father working so hard his whole life. Was he happy? I don’t know. I can’t imagine so with how fat he was. But maybe he liked work, sometimes. He would fly to other business locations and pitch plans and I didn’t see him all that often during the week. My few memories of spending time with him are:

  • the time he tried to read me the first chapter of the first book of the Hardy Boys series, which wasn’t interesting to me at all besides my ADHD brain had no ability to focus on someone else reading me a story so he gave up
  • Playing War and Rummy with him, mostly War, when we did spend time together that was something we could do, when I was young
  • Building an erector set helicopter. I remember it hurt my fingers to build. It was cool when it was all hooked up and the propeller spun around
  • Occasional family picnics and family events. He’d talk to his family. Sometimes when I was very young he would be more active.
  • Long drives to holiday dinners. His fights with my mom in the front seat. Listening to his classical or 1950s music.
  • Him getting extremely angry at me when I couldn’t focus on math homework and understand the problems or what he taught me or remember any of it.
  • Him ripping his belt off and beating me because he’d come home and my mother would complain about how I didn’t pick up my room so then he would at some point call me into his bedroom and tell me to bend over the bed and he would hit me hard and I’d cry and refuse to apologize and then I’d go to my room and cry all night telling myself how horrible I am and how I don’t deserve to live and such.
  • He liked to grill, so sometimes he would do that, if family came over.

I don’t want to be my father. I’m clearly not my father. But who am I? I don’t know. I feel very much alone. More than ever. I don’t know what to do. My house is a disaster. I need to clean it. It always feels like 2 steps forward 3 steps behind. If only, if only, if only I could clean things up and get it all to a place where I can spend the little energy I have playing with my kids. But I want a new job. I want to leave this one. To what? I don’t know. What can I do? Even when I have energy I last 3-6 months and then fall apart. Now? I don’t know.

I want another child. Ok, ok, so after all that information it sounds like a horrible idea. But I’m trying to hold it together so my husband will let us try for another kid. He knows I don’t like my job and how depressed I am and he’s depressed too. I mean, he hasn’t changed jobs in over a decade and he still makes the same income with slight raises for his one freelance gig that he works part time. I wish he would see how miserable I am and at least work towards maybe earning a little more money so I could take a step back for a bit. I understand now why some women becomes stay at home mothers. I don’t know if I’d like that either. I like earning my own money. But I also… I feel like I’m saving for a time that is now and it’s too late and I just want the time right now.

I look up classes for my kids to do with them and most of the classes available for their age are during the week in the middle of the day when I have work. I signed up for a playgroup for my youngest son at 9:30 on Monday mornings because fuck it I’m working remote and I get my shit done and I’m just going to go. I need some social interaction with people outside my family. Not that I’ll make friends or anything but who knows. And my older son starts preschool next month and my husband is supposedly going to get involved with that since it’s a parent participation program and I don’t have any time to participate. Will see how that goes.

I know women who stay home often are sad about what their husbands expect from them as they’re expected to keep the house clean and take care of the kids and make amazing dinners and still be great in the bedroom and all but you know it’s even harder to be a breadwinning woman who doesn’t have a “wife” like that… it’s hard to be all these things and none of them all at the same time.

 

Networth

End of the Month Check In: Progress and Stagnation

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Well, it’s somehow (basically) June and closing in on the half-way point of 2021. Insanity, right? As the world slowly chugs back to normal-ish, I’m spending most of my time moving projects along and figuring out how on earth I will unpack my entire garage when I don’t have a closet (my family renter has the largest room with the walk-in-closet, which he uses as a library since he owns very little other than books.) So. I have to figure that out.

Despite my whining about work stuffs, I’m feeling pretty good about making it through the year as long I can keep chugging along. No hopes and dreams of getting a knockout performance review and being promoted or anything like that. I could stay at this company 10 years more and would probably never see a raise or title increase. Which is why I’m still, albeit less obsessively these days, thinking about what’s next.

But I also have realized that IF I can negotiate a WFH situation (not sure I can into next year) then it might make sense to stay for a bit longer. It’s definitely worth applying (and hopefully interviewing) starting around Feb next year, but I don’t have to jump to the next thing. This job, as stressful and frustrating as it can be at times, seems somewhat manageable for me. I have a sense for how to do it well, even with some of the newer things my new boss wants me to do, and I think I can sort those out too. Again, I’m kind of limited in going above and beyond since I seem to get penalized every time I offer any creative ideas to make things better or do more than is expected of me (which seems to be the requirement for a high performance review and promotion?!) BUT it’s kind of nice to, for once, have some sort of feeling that I can just stick it out, get the work done, try to fly by invisible, make people happy, and have time to maybe get healthy and maybe see my kids a bit before they’re off to school and such.

