So I Gave Notice Yesterday

I’ve run and re-run the figures. It looks like everything is set financially for me to have my last full-time working day on February 5, 2016. I have enough vacation days to get me through April 11, 2016. Our bonuses are to be dispensed April 1 so I should still get my bonus. Also HR said I will have full medical benefits for the entire month of April, which is excellent seeing as how our premiums will skyrocket on the new plan. 

So yesterday I composed an email stating exactly when I would stop working and when my vacation days would run out, etc. I ran it by my mentor and friend. Everything looked good. 

When I got ready to send to my manager, I hesitated when I hovered over the Send button. “Are you sure you want to do this,” that little voice in my head said. A few seconds later, Yep. I pressed send. Can’t take it back now.

I was only a little nervous. I think Mr. NaD was more nervous than I was when I told him. LOL.

Well, that was yesterday. My manager forwarded it to his boss for approval. He came in the office today and said she didn’t have a problem with my proposal. Woot!

“This is actually happening,” I keep thinking. It feels like Christmas when I was a little kid. 

So I am definitely set to retire from full-time work in about three weeks. 

Work Longer for Early Retirement or Work Part-Time Now?

I’m still working. I’m a little burned out. It gets to you after a while that you work all day only to spend hours driving in Houston traffic, the noise of the office, the office politics, etc.  Reading early retirement blogs became a way to relieve stress. It‘s so much fun reading how others have attained what I want and what their day to day lives look like.  I started dreaming about what it would be like not to have to deal with the negatives of working. How nice it would be to not be stressed anymore! I could see NaD Jr more.  I would have time to read again, to visit with friends and relatives, to do all the things I’ve been wanting to do.  So what would it take to reach this goal?

We would need 1.5 million dollars to fund $5000 a month in retirement. I would have to work another 12 to 13+ years depending on layoffs, stock market, and life in general. I just can’t do it. That’s too long. I’m done now.  I need a break right now.  I’m not going to work longer just so I can quit work forever.

The thought at the time was that if I became a SAHM, I’d one day have to go back to full time work in order to retire early. That’s not appealing either but $1.5 million seems impossible to reach on a single-income teacher’s salary.  So for a while now after we paid off the last of the debt that we’re going to pay off before I quit, I’ve been focusing on preparing to be a SAHM. I just put retirement out of my mind for a bit.

Then I read an article where the author mentioned how he was going to work only a few hours a month so that he could quit working full-time immediately. That got my attention.

I wish I could remember where I read it as I want to re-read it.  The author had multiple sources of income listed next to the amount of money he was expecting to make from each category.  I felt such a feeling of relief looking at his numbers. His listed numbers were so much easier to attain.  Of course you would not need as much money to live off of if you’re going to supplement your income with work, but I had never seriously considered that before. I had been bent on retiring completely and forever.

So I started working on my own plan based on his scenario. What would work for me? What wouldn’t?  I didn’t even ask my husband if he wanted to quit full-time work. Lol. (He’s always said he wants to work forever and never retire.) I just got busy and figured out how we could work a little and not make it feel like work.  Suddenly we didn’t have to generate $900k in retirement funds. Whoa.

                                 Mr. NaD take home from part-time work: $2000
                                 Ms. NaD take home from part-time work: $1000

                                              $3000 a month x 300 = $900,000
               ($900,000 x .04 withdrawal rate = $36,000 a year or $3000 a month)

Previously I wasn’t really thinking about rental properties. I had pictured retirement being funded by stocks alone. But if we had a rental or two, we could reduce the amount of time it takes to retire. Depending on where we move to, we wouldn’t necessarily need that much more equity in our primary residence to purchase a place that has a garage apartment and/or basement ready for rental. 

                                      Rental property: $1000 a month profit


This means we’d need $320k or so in stocks. We have $50k now, which leaves the need to earn another $270k. Huge difference between $1.5m and $270k. I felt such a sense of relief seeing that $270k figure. My heart literally beat faster knowing this was possible and not just possible, but possible right now! We can put this plan into place and begin immediately.

Happy Dance!

So another 12 to 13 years of working full time so I can retire completely at 60? Being miserable the entire time? Or 24 years of working part time being happy? I would like to work part-time, please.

