Ether to FI: A New Job & a Net Worth Update

Today’s guest author will be familiar to most of you. This is the anesthesiologist’s 21st submission since beginning his FI journey more than half a decade ago.

In a recent post, Dr. E.T.F. stated his intention to move to a new city for a new job, and he expressed his gratitude to those of you who reached out with job leads in areas that met his criteria.

As you’ll read below, he was successful in his job search, and he’s looking forward not only to a new job with improved hours, but also to a break in between. When you have an opportunity to take multiple weeks or even months off between jobs, it’s a great time to get a glimpse of what the FIRE life could look like.

His original goal was to have one third of $10 Million in 10 years. With under four and a half years to go, how is he progressing? Read on to see precisely where he’s at and what he and his wife are invested in.

We will conclude the third and final part of our series by reviewing previous posts and giving updates on the status of the E.T.F. family.

I hope everyone is doing well so far in 2023. Spring break is behind us, and summer vacation is on the horizon. This will be my first proper summer vacation in a very long time. I am taking time off between jobs to travel with the family.

Breaking news: I will start a new job in a new city. It fits the criteria of mountains and large bodies of water. We look forward to moving somewhere new as a family and experiencing a different part of the country. Mrs. ETF is especially doing a happy dance. She is not the biggest fan of our current location. I am happy to move to an area with elevation: Bye-bye, flat land for as far as the eye can see.

Let’s move onward to the review.

How are those predictions going?

When will we learn that no one knows what will happen next? The talking heads on CNBC, your next-door neighbor, the late-night infomercials, and the psychic down the street all have one thing in common. They are all guessing. Even a broken clock is right two times a day.

Let’s review some of the financial news in 2023—low unemployment rate even in a slowing economy. Inflation rates have come back down from the higher rates last year. Banks are falling apart like a sandcastle in a hurricane. The stock market is dancing all over the place.

Basically, our regularly scheduled program. Finance remains unpredictably irrational. Personal finance, on the other hand, should be predictably dull.

Has the noise from the news on your tv screen changed your financial plan? It has not changed mine.

The ETF portfolio: 100% Stocks

I have remained 100% stocks since I started my investing journey. My rationale when I began was that I did not need bonds to decrease the volatility of my portfolio because I was trying to get to FI as soon as possible.

The “risk” of my portfolio did not matter because I have a long-time horizon, and I am willing to continue to work if my portfolio were to fall by half in 10 years.

My portfolio asset allocation has been 70% US and 30% international. The US component has been 45% large-cap stock mutual funds, either a total stock market index fund or the S&P 500 index fund, depending on their availability in the investment vehicle. 25% has been invested in small-cap stock mutual funds, either a small-cap blend index fund or a small-cap value index fund.

My international component has been split equally with 15% in a total international stock market index fund or a developed markets index fund. The remaining 15% is in an emerging markets index fund.

The portfolio has been tilted towards higher risk and hopefully higher returns; I hope to beat PoF to FI in less than ten years. The portfolio will remain relatively unchanged over the next four years as we race to the finish line of ten years, ending August 31^st, 2027.

I have stated previously that I don’t check my portfolio except to calculate my net worth statements for these posts. I don’t have tracking apps on my phone. Watching the stock market’s gyrations daily, weekly, or monthly has never made sense to me. It has served me well to ignore the market and keep on investing. Maybe we can make a new t-shirt, “Stay calm, and keep investing.”

Enjoying the Moments

During my job search, I was offered multiple opportunities that would have been more lucrative, but my guiding principle made my choice easy. My main driver for looking for a new role was the ability to spend more time with my family.

My new job will have set hours with a lot of time off. This will allow me to help with homeschooling my kids. The flexibility of homeschooling and my newfound time freedom means I can enjoy exploring with my wife and kids, and we will be off the traditional school vacation schedule.

There is a massive difference in the price of flights and lodging when you take a trip during “spring break” versus two weeks after spring break. I am very excited about the places we can visit and the people we can see.

On the website, Wait But Why, an article titled “The Tail End” discusses the typical human life span and the parent-child relationship. There is a statistic that you will spend 93% of the in-person time with your children when they are aged 0 – 18. After that period, for the rest of your lives, if you live till age 90, you will only see them for 7% in person. This sobering statistic clarified my priorities to increase my time with them.

I am looking forward to squeezing every drop out of the 93%.

Homeschooling – Worldschooling

Mrs. ETF has done most of the homeschooling while I worked in my current position. I am looking forward to becoming another teacher for my kids. It would allow us to give individual attention to each of our kids and increase the efficiency of the school day.

There is so much learning that can be done outside of traditional books. We will go to all the local museums in our new city. We will spend time observing nature and hiking different trails. We can do so much during the week when other kids are in school. We will have fewer crowds and more fun.

Worldschooling will be part of our homeschool journey. We love to travel, and the chance to use travel as part of our curriculum will be great. We want our children to be multilingual, so going to other countries and picking up the language through everyday interactions with the local population will be very beneficial. We hope to provide our children with the education we would have loved to receive growing up.

Net Worth Statement

Our net worth has been frozen in time. It did not move much since the last time that we checked in. However, we have continued to buy more shares of each mutual fund.

When the market gradually and inevitably climbs back up, #upandtotheright. I expect to see excellent growth in our net worth over the next decade. Let’s hope Mr. Market charges forward by 2027 so that we can meet the ten-year to FI goal.

I am enjoying the lower asset prices, and I will continue to buy as much as possible. In the wealth accumulation phase, dips are good. Don’t forget to embrace the dip. Our net worth is $1,754,773.67.

We decided to take advantage of our lower income in 2023 due to my long vacation between jobs and convert some traditional money to Roth. Mrs. ETF’s old pension was rolled into a traditional IRA and converted to a Roth IRA. I have higher hopes of the money growing our portfolio than as part of the pension.

We will see you in a few months, and I should be writing from an exotic location. Having time to step back and take a breather will be great. Enjoy spring, and I will talk to you in the summer.