So I’ve got these 7 months left to get through with the best work I can do. I think it’s achievable as long as I tell my ego to shut the fruck up. I’m being treated horribly but no one cares when I’m making as much as I’m making this year and I get it, that’s fair, I don’t deserve to be treated with respect or anything. At least no one is yelling at my face. I also feel good(?) knowing some of my colleagues are leaving soon because the environment has gotten toxic, so I know it’s not all me. I think their leaving is a huge loss to the organization but doubt it will be enough for things to change. People don’t stay in jobs that long here anyway, you do your 4 years of vesting and then you move on or you can’t keep the same income. It’s sad that’s how it’s structured as companies don’t really care if they lose that knowledge and talent, but I guess it saves them money over time. Anyway. I can leave anytime between Jan 1, 2022 and April 1, 2023. I’ll be in no rush and just try to find the right next fit. The only rush I’m in is trying to get into a new company before I attempt to have my last baby. I don’t want to go through this company as the woman who took 3 maternity leaves, and I’d also like to find a company that covers IVF since I’ll be 39 (!,!,!,!??) when hopefully getting pregnant with my last kid.

Anyway, this month has been pretty flat for net worth growth because it went down then came back up. It’s kind of sad that I didn’t sell out of more of my company stock as it hasn’t come back up and my dreams of hitting $3M this year are no longer viable. That’s ok, though. I’ve got a solid plan to get to $3M in about 5 years. And I’ve decided one I get to $3M, which includes having $150k per 529 plan locked, loaded, and forgotten about, I can relax a bit when it comes to spending.

My plan is basically pay the mortgage a year in advance so I always have that safety net (won’t lose my house for a year) and just let it all roll. By 43 or so we should have $3M unless the stock market tanks. A lot of that increase will be gains on the current investments but it also includes still putting a lot of income to savings. Once we get to $3M, I don’t think I’ll need to save as much. We’ll still max out our retirement accounts, but I’ll feel good about where we are so we can spend more on home furnishings, maybe save for and add on to our house or even move to the town where I really want to live. I figure my in-law will probably live with us for 5 more years, and him putting money to us instead of rent helps too. So instead of our mortgage being $7k, it’s $5k a month, which includes about $2k going to principle, so we’re basically paying $3k a month to live here, which makes my brain feel better knowing we were paying $2.5k for a 1 bedroom apartment and now we have a house with a yard. I try to ignore the lost gains on the downpayment and principal.

Anyway…

Here is where we are start of June and updated stitch goals for the year. It’s unlikely we can be up another $450k this year (my estimated additional savings for us as of June 1 is about $200k after expenses (due to the remainder of my stock vesting and living fairly frugally for the rest of the year), so that would mean our total investments (1.78)  would have to increase by $250k or about 15% in 7 months — unlikely.)

GOAL Apr May Jun
Retirement $775.0 $521.5 $715.0 $715.7
Taxable $1,100.0 $804.5 $856.0 $822.1
Cash $0.1 $0.1 $0.1 $0.3
529 A $150.0 $91.6 $105.0 $106.2
529 B $150.0 $41.3 $73.0 $74.7
529 C $65.0 $63.7 $65.0 $65.5
Home Equity $260.0 $250.0 $257.0 $257.6
TOTAL $2,500 $1,773 $2,071 $2,042

I’d say more realistically we’re looking at closing the year out with $2.2M, maybe flat, but if flat then hopefully there will be a run up at some point where we’ll see increase in the stock market. Or it could all crash and we could close the year out at $1M. Who knows. That would suck. I want to get to the point where we have $3M in investments then I can just live life and not worry about saving a ton more and let those investments ride for years so they can go up and down and not bother me much. Then with $3M invested it will get to $5M eventually, especially if we continue to max out our retirement accounts but not add more to our savings otherwise. I’ll probably start a small UTMA for my kids once eligible for gifting them again (since we’re superfunding 529 this we can’t give them any gifts again for 5 years) – I figure I’ll start doing small contributions to UTMA in year 6 and then whenever they get their first jobs I’ll start matching their income so they can all start Roths. That should fall in line nicely with when I’ll have enough saved up to feel like I can do that without impacting our future. It also will be around the time when my mom will need money probably so I want to make sure I have enough saved where I can help her if needed and pay to fly out to visit her frequently when she can no longer travel (that hopefully will be in a bit longer, but good to know I have the money to do it so I don’t have to worry about spending a lot on flights to see her.)

