my name is sylvia hall i'm an attorney in seattle washington i'm on the path to early retirement my goal is to be able to retire the end of this year we'll see what happens i learned my money goals the hard way i graduated from law school in may 2005 i had just over a hundred thousand dollars in debt i took the bar in louisiana and the week after i started my first job hurricane katrina came the job said we love you you're more than welcome to come back but the building is going to be closed for the rest of the year so i found myself with six figures in debt no real job at the time and the student loan grace period was just about over i had no ability to pay rent and the landlord basically said you need to get all of your stuff out there was no such thing as renting a u-haul there was nowhere to donate everything so i literally had to throw everything away i think that had a really profound effect on me because when you're throwing away all these things that you've collected you really realize okay i didn't need any of this stuff so hurricane katrina was the real starting point of not accumulating so many things i was beyond broke and i just sort of had a moment where i just said you know what i don't ever want to be this broke again i moved to seattle in 2008 when i thought about where i wanted to move i wanted to focus on a city that had a growing economy a state where there was no state income tax and then no hurricanes welcome to my humble abode i got it in 2016 as a foreclosure this place is 400 square feet and nobody else wanted it so i got really lucky fire is a movement it technically stands for financial independence retire early i really think about it more the fi instead of the re so the financial independence it didn't seem like it was a viable option but i figured you know what i'm just gonna set up the plan i'm going to automate it and then just not think about it i put myself on a very strict budget and so what i did was allow myself 250 a month that's the only amount that i kept i basically was paid on the last day of the month and on the first of the month everything other than my 250 dollars was diverted elsewhere so every dollar had a home the first real milestone that i got to was when i hit a net worth of zero i have never been so excited to have zero as a net worth gradually i started getting raises and i kept the same budget even after i got the raises i kept my same car my parents are always yelling at me about my car i was able to keep going with that budget and actually save for an emergency fund i eventually raised my discretionary spending to 300 a month and then gradually since i really started maxing out my 401k right after we came off the great recession those accounts just took off on their own same with the roth retirement account and at that time i had a taxable account for the surplus it actually progressed to a point that i did eventually become financially independent so the plan was to spend about a hundred fifty dollars and the total bill came to 155 and except for the perishables that should last me about two to three months so got costco out of the way i wrote down all of my expenses and i really wanted to figure out how to chop each expense by 20 percent most people really focus on housing cars and food for their main expenses but for me the number one expense was taxes my first real estate purchase was an out of state purchase and turned that into a rental and that was the first time where i was like wow okay i get a property and someone else is paying for it once i stop working i plan to just live off of rental income so i don't have to worry about again the social security taxes et cetera i can live virtually tax-free as long as i have that depreciation so basically for the next 20 to 27 and a half years i can earn income without paying taxes on it if i stop working so i have been searching for my last property for a while now and it has been such a roller coaster the last rejection just came yesterday i found on redfin that another house that would be just as ideal came on the market and so i reached out and left a message with the listing agent so i've been on pins and needles ever since putting that offer in a lot of people will hear my story and think oh she's an attorney so that's different or i couldn't do that because i don't have a down payment but the methods that i use can be duplicated by anybody there are various credit unions across the country and most credit unions have some sort of either no down payment option or low down payment option even if you don't have the money on your own if you and a friend or you and a colleague are in the same boat pull your resources together if you are paying rent somewhere there is a similar place that you can own and use this same strategy if my plan goes well i won't have to actually touch the invested accounts and those will just continue to grow and my plan is just to leave that to nieces and nephews maybe my undergrad college so i don't have any plans to use that money but it's there as a fail-safe the reason why is because i really feel like i have been the most fortunate person ever i've got plenty if i can just live off the rental income and that's enough for me i've always had a pretty firm sense of enough and so if i can make it so that the next generation of my family doesn't have to start from scratch if i can leave that legacy to them then that's more than worth it to me that's certainly worth more than anything i can spend that money on so i get another offering for all cash pretty close to what you're doing but um i think he's leaning towards still taking yours but i'll but i'll keep you in the loop for sure okay all right sounds good thank you all right all right you
