2025: A Year of Waiting, part 2
Jan. 4th, 2026 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerEarlier today I posted my personal reflections on the past year. I dubbed it 2025: A Year of Waiting. That post wasn't all of my personal reflections, though. It was just one part. It turned out after I wrote and edited the part on how 2025 was the year of Being Sick Sucks— a tag I attached to 47 posts last year— I felt so down I needed a break from writing. I didn't want to risk that this retrospective gets stuck in my WIP queue for another few days, though, so I published what I had. I planned to come back with the rest later. Later's now.
The thing about Waiting... as a theme is that it has both negative aspects as well as... not-so-negative (I can't quite bring myself to say positive) aspects.
The negative kind of waiting comes with all the things that are beyond our control. Like, do I get sick with a virus despite generally being safe and smart about hygiene? How long does that virus take to run its course? How long does my wife's recovery from a planned surgery take? How many complications happen along the way, each setting her back two weeks or more, through no fault of her own? All we can do with these is keep waiting, and keep pushing out our expectations for how long we'll be waiting.
On the other hand there's the type of waiting that comes with a situation where we have some control. We set ourselves up as best we can for the long term, then navigate through the complications and changes thrown our way. Though there can be frustrating setbacks, overall it is fulfilling to nurture the plan to its fruition. Planning with money is one of these situations.
Once I had the cost side of the budget I worked on the income side. I used my models of an investment portfolio to figure out how much we'd need in the bank to generate cash flow to fund our expenses.
It was much too early to retire then, of course. But it wasn't a Y/N question. It was a matter of when.
And that's where I started saying Five Good Years. Because from what we had then, I estimated that it would take five good years— meaning, five good years of stock market returns— to get us to our goal.
Of course, Five Good Years seldom happen all in a row. I knew that when I started saying it. I figured Five Good Years would actually take 7 years. There'd be a downturn and recovery in the market cycle somewhere in the middle.
As it turns out, Five Good Years took 10 years. I coined the Five Good Years mantra in... checks blog... April 2015. And it was around September 2025 that we reached our target number.
Why the difference, BTW? Why 10 years instead of my forecast 7? Two things. First, unanticipated disruptions gave us more not-good years than I expected. Hawk had two long periods out of work. Second, we had to raise our target number significantly. Even though I accounted for inflation in my model, high rates of inflation not seen in 40+ years kicked in in the early 2020s. Over the past 5 years the cost of many grocery staples have doubled. Property insurance has increased 10+% YoY multiple times. And health insurance, which was already one of the largest line items in our retirement budget, has rocketed up in cost at 2-3x the rate of inflation for 10 years.
These setback aside, the good news is we reached our financial goal in 2025.
The less good news is, I feel a bit like the proverbial dog that chases cars and finally caught one and now isn't sure what to do with it.
While waiting I've suffered numerous setbacks over the years. And this year there were even more setbacks.
Early in the year, in January 2025, my company had a big layoff. IMO it was poorly strategized and poorly executed. And that wasn't just my opinion. It was so bad that a lot of good people said, "Fuck it, I'm out," and quit of their own accord. Then in September there was another layoff. That one left us too short-staffed to complete all the work tasked to us in our compensation plan.
Along the way my boss has been saying earnest things about helping me build my career. But at this point it's way too little and way too late. Even if I wasn't already financially at the point of saying, "I'm outta here!" just the fact that it feels like he's shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic while telling me he'll help get me promoted would make me prefer to look elsewhere for my next opportunity anyway.
The thing about Waiting... as a theme is that it has both negative aspects as well as... not-so-negative (I can't quite bring myself to say positive) aspects.
The negative kind of waiting comes with all the things that are beyond our control. Like, do I get sick with a virus despite generally being safe and smart about hygiene? How long does that virus take to run its course? How long does my wife's recovery from a planned surgery take? How many complications happen along the way, each setting her back two weeks or more, through no fault of her own? All we can do with these is keep waiting, and keep pushing out our expectations for how long we'll be waiting.
On the other hand there's the type of waiting that comes with a situation where we have some control. We set ourselves up as best we can for the long term, then navigate through the complications and changes thrown our way. Though there can be frustrating setbacks, overall it is fulfilling to nurture the plan to its fruition. Planning with money is one of these situations.
Money: I Planned Patiently, and Now I'm There!
Years ago I started repeating the mantra Five Good Years. Hawk and I did a budgeting exercise to figure out how much money we'd need to spend on a monthly basis in retirement. We included things other people often overlook when they do this as a kitchen table budgeting exercise: health insurance costs, maintenance and insurance on the house and cars, costs for replacing cars every several years, and of course, the costs of living the active lifestyles we'd like to keep.Once I had the cost side of the budget I worked on the income side. I used my models of an investment portfolio to figure out how much we'd need in the bank to generate cash flow to fund our expenses.It was much too early to retire then, of course. But it wasn't a Y/N question. It was a matter of when.
And that's where I started saying Five Good Years. Because from what we had then, I estimated that it would take five good years— meaning, five good years of stock market returns— to get us to our goal.
Of course, Five Good Years seldom happen all in a row. I knew that when I started saying it. I figured Five Good Years would actually take 7 years. There'd be a downturn and recovery in the market cycle somewhere in the middle.
As it turns out, Five Good Years took 10 years. I coined the Five Good Years mantra in... checks blog... April 2015. And it was around September 2025 that we reached our target number.
Why the difference, BTW? Why 10 years instead of my forecast 7? Two things. First, unanticipated disruptions gave us more not-good years than I expected. Hawk had two long periods out of work. Second, we had to raise our target number significantly. Even though I accounted for inflation in my model, high rates of inflation not seen in 40+ years kicked in in the early 2020s. Over the past 5 years the cost of many grocery staples have doubled. Property insurance has increased 10+% YoY multiple times. And health insurance, which was already one of the largest line items in our retirement budget, has rocketed up in cost at 2-3x the rate of inflation for 10 years.
These setback aside, the good news is we reached our financial goal in 2025.
The less good news is, I feel a bit like the proverbial dog that chases cars and finally caught one and now isn't sure what to do with it.
Career: Way too Little, Much too Late
Another aspect in life where I've been waiting for many years is my career. I've been waiting for opportunity for advancement to come to fruition.While waiting I've suffered numerous setbacks over the years. And this year there were even more setbacks.Early in the year, in January 2025, my company had a big layoff. IMO it was poorly strategized and poorly executed. And that wasn't just my opinion. It was so bad that a lot of good people said, "Fuck it, I'm out," and quit of their own accord. Then in September there was another layoff. That one left us too short-staffed to complete all the work tasked to us in our compensation plan.
Along the way my boss has been saying earnest things about helping me build my career. But at this point it's way too little and way too late. Even if I wasn't already financially at the point of saying, "I'm outta here!" just the fact that it feels like he's shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic while telling me he'll help get me promoted would make me prefer to look elsewhere for my next opportunity anyway.
