Nine months left and everything is still on track.  This post officially marks the 9 month point in my countdown to FIRE – being financially independent and retired early. My FIRE escape date is planned for April 1, 2016 – just a few weeks before my 50^th birthday. Each month I’ve been counting down the activities that are getting me prepared.

The overall stock market slipped a little this month and is now basically flat from the start of the 2015.  The Greek debt default headlines seem to be dominating the financial press.  Despite that, the MegaCorp that our nest egg is heavily invested in reported positive earnings growth and finished the month well.  It is now up +7% for the year and since we have stock options, our growth is levers up to +19%.  That’s enough to lift the overall portfolio.

At the end of the month, I unloaded a few more options for cash and built our early retirement cash reserves a little more.  I am now at 2.7 years basic spending money in a cash reserve.  It’s not earning any interest, but it’s completely safe and will help us weather out a market downturn if needed.

Our “One More Year” Fund also is growing nicely.  I’ve gotten three paychecks since we committed to working one more year as a charitable giving project and it has quickly grown to tens of thousands of dollars. My DW and I will look forward to deciding what organizations will benefit from the fund, but for now we are just letting in grow.

Other than watching the markets and our nest egg growing, we did very little to plan for early retirement in the last 30 days.  We were on a very extended vacation that I have posted a bit about – a Baltic cruise to the Scandinavian countries and St. Petersburg, Russia.  Now that we are back, I need to figure out how much vacation I have left for the year.

Final Year Of Work – 9 Month Checklist:

• Keep the countdown up – 38 weeks to go
• Continue to build cash reserves – goal is 3 years spending at retirement
• Set up a meeting with your financial advisor for a check up – ours is on 7/18
• Take your vacation time off and think about being off “full time”
• Build our “One More Year” Charitable Fund

Image Credit: Pixabay