First, thanks for taking a moment to learn a bit more about us and our FIRE movement blog!
Second, if you’re just looking for a complete listing of what we write about, be sure to check out The Archives. Feel free to reach out to us, too!
We live in the US, in Virginia, in a medium cost-of-living urban area. We’ve lived in our neighborhood since 2013 and own the 1,250 square foot townhouse-style historic place we’re in. We chose city life over country life.
About the Authors
Jenni is a mid-thirties pharmacist (now part-time!) at a family-run pharmacy business. She’s winding down her work focus and transitioning to a form of early retirement, but still working on the most meaningful projects for her patient care.
Chris is a mid-thirties small business owner that has operated multiple online endeavors. He built most of his wealth through a digital design and development business as well as an online e-commerce business. He’s also served as an adjunct professor and Peace Corps volunteer. Currently, he works a handful of hours per week to support fulfilling causes and meaningful digital projects.
Reaching Financial Independence
While we’ve been very fortunate to have supportive families, we both come from middle-class backgrounds. We started our career paths with a combined debt (due to student loans) over six-figures. From the point of our first professional job’s paychecks until FI in 2018 at 33, our average income was just over $77K per person per year.
On this FIRE movement blog, we’ll write a lot about investing strategies and solving the personal finance quandaries we and many others run into on their journey. You can get started with:
- Deciding between individual stocks vs index funds and avoiding our mistakes
- Putting your investments on autopilot with total market funds like VTSAX or VTI
- Making the decision between buy vs rent and invest with your first home
If you’d like to read a detailed rundown of our thirteen-year journey from undergrad to financial independence at age 33, check out our post on how to become a millionaire in 10 years (or less!).
As we reveal our successes (and failures!), we both want you dear reader to understand our intention is to help shed light on the path we’ve tread to reach financial independence. Avoid comparing yourself, where you are on your journey, to us (or anyone else!). It’s taken us many years of focus and planning to reach this point, filled with plenty of pitfalls and mistakes. Don’t let comparison be the thief of joy within your life, you’re on your own journey.
Our Escape to Retire Early
During the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020, we finally cemented significant changes to our career tracks. We changed our focus from day-to-day career-building to evaluating larger goals and plans. We wanted to set our eye on giving something back, which we’ve started with our Reader’s Choice Donor-Advised Fund. Our vision of early retirement isn’t without work, the focus will just shift from money to something more important. We’ve asked ourselves why people work, so we’re building more creativity into our lives.
We’ve been working to earn our financial independence since before it was the cult topic it is today. It’s the first step in the process of early retirement which we detail throughout what we publish here. If you’re unfamiliar with these concepts, take a moment and start learning about FIRE.
A FIRE Movement Blog
TicTocLife is our story of how our early retirement experience has transpired. It’s our retire early blog.
Life continues its tick-tock of routine and will slip away into a cycle of work, sleep, repeat.
Here’s topics you’ll find written and discussed around here:
- Transitioning out of traditional careers
- Financial planning for early retirement
- Adding frugal hobbies to daily life
- Hacking travel opportunities across the world
- Choosing meaningful work in life
- Maintaining and improving health for the long term
- Giving back in creative ways, leveraging our FIRE knowledge
You have to make an active choice in life to go on a different path. It’s a mix of a fire movement blog and early retirement success story—we hope!
You can also learn more about us individually on the Meet Chris and Meet Jenni posts.
If you’d like to catch more “behind-the-scenes” updates from us along with our thoughts on the latest in the FIRE movement around the web, consider signing up for our infrequent newsletter below!
We both greatly thank you for taking valuable time out of your life to engage with us and read what we’ve written. Thanks for being part of our little community!