Progress to Financial Independence- November 2017

In November, Whitney and I weren’t quite as busy and spent more time focusing on working out, dieting and relaxing. We both had a couple weigh ins we needed to meet for our HealthyWage challenges, and Whitney decided to do a three day fast, both for health benefits and to meet her weigh in goal. She did surprisingly well with it, but days 2 and 3 are always the toughest, so her choice to do a 3 day fast was definitely challenging! I had done a 5 day fast earlier this year and I didn’t think days 4 and 5 were very hard at all.

We did take one trip home for the weekend to go to a wedding of one of Whitney’s high school friends and got to see friends and family very briefly. We took another day trip to Asheville to see some of Whitney’s friends who were visiting, and we tried to do a couple final things in Western NC before it was time to move.

Whitney and I spent our first Thanksgiving away from family this year, because we had to work the day after Thanksgiving, which meant that we had to do our own cooking. I made a turkey breast in our Instant Pot (which I would highly recommend purchasing if you don’t have one) and it turned out extremely well. Whitney made one side and we purchased a couple of ready made sides from the grocery store and had a great dinner.

We finished up our contracts in Western NC on December 1st and made the journey to back to Eastern NC. The week prior to moving we found someone to work on our camper and dropped it off at his place so that he would have a full week to work on it before we picked it up on the way to the beach. We spent that week in a park model camper (basically a trailer) at the same campground we were living. This seemed like a good idea for the cost and convenience of a place to stay while the work was being done, but it turned out not to be the best experience for us. There were a lot of issues with the electricity, a shower that didn’t work, generally being unclean and old, as well as an unpleasant surprise of a flea infestation… Needless to say we were happy to get out of there and pick the camper up. The guy was successful at repairing the water damage on the back of the camper and he sealed it so that no further damage will occur. Unfortunately, he was unable to fix our living room slide out, although he assured us it wouldn’t be a problem, and we still ended up having to pay him despite this being basically the same as it was before. When we arrived to pick up the camper, we were disappointed that the slide out was still not working, but unfortunately we really had to hit the road and head on to our next assignment. And then, things got worse. As soon as we got the camper hooked to the truck, the landing gear on the camper stopped working. Fortunately the truck was already connected at that point, so we were able to leave, but we couldn’t unhook the truck with only half of the landing gear functioning.

We made it to Eastern NC in the middle of the night on Saturday and planned to just keep the fifth wheel hooked to the truck until we were able to get the landing gear fixed on it. Since we would only have one vehicle, we planned to rent a car, but luckily one of Whitney’s coworkers/friends was nice enough to let us borrow one of their cars for a couple of days. The landing gear ended up not being an easy fix (currently still not fixed) due to having to order new parts to replace the broken ones. In the meantime we had another friend bring a jack over so that we could jack up the fifth wheel to get it unhooked from the truck and then have it supported on a jack stand. Then we were able to return the borrowed car and have two vehicles again. I’m optimistic that I will be able to replace the landing gear on my own once we get the parts, but we will see.

Financially I did well last month overall. The fifth wheel repairs ended up being more than the estimate even though he was unable to get the slide out working properly, which definitely hurt my net worth a little. Even with that extra expense, the continued rise in my investment returns made it a pretty good month. My FI date remains May 2019, but Whitney and I have been talking about transitioning out of full time work before I reach my full net worth goal in order to do some international travel next year. We haven’t fully decided what we will do yet, but it’s very likely that we will only be working about half of the year next year. Next month I should have more decided and will announce what our plan for 2018 is then.

December looks like it will be a good month financially even though we are taking two weeks off of work to go home for the holidays. I am expecting referral bonuses (from travel therapy companies) in December that should offset the missed paychecks and then leave a couple thousand extra which is exciting. My trip to Aruba with my little brother is (was) in December (since I’m late writing this of course) but the majority of the expenses I already paid for several months ago, so the expenses there shouldn’t be too high and shouldn’t really count against December’s finances.

I think that 2018 will be a very exciting year for Whitney and I, so stay tuned!