What I feel best about is where the 529s are right now. My parents gave me the gift of my education and while I can never pay that back to them, I can pass that gift down to my kids. And I will. With $225k already saved in 529s, I’m well on my way to making sure my kid’s undergrad is covered in full — and if the market works for me it’s possible they can have grad school covered and/or their kid’s college education covered (and if I’m still alive by  the time my kids have kids — the I should be in a place financially where I can help put them through college too.)

I’m hoping I am alive that long as my health has been not the best lately, but I’m starting to feel a bit better with random “flares” of who knows what. I know everyone thinks my health issues are related to my having given birth earlier this year and maybe they are but the headaches seem possibly vaccine related (they got really bad after second shot then went away about 3 weeks after the shot) but the fatigue is concerning and my eye blurring issues (two episodes of my right eye vision going blurry for 15-30 minutes) still have me worried even though the eye doctor said she found a benign thing in there and that could explain it…

My neurologist offered and MRI and I’m so fucking claustrophobic that she said I really don’t need to do one now since it’s super unlikely based on my symptoms and her office testing that they’d find anything. She also seemed comfortable with the idea that the headaches were caused by the vaccine as she has heard that some people do get headaches for a few weeks after the vaccine (yet everything I read online about it says side effects should go away in 36 hours.) My allergy tests all came back negative so I don’t know what’s up. I think I’m going to make another appointment with my doctor once I finish my at-home 72 hour EKG as we’re seeing if anything is going on with my heart (though the weird chest spasms seem to have stopped — I doubt they’ll find anything.) Maybe that’s a good thing and I can just put this all behind me, which I’d like to do, except every once in a while I’ll feel incredibly fatigued, like my lungs are just weak, and no matter how much I breathe in I can’t get enough air. Maybe it’s just anxiety and panic attacks but I don’t know… even my initial EKG saw that my PR interval was slightly depressed but not enough to diagnose a heart block since my heart rate was low at the time. I’m really curious what this EKG will find, if anything. I just want to feel better. It’s taking too long to lose weight after baby and I’m still considered obese which I’m sure isn’t helping. I know it’s hard to lose weight while breastfeeding but still I have to get the weight down.

So outside of keeping my job and saving as much as possible this year towards my $2.5M goal, my other main goal is getting back to the “overweight” and not obese BMI category. I’m not going to get to a healthy BMI this year but I can inch closer. If I want to even consider having a third kid… and getting pregnant in 1.5 years (!) especially with IVF I need to drop the weight. And I don’t want to feel like this for the rest of my life. At least doctors will treat me better if I’m a healthy weight.

I’m also wondering about if I want to stay sober for good. I never considered myself an alcoholic but at this point in my life I can look back and see that of all the moments in my life I regret about 90% of them occurred when I was drinking. I was a binge drinker and it was hard for me to stop at one drink when socializing. I had a lot of fun being a drunk idiot too, don’t get me wrong, but I just am not the right kind of person when I’m drinking. I think I can manage a glass of wine with dinner when I go out on a date, but I don’t want to to do the social drinking that has led to me being an idiot and saying shit I can never take back. I’d say the other 10% of things I regret are due to my likely undiagnosed bipolar disorder as I can definitely see periods of my life where I was manic and I’m scared of who I was then and just hate myself for it, but I’ve decided I have to just close the book on that and move on and try really hard to focus on knowing when I’m in a phase like that so I can just stop myself from saying whatever it is I’m thinking at the time because it’s not real and it’s not me. My therapists never believe me that I’m bipolar but I know I am. Drinking while manic is the worst for me. Though it’s not exactly good while depressed either. :/ So, yea, I’m going to try to reduce my drinking. Really cut myself off at 1-2 drinks if I do decide to drink. I haven’t had a drink in over a year (due to being pregnant and breastfeeding) and I don’t see why I can’t continue on this way. It’s rough as I’m so socially anxious and I really do find it easier to engage with other humans after a drink… or two. But I’m old now and a mom and I don’t really want to be social like that anymore. I’m worried I’ve fucked my liver with my occasional binge drinking through the years. It was not frequent, but it was still pretty bad when it happened. Plus, not drinking saves $$… though I’ve been putting that to overpriced tea at Starbucks and Peets. At least that’s a bit healthier for me. Oh, and I’m trying to cut out caffeine as well outside of green tea and matcha. That mostly means not having the occasional latte and especially not having Coke Zero an Diet Pepsi which is horrible for me anyway.

