Hi there! I know it’s been a while, but I have another Wednesday installment of our Your Three Year Experimentguest series, featuring people who are sharing their own three year experiments–their plan to engineer the life of their dreams over the next three years.
Today we’re featuring the story of someone who has some quite amazing self-discipline in the spending front, spending less than $18,000 per year while earning a six-figure salary! In this interview, you’ll learn:
How A Purple Life increased her salary to six figures by age 27
What her annual spending has been for the last four years
How and where she decided to move for the lowest COL/highest salary combo
Tell Us About Yourself
Hi! I’m A Purple Life. I’m a 29 year old who lives in Seattle and works in marketing. I’m in my 5th year of my financial independence journey and I’m aiming to retire next year at age 30.
What’s your background? Early years, education, married, kids, jobs?
I was born and raised in Georgia and after graduating college I moved to Manhattan with my partner and started working in ad agencies. My partner and I are coming up on 10 years together and we are a bit unique (or so my friends tell me). We are not getting married, never having kids and do not combine our finances in any way. I’m reaching for early retirement with just my own money based on my spending alone. We’re very independent people.
How did you come to the realization that something needed to change in your life?
I’m embarrassed to say that it actually took me YEARS to come around to the idea of financial independence. My partner introduced me to the idea and on a bus from Manhattan showed me the math behind it (I suspect he chose that moment because I couldn’t run away). At the time I was barely saving any money because of how little I was making combined with Manhattan’s insane rent. I didn’t think it was possible.
Hi there! It’s Wednesday and time for another installment of Your Three Year Experiment, featuring people who are sharing their own three year experiments–their plans, goals, and dreams for the next three years.
Today’s post is from Claudia from Two Cup House. Claudia is a personal finance blogger, SEO consultant, and trainer who moved into a tiny house with her husband Garrett in order to get closer to financial independence.
Claudia and her husband paid off six figures in debt in just a few years by downsizing to a tiny house and starting their own business. Now, they’re pursuing FI, but not RE (that’s financial independence, but not retiring early). Read on to find out:
how they were able to pay off $200,000 in a short time
how they’ll balance building their business with travel
the one place in their budget they’re not frugal
If you’d like to be featured in the series, send me a note! My contact info is on the Start Here page.
What’s your background? Early years, education, married, kids, jobs?
We grew up in different parts of Pennsylvania and have spent most of our lives here. Unsurprisingly, we’re Penn State grads.
My husband, Garrett, and I live in a 500 sq ft house in Lancaster County, PA. We don’t have kids (and don’t plan to have kids).
Today, we’re self-employed. We run our own marketing consulting and training business.
How did you come to the realization that something needed to change in your life?
At the end of 2014, we heard a radio program about personal finance. People were talking about getting out of debt, which was unusual to us. After hearing enough episodes, we sat down to take a look at our own debt and found we had more than $200,000 in debt (including a mortgage), which made us both feel quite uneasy.
What will that change look like?
Deciding to downsize and sell our home was the first big step. I found a full-time job. And, we started a side hustle. All of this happened within the first four months of 2015. Once we put a plan in place, we wanted to make all the big changes as fast as possible.
Now, we’re pursuing some level of financial independence. We seek to invest enough to have dividends to cover our basic expenses, so we invest half of our income toward the goal.
Claudia and Garrett sold their 1,500 square foot house and downsized to a 500 square foot house to pay off their debt and reduce their living expenses. They now live mortgage-free.
How are you employing a three-year experiment to make it happen (i.e., what’s your three-year plan)?
Since we’re doing well with our finances, we decided we don’t have to rush to the finish line. Balancing work and life is the focus this year.
The first year of our three-year plan will be 2019. We will begin traveling the US and invest half of our income. And, we’re launching a new project that will help us grow our business.
The second year of our three-year plan is to bring in a partner of sorts to help us grow your new project (and subsequently our business). Scaling this new project requires more help than we have today, a necessary step to maintaining work-life balance. We’re planning to travel more of the US and then also take a trip to Europe for a few months.
The third year of our three-year plan is to improve our second-year efforts by looking at the data, figuring out what works so we can continue doing more of that, and eliminating what doesn’t work to make us more efficient. We’ll be traveling around our favorite parts of the US and abroad to find a small plot of land we can call “home” in the future.
What have been some challenges you’ve run into?
With respect to our personal finances, we have a tendency to push the “easy” button when it comes to dinner, so we’re not always the most frugal.
What have you found easier than expected?
Living in a small house makes life a lot easier. We don’t spend as much time cleaning or maintaining a home as we used to. We find we’re happier than we were in the big house.
The Penningtons share their 500 square feet with their cats, too.
Do you think you’ll reach your goals in three years? Longer? Shorter?
I think it’s going to take us more time than we expect to grow our business, but since we’re on the slow road to financial independence, we’re not all that concerned if it takes another year to get there.
However, I think we’ll find our next patch of grass sooner rather than later. We’ve wanted to relocate for several years and have already identified a few places we like.
What are you looking forward to once you’ve reached your goal(s)?
Having the ability to take our business on the road with us is the goal, so I’m looking forward to the start of our travels 2019. Achieving financial independence will just be the icing on the cake.
Hi there! Today is the second in my new series, Your Three Year Experiment, featuring people who are sharing their own three year experiments–their plans, goals, and dreams for the next three years.
Today’s post is from Trevor, a freelance writer who writes on behalf on Porsche Atlanta Perimeter. In his free time, you can find him running with his dog, spending time with his family, jamming on his guitar or outside enjoying about any type of fitness activity imaginable. In this interview, he’ll share:
the surprising tipping point to him finally getting sober
his three-year plan to create a massive savings fund for himself
how’s he able to make a living as a freelancer
If you’d like to be featured in the series, send me a note! My contact info is on the Start Here page.
What’s your background? Early years, education, married, kids, jobs?
I was the “good kid” in high school and even maintained that in my early days of community college. This was before addiction took hold. In my early 20s, I started partying hard. It felt like I became the “cool kid” I always wanted to be. I’d never say no to a night of drinking, and everyone knew it. They’d all call me whenever they wanted to go out, and I wasn’t one to disappoint. I’d close out any bar on any night of the week.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I needed to drink. I dropped out of college to help my parents with bills, and things got progressively worse from there. Continue reading “Your Three Year Experiment: Trevor”
Hi there! As promised last week, today I have a brand new series for you, featuring people who are sharing their three year experiments, that is, their plans, goals, and dreams for the next three years.
Today I’m thrilled to introduce Scott and Caroline, who share their early retirement strategies at Costaricafire. In this interview, you’ll learn:
how they created a real estate portfolio to help them retire
the three income streams they’ll use to fund retirement
the first thing they’ll do when they’re fully location independent
If you’d like to be featured in the series, send me a note! My contact info is on the Start Here page.
Hello! Tell us about yourselves.
We are Scott and Caroline, 40-something parents of two daughters from New York City. Caroline has been operating her own Career Coaching business for over 10 years after a career in finance, consulting and recruiting, and Scott has recently stepped away from a 23-year IT career to focus on our real estate investments and IT consulting.
What’s your background? Early years, education, married, kids, jobs?
