My trial by leanFIRE - 2026 Edition (UPDATE #2)

Original thread

tl;dr: Trial is going well. ACA is cool. Your mileage may vary.

This is my 6 months of FIRE/Unemployment update. For starters I want to thank everyone who commented on my original posts about this topic with various bits of advice I may not have thought of. It's nice having some input from outside sources. Now let's talk details.

Lesson's learned & things I've learned about myself:

• This not working thing is pretty great.
• ACA makes this possible much sooner, very happy it exists.
• Filling my day has not been a challenge.
• I did, in fact, get very little satisfaction from work.
• Bucketing strategy for my investments seems to work for me.
• Quarterly re-up for my cash on hand feels right.
• Friends/family still working means I don't see them much more than normal
• Not worrying about PTO hours is great.

On the day I got laid off I had a $535k portfolio and seven months of expenses in cash. This morning I have around $585k (+$50k from start) in my portfolio and the same seven months of expenses in cash. $5k of that was a windfall, but still to be up $45k in six months when I'm spending $2000-2500 a month is pretty cool.

In my original thread I replied to someone:

I do think if we get a big run up in stocks and my 535 becomes 600 (or something) next year while I'm trialing this I will take a year of expenses out and put it into cash to add to my cash pile.

Well would you look at that! That's basically exactly what's happened. So I will do DCA out of some positions in my Roth accounts to add a one year extra cash buffer in said accounts.

Next steps? Honestly just more of the same. I'm still not bored. I'm still finding simple fun stuff to do daily. I love binge watching shows if the weather or my mood is meh towards my usual daily activities.

I have some extra rambling that I'll post in a comment if you want to check that out.