So if I can get to the end of this year mentally stable, with my kids thriving, with $2.5M (or $2.3M) in the bank, with my job intact, etc etc, and alive, I’ll call it a win. Really I’m considering this job my $2.5M job so I’d like to stay in it until I get to $2.5M, but we’ll see about that. This job is my $2.5M job and the next job needs to be my $3M job so I have to find the right fit and right salary to make it worth a move. The only thing I can do is just try to go the best I can at this job and stop going to get overpriced tea so much. But it’s my one self care pleasure in life so I allow myself that.

 

Networth, Wealth

How I Grew My Networth from $15k to $1M in 15 Years

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In 2005, I had about $5k to my name. By 2010, I had increased that amount to $88k while living in high cost of living (HCOL) area and earning an average salary of $56k for those first years out of college. Five years later, my networth hit a respectable $342.4k. I kept working at startups with decent-but-not-great pay (stock options are worthless) and lived relatively frugally over the years.

By 2017, I achieved my first goal of $500k — a bit milestone, as I wanted to have $500k in the bank before having my first child–and I made it! Thanks to finally switching to work in a public company (and that company performing stronger than the market), I’ve been able to dramatically increase my networth in a short amount of time… doubling it in under 2 years. I haven’t really spent time to appreciate that I actually doubled my networth in two years.

Do I think anyone can do this? No. I got lucky. Some of this lucky has to do with my working at a lot of different startups and building up a reputation for being good at one thing that ultimately got me the job I have now. Will I continue to make such a high salary? No — probably not. My income is largely dependent on my RSUs and after I vest the remaining two years of stock, I’ll be back to a lower (but still good) salary. I’ll need to leave my company and find a new job for a chance at making close to the same income. Hopefully by then my experience at this company will get me the ticket in the door at another company that pays well and will offer me a good compensation package.

I know a lot of people look at my income now and think–well, I’ll never make that much. And that’s probably true if you work in a different industry that doesn’t offer RSUs as part of your compensation package and you aren’t a highly skilled employee. But you can see you can still save quite a bit on a lower salary in your 20s if you are single and don’t have kids. Now, I admit I did not have college loans to pay pack (thanks to mom & dad) so you can fairly say that my total networth should be about $200k less than is now, or even less than that since I would have lost out on compound interest repaying a loan. So comparably to others who have loans, my networth today is about $800k and by the end of this year will be $1M or more.

I still have a long way to go to achieve my goals. I want to get to $2M before having my third child (whether or not I have a third child is dependent on achieving this milestone by the time I’m 38 or 39) and I want to buy a $1.7M house. Below, you can see my income, networth, and YoY growth for the last 15 years. I plan to continue tracking this for the rest of my career — subscribe to my blog to get updates and learn more about my path towards wealth. If it inspires you to save a little more each month — awesome! Remember, I live in a 800 square foot apartment with my 22 month old and husband and drive a used car built in 2011.

Year Income Networth $ Growth % Growth
2005 $15k n/a n/a n/a
2006 $35k n/a n/a n/a
2007 $50k $24.9k n/a n/a
2008 $60k $15.8k -$9.1k -37%
2009 $60k $32.7k  $16.9k 206%
2010 $120k $88.6k $55.9k 270%
2011 $90k $145k $56.4k 64%
2012 $100k $200k $55k 38%
2013 $110k $253k $53k 26%
2014 $125k $299.5k $46.5k 18%
2015 $160k $342.4k $42.9k 14%
2016 $190k $416k $73.6k 22%
2017 $130k $551.3k $135.3k 32%
 2018  $300k  $625k  $73.7k  13.3%
 2019  $400k  $1.05M  $425k  99.83%
 2020  $500k $1.3M Goal  $250k goal  23% goal
Networth

Saving for a Two Million Dollar Networth by March 2022

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Life has been busy these days. I’ve been busy saving 2 million dollars. Well, not yet. But I’m shockingly well on the way to a family networth of $2M before I turn 40. This number seems ridiciously large AND small at the same time. It’s obviously large. If $1M seemed large, $2M seems much larger. It is an amount many people would consider “rich” — although not in the Bay Area.

