I can’t begin to describe the almost dreamlike surrealness that comes with walking into a beautifully decorated restaurant and reading a BIG banner and cake that say “Congratulations on your Retirement!” YOUR retirement. This is IT. If you aren’t 1000% sure you are ready for early retirement, seeing the BIG cake at the YOUR farewell party certainly will seal the deal. As I wrote about … Continue reading FIRE Milestone – The Glorious Farewell Party
Entering the atomic age, T.S. Elliot remarked that the end of the world would likely come now come with “not a bang, but a whimper”. As I enter the final week of my almost 27 year professional world, I am not sure whether to expect a bang or a whimper myself. Will this be a boisterous, celebratory week or more of a low-key farewell? With … Continue reading Final Week of Work – A Bang or Whimper?
We are on the last day of spring break and enjoying beautiful 80-degree days in sunny Florida, while our home in Minnesota got hit hard with almost a foot of snow (Minne-snow-da). One of my brothers posted a picture of his long driveway freshly plowed after 11” of snow! It’s more than escaping the cold for warm weather that makes us love travel. It’s a … Continue reading FIRE Station Fun – Frivolous Travel
This week we are on Spring Break – enjoying the sunny weather in Florida. When I get back, I only have one week left in the office before I leave for early retirement, so I’m kind of feeling retired already. Kind of like the ‘practice early retirement’ I imagined when I was home for the holidays. This time, I decided I would NOT pay … Continue reading Magical Escape From Work Email
With just a few weeks to go before early retirement, I’ve started the process of taking things home from my MegaCorp office. My plan is to take home bits & pieces until April Fool’s Day, when I turn in my badge & laptop on my final day. It’s a small but meaningful milestone in my path to early retirement on April 1st. Related Milestones: Giving … Continue reading FIRE Milestones – Taking Stuff Home From Work
In the MegaCorp world, you are in the Navy. Most everything is respectable, most everyone follows the orders, and most everybody works to get along. While the discipline and diligence drives efficiency and executional success, the lack of independence and spontaneity can be huge demotivators to people over time. Achieving FIRE (financial independence & retiring early) has me feeling like a pirate – going rogue … Continue reading FIRE Station Fun – Life Of Independence
For those of you who have been following MrFireStation.com since early last year, you know about our plan to devote all of our final year’s paychecks and bonus to a good cause. We first wrote about our “One More Year” fund last April and gave more detail on the background on the idea and an update in December. To make us feel like we were … Continue reading One More Year Effort Becomes “Angel Fund”
Today is the first Monday of Daylight Savings Time which sprang most of the United States forward one hour early Sunday morning. It makes for one of the toughest Monday morning wake-ups of the year and as it realigns our location to the sun and the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England. This Monday morning also happens to be the second to last Monday morning of my … Continue reading Springing Forward
This is the latest picture of the overhead cabinet in my office at MegaCorp. Each week for the last 52 weeks, I have been pulling down a marker to countdown the weeks. I thought I would share a quick picture now while there is a few still left. Here’s what it looked like originally and at the last update I showed … It’s amazing … Continue reading Post-it Flag Countdown Update
I am slowly coming to the realization that I now have time to waste. I say that in the most positive sense. While I still have a few weeks of work left before I early retire, I don’t feel nearly as rushed as I used to. It’s nice to feel that wasting a little time isn’t such a bad thing. After all, as John Lennon … Continue reading Having Time To Waste
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