Figuring out your Number may lead to insomnia.
Back around 2016, I read like crazy.
I found and devoured the Mr. Money Mustache blog, and then had the uniquely ridiculous experience of citing the unusually named blog to completely serious friends during highly intellectual conversations.
I consumed the Bogleheads book, routinely pored over the Bogleheads wiki, and researched relevant threads from past questions on the Bogleheads forum. It was like getting advice from the world's most financially savvy engineers. They were brilliant, enthusiastic about sharing what they knew, and often went to technically sophisticated lengths to make their points.
I read books. Bill Bernstein's Four Pillars of Investing and Jim Dahle's The White Coat Investor. I skipped the optional mathematical proof chapters in Bernstein, but I loved his writing all the same. He made complexity accessible.
Like many folks who end up pursuing financial independence, I was driven to read by my variant of a common burning question: How much longer do I need to work shifts in the ER?
Only later did I realize that this was a deceptive way of asking an entirely different series of questions: How much longer do I have to trade time for money? To let somebody else tell me where to be and when? To choose work based on income rather than interest?
Once I realized what question I was really asking, it begged further questions. The most critical seemed to have to do with how much of a nest egg I needed to survive without further income. How do you figure out your Number?
You can start with the 4% rule, which tells you how much you can reasonably spend based on your savings (spoiler alert: it's ~4%). This is your safe withdrawal rate.
When I began the journey to financial independence, I looked at our annual family spending and extrapolated. Great news: number defined.
As I approached that number, I grew slightly uncomfortable. Our family spending went up. Toddlers outgrew big plastic stationary contraptions and developed an interest in big metal mobile contraptions, the latter involving auto insurance increases. They also undertook athletic and artistic endeavors involving fees and donations. We began to prioritize international travel because the kids were old enough to carry their own gear and to (mostly) manage the long flights.
I tried ratcheting our safe withdrawal rate down to something more conservative like 3.5%. This increased our Number by ~25%. Since that created sufficient distance from what was an upward revision of our Number, I went back to the mindset of still working toward a goal that was at a remove. I've spent decades in the accumulation phase of my financial life, and it was comforting to return to this default mindset.
Today I logged into Vanguard, only to find that the brokerage account showed that we had once again reached an all-time high with our liquid net worth not seen since December of 2021. Returns from investments now constituted over 40% of the funds in the various accounts. Crazy!
I have not felt stressed about money for some time, but a strange and counterintuitive feeling began to dawn. What happens when, even after moving the goal even further away, you once again find yourself on the verge of reaching the goalpost?
All the nagging uncertainties that people bring up when they object to the preposterous idea of leaving work during your peak earning years began to surface. How will we pay for health insurance in the decade plus that remains between our current ages and Medicare eligibility? What if catastrophe strikes? How will we adapt when the life in high-cost-of-living-what-were-you-possibly-thinking California ruptures and falls into the ocean, literally and metaphorically?
Which brings me to the current crossroads. The comfortable thing to do is to once again move the goalposts. Revising our number upward would be the prudent, conservative, cautious thing to do.
Maybe a little 10% bump of the Number could seem like a way to postpone acknowledgement that a goal has been met. To feel the comfort of further lowering our safe withdrawal rate.
Or perhaps pushing off the inevitable doesn't matter so much.
On a road trip along an isolated stretch of California coast, my family came across the art of a hermit who piles rocks on a mist-shrouded beach in a manner that defies physics, in that fragile way that you know cannot possibly last.
Life now feels precariously balanced and beautiful. The kids are under our roof for a few more years. We have shared family travel memories to look forward to making this spring and summer. My wife and I have work we (mostly) enjoy that permits us sufficient time to deepen friendships and community roots, be present for family, maintain fitness and explore ideas.
I'm going to try to frame attaining our Number as just another marker on the journey.