I also don’t really consider my networth close to $2M, since I actually track everything on a post-tax basis. I map my investments to an allocation plan that my former CFP provided. I also have a chunk in cash (not seen below) because that’s for the downpayment of the house I will be buying soon (hopefully, house TBD.)

Screen Shot 2020-05-10 at 7.48.24 AM

The orange are areas where I’m underinvested. I’m quite over in large cap but that’s because of my probably too high concentration in company stock. My company has performed quite well (so well that I do kick myself for selling my RSUs at a fraction of the price it is today.) I’m glad I held on to a good chunk of my ESPPs (for now) as it is unwise to do this financially speaking (you get a discount up front you’re supposed to sell immediately and not take a risk on that money) but I decided to hold a little under 1000 shares and it definitely is helping get me closer to achieving my goal. I still have a significant chunk of RSUs and ESPP coming in the next two years… so that’s where I’m estimating my family will achieve $2M PRE TAX by the time I’m 38. Maybe we’ll get there post tax by the time I’m 40.

Do I feel rich? NO. But I do feel INCREDIBLY LUCKY to have a job that pays well, let alone a job at all right now. It feels weird and I’m looking for ways to give back. I donated $100 to a local food bank but that’s not enough, so I’m considering how to give more while also still staying on track to our goals. My donation plan was always to save as much during life, invest well, and then in your will put a % of your savings towards charity. That way if times get tough later in life you have the money if you need it, but you still have a plan to give back to the world. But right now the world clearly needs it, and I’m overwhelmed by trying to figure out where to give and how much. It is definitely on my mind — but so is buying a house and having a 12 month emergency fund and hopefully being able to work part time in a few years because…

I’m apparently pregnant.

Shh, don’t tell anyone. It is top secret. It’s super early and only my husband knows. We started trying this month and thought it would take a while because last time I needed infertility treatment to get pregnant. Low and behold, boom, happened right away. I’m excited and scared and will write more about this later but clearly it shifts our financial picture. Before I was considering moving further from my office to have more space in case I had another kid, now I definitely am thinking about this option. We’re still talking about $1.5M homes, but they are much bigger and right now we want space and with another kid we will def want that space. We could still rent for a few years but I want to settle down in a neighborhood where my son can make friends  and we can meet other parents and just feel at home. I’ve been living semi frugally my whole life (we’re still in a 1 bedroom apartment even though we can clearly afford more) and I guess I’m ready to take the plunge.

I did run some numbers based on a more conservative house buying formula and found that we need the following amount in savings/cash before we buy a home for the following prices:

House Cost Cash Savings
$1.5M $436,542
$1.7M $494,000

I also determined that to have 30% of our networth be in home equity (and emergency fund) that we’d need approximately $1.95M in networth to buy a $1.6M home. (My gap analysis below) but clearly we’re not going to get there before we buy a home now, so I’m going to do my best to try to reduce the home cost while also buying something we can grow into. More on that later.

30.0% 43.0% 5.0% 27.0% 5.0% 12.0% 8.0%
23.1% 33.1% 3.8% 20.8% 3.8% 9.2% 6.2%
43.00% 5.00% 27.00% 5.00% 12.00% 8.00%
goal $450,000 $645,000 $75,000 $405,000 $75,000 $180,000 $120,000
gap $450,000 $284,705 $47,142 $252,465 $47,525 $160,066 $89,103

 

Right now my estimates have us at about $1.96M pre tax in March 2022. That’s so soon! If I can do this, it will be pretty incredible. I just have to keep my job. Through a pandemic. And a pregnancy. How hard can it be?

But the reality is I’m scared. Yes I have a lot in stocks I could sell to cover the mortgage for a while… and right now I have a job. But will I have a job in a year? Who knows. My company may need to have layoffs at some point. I really don’t understand how they would decide that and who would be laid off, but I definitely am not “safe.” So I have to assume that at any time I could lose my job, and at that point it would be hard to find a new one. I will just hold my breath through my vesting periods and pray (even though I don’t pray) that I can get through the next 19 months until I get most of my stock. That’s 8 months of pregnancy, 3 months of maternity leave, and 8 months of being exhausted and holding on for dear life.