How I Make $77 a Month Working about 10 Minutes a Week from Home

Right before Christmas we went to Fulshear’s Christmas Festival. We signed up at the All State stand's raffle for a free Kindle Fire.  We won!! That was a nice surprise.  

Now on with today's post. 
 

Our goal is for me to work a couple of hours a day at the most to bring in $1000 a month working from home. I would like to work as little as possible so I figured getting paid to do things I already do would be a good place to start. 

Santander Bank - $20 (this promotion ended for new accounts)

Santander Bank had an offer where you earn $10 a month to make two automatic bill pay payments. Since I do this already I set up an account. Santander also gives you $10 a month if you direct deposit $750 twice a month. We do this already as well. I've not been charged any fees so far. 

There isn't a local branch of Santander Bank in my area so everything was done over the phone and internet, which took about four months to set up. It was a very confusing and aggravating process. They were very polite but the representatives I spoke with were not knowledgeable. Their website is not the most user friendly but it's not as bad as others I've seen.  The aggravation was worth it though. For four months now I've received $20 a month. 

I wish I had kept track of the time it took to set up the account and to set up the direct deposit and automatic bill pay. Maybe six hours total?

I've had bad experiences with banks in the past so I'm not quite ready to trust them completely yet although I've had no problems with them after the account was set up. They've reliably paid $20 each month at the beginning of the month. No gimmicky waiting till the end of the month to get paid. 

But since I'm not ready to switch all of our banking to Santander, I forward the $20 and each $750 deposit to our credit union. That takes about five minutes a month. I'm to the point where I almost trust them enough to set up automatically transferring the money but I'm not quite there yet. Once that happens I'll be at one minute a month to check to make sure everything is kopasetic. (I heard this word in an old episode of Simon and Simon the other day. I hadn't heard that word in forever.)

I called to see if Mr. NaD could get his own account and was told they no longer offer this promotion. I'm glad I didn't put off getting the account!

So for now I'm earning $20 for 5 mins of work a month using Santander Bank.  

Citi Bank Rewards Card - $52

We have a Citi double cash back card. It pays 1% when we make a purchase and 1% when we pay the card. We use the card for everything. I'm sure unexpected expenses will pop up but for now I only project making 2% on normal monthly expenses. 

This was a painless process to set up. It was time consuming, though, to switch everything over. 

We pay our bills monthly. We front load the credit card to keep ourselves out of trouble. Meaning on the 1st of each month we send the money to the Citi credit card for our normal bills. Then as the month progresses we spend down the credit.

Before we began using the credit card, on the 1st of every month I had automatically transferred our bill money to another account. So sending the money to the Citi card is no different from sending the same money to the account I was using before. I'm not increasing my workload. 

It does take about 2 minutes to redeem the rewards. 

We are earning $52 for 2 minutes of extra work a month using a 2% rewards card.

Bing Searches - $10

A week or so ago Mr. NaD and I each downloaded the Bing app to get paid for searches. This was also a painless process. After downloading it we discovered you can click on the daily points. This takes about one minute a day. We already do web searches a day so the searching itself is not additional work. 

We are earning $10 total, or $5 each, for 30 minutes of extra work for me each a month.
Grand Total:  $82 a month or $984 a year

I prefer not to work more than 10 hours a week. So far I'm well under that amount: 

                                                Weekly Time Spent

    1.15 mins a week (5 mins a month x 12 months / 52 weeks) Santander

      .46 mins a week (2 mins a month x 12 months / 52 weeks) Citi Bank rewards card

    7.00 mins a week (1 mins a day x 7 days a week) Bing

-------

    8.61 mins a week earning $77 a month.  

                                            Hourly Wage $115 an hour 

         $82-$5= $77 a month x 12 months / 52 weeks = $16.6154 a week. 

        $16.6154 earnings / 8.61 minutes of work = $1.93 a minute x 60 mins = $115.79 an hour

I'm not positive on the math of the hourly wage, but if it's correct, no way do I take home this much money right now.  

The above calculation excludes the money Mr. NaD makes through Bing as I'm keeping track of my hourly wage. For purposes of our accounting though, his earnings are categorized under my side gig heading. Nice how that works!

Not a bad start. I don't expect it to be so easy from this point on though. I just need to find more venues like the above. Any suggestions?