Please, wish me luck. I’ll need it!

Anxiety, Health

Financial Planning in the Age of Coronavirus

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Like many of you, I’ve been trying to stay afloat–mentally–under stressors that appeared practically overnight. With the economy humming along somewhere through a very long bull market, it was clear the upward tick to the markets wouldn’t last forever. However, I don’t think anyone thought it would end so jarringly.

I sit here from my “shelter in place” apartment in one of the worst hit counties in California. My company went a little early in moving to WFH and I’ve been adjusting, but the last weeks have been a bit of a blur. On the Saturday before my company decided to move to a WFH policy, I felt I was coming down with something. I don’t think I had a fever, I just had mild aches, and my chest immediately felt impacted. I went to work on Monday (if I had a fever I definitely wouldn’t have) and waited for my company to make the call. It wasn’t far into the day Monday when whispers of the company going fully remote made their way around the office, then an email formalizing that we would no longer be coming into the office for the next few weeks.

My lungs tight and heavy managed to breathe a sigh of relief. All I wanted was to get home and keep my family safe. At the time my 76-year-old father-in-law who provides childcare was still coming to our house via the train. It made no sense. I feared for his health and safety. In those 24 hours our worlds changed. Grandpa no longer would take the train to provide childcare. But my husband and I would still continue working, albeit with both of us WFH, with no childcare.

Over the next days my lungs felt like they had a cool liquid pouring into them, a slight burning sensation, and I felt winded after walking or picking up around the house. With no fever, I didn’t want to be a hypochondriac, but I emailed my doctor and she said normally she’d have me come in to check out my symptoms (as they were concerning) but with coronavirus going around she couldn’t, so she’d just treat me for pneumonia–just in case that’s what I have. Coronavirus testing was out of the question since I hadn’t been to another country recently and had no known contact with another person who tested positive. I was put on a course of powerful antibiotics and provided an inhaler to help me breathe.

The next day, our entire region went on full lockdown.

Two weeks later, my lungs still hurt. I’m not sure if the antibiotics did anything. I’m not convinced I have coronavirus, but I’m also not convinced that I don’t. My husband had what appeared to be a bad stomach bug with a low fever the same week I first felt ill, and now coronavirus reports say that sometimes it starts with gasterontestinal issues. He too felt some tightening in his chest. Neither of us were coughing, though–so what we have could be pretty much anything. If it’s coronavirus, we’ll never know outside of suspicion. I know whatever is happening to my lungs, this cold fluid sensation and the tightness in the center of my chest, is new to me. Could it be crippling anxiety? Sure. But the cold fluid sensation is strange and I continue to have mild respiratory symptoms.

I think I’m ok. Physically I’m just trying to take it easy. Mentally, I’m a mess. I know way more than I ever wanted to know about pandemics and how they exponentially spread. I’ve spent countless hours trying to convince my boomer mother, stuck in her snowbird condo in Florida, to take this seriously–especially given she’s in an area with a lot of older people mixed with young tourists where things will likely get bad.

Then, there’s my portfolio. Down something like $200k, give or take, prob give quite a bit more in the coming weeks. I’m a buy-and-holder, and got my start in investing right before the 2008 downturn, so I believe in the power of investing when everything is going haywire and how the recovery is when wealth is made. Downturns are good for the market and give us a time to buy on sale. But this whole situation is unprecedented and things can get a lot worse than they are. It’s unlikely–given its fatality rate–that the economy will fail to recover once a vaccine is tested and brought to market. But I don’t know how the economy can handle everything shutting down for a while, especially if this goes on (or on and off and on again) for 18+ months.

I’m using this opportunity to rebalance my accounts, but not to sell for no reason. I’ve been doing some unrelated research regarding asset allocation including real estate, as well as what one should really have in cash for a home purchase. I’ll write another post about that eventually, but I’ve basically determined that 30% of my net worth should be held in real estate. I’m looking at 30% of my net worth including a downpayment, closing costs, and a conservative 12 month emergency fund. In order to afford a $1.7M house, we need $500k cash in the bank.

My CFP who I hired for a year (who is no longer my CFP) recommended putting my downpayment into municipal bond funds for the tax advantages over the low interest-paying savings accounts. Well, that plan went to shit in the last two weeks. Apparently muni bonds funds are usually super stable. But after I put $200k into them, they decided to become volatile in a way they haven’t been since 1987. So far I pulled out the $200k (down to $192k) and put it into a short term bond fund, to take the loss in the intermediate state muni. That hurt a bit. Will probably just move everything to cash soon. It seems like this will be the year to buy–that is, if I can keep my job!

On top of all of this I’m not questioning the timing of trying for my next child. Due to infertility issues (at least with my first kid) plus now my “advanced maternal age” of 36, I really don’t want to wait. I also really don’t want to be pregnant–with the weakened immune system that comes with that–in the middle of a global pandemic. If I do get pregnant, we also have to move, which isn’t horrible since I do think this will be the year to buy. But if we’re on a year-long shelter-in-place, I don’t know how we’d move. We couldn’t even look at houses–or rentals for that matter. I think we could manage a year with two kids in a one bedroom (we’d save a ton that way) but legally you’re not allowed more than 2 adults and one kid per one bedroom, so we’d be in a bad situation… if it gets to the point where I’m pregnant and we aren’t allowed to leave our homes except to get groceries and medical supplies.

My overall thoughts right now is:

  1. Make sure we have our downpayment fund (ideally $500k) secure in cash or cash equivalents by fall (we have about $363k right now if I sold the bonds, and if I needed to I could make up for the rest selling stocks, but I’d prefer to not have to do that.) Be ready to buy when no one else is buying.
  2. Try my best to keep my job. I’ve actually been making progress on my coaching plan and things seemed to be turning around. Then Corona hit and–who knows. I’d be on the chopping block if there were layoffs, probably. I’m hoping we don’t have layoffs coming, but I have to assume they are with the state of the world. If I assume they are, then buying a house sooner than later makes sense (kind of, I mean not having a job won’t be great after buying a house, but that’s why I’m making sure we have a 12 month emergency fund.)
  3. Just try to get pregnant and see what happens. Worst case, I’ll be giving birth while incubated with a shared ventilator wrapped around my head, with my husband waiting from home to hear if I’ve survived childbirth and coronavirus and if the baby is ok. Ok, that’s a pretty horrible worst case, but it’s a possible one. More likely if I were to get pregnant I’d get a different standard of care as the doctors would try to keep me out of the office as much as possible. Given my infertility situation, it’s still unlikely I’ll get pregnant naturally. I do worry about being able to get infertility treatment in the next year, especially if we need something beyond the medication-based treatment protocol we did to conceive baby #1… The good news is that I conceived baby #1 right after a 3 month in-between job break where I focused on my health, travel, and relaxing. This isn’t exactly the same scenerio–I’m working and stressed–but I think over time with this WFH situation, if I can manage to keep my job and be as productive as I know I can be WFH, I can really focus on making the most out of every hour in the day to eat healthy, exercise, sleep, and do the things that set my body up for the healthiest possible pregnancy.

Things sure are crazy for everyone these days. I know I’m not alone. I’m trying to figure out how to balance being a mom and working from home with no childcare and getting to that level of health I want–I ordered some new running shoes and plan to use them, while staying six feet away from the other residents of my neighborhood, to disconnect from the panic sensation that fills me daily and reconnect with the sounds of nature and the taste of spring air. I hope things go somewhat according to plan, but not counting on it.

 

 

 

 

Mental Illness

Time Just Keeps On

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There is something about turning 36 that feels different then turning anything prior to this. Maybe it’s because I’m now mom to a little monkey man who I must keep alive and nurture and support. The one thing I have the chance to do right in all the world is raise an emotionally healthy kid. I’m trying.

The money thing is getting old. By “the money thing,” I mean working a job that pays enough to provide the potential to maybe be able to afford a life that meets the expectations I’ve set for myself and my family.

You know, I thought when I saved $1M I’d feel some sort of–something. It’s a major milestone and I’m there, give or take, by end of this year. Yet, there’s just this emptiness. It isn’t enough to provide financial security, so it is really meaningless. But it’s also so much more than what most people have, so I also have guilt multiple by every dollar I’ve saved. My privilege made this all possible, and I don’t deserve any of it.

I really don’t know what I want–and it doesn’t matter any more. I want so much and so little. I want to pause time, revert time, swallow time whole, but of course, that’s not possible. It keeps ticking on and it always will. My saving grace will be giving up wanting anything at all. To silence my mind from spinning up a thousand scenarios and just see what’s good right in front of me, in the moment, that often doesn’t cost a damn cent.