Today is Sunday, and my husband is back into human shape. It usually takes him a whole Saturday to brush off all the stress and frustrations from his job. It wasn’t the case a while back, but the crisis has accelerated the discomfort.
The silver lining is, he can not see more clearly what happens when someone controls your time and freedom, and you need that paycheck. He still has 4.5 years to go in the military before he can retire with a full pension.
So for now he takes a deep breath and keeps grinding. He is on track to FIRE with a nice nest egg on the side, but we have been discussing what would happen if a million dollar would fall from the sky right now, and I think he’d give the military the finger and retire yesterday.
I am thankful that he has a stable job and paycheck to keep the momentum on his FIRE journey going, when so many people are looking for a job right now.
I have lost most of my online income, although a few clients are still around. My Airbnb houses in Guatemala haven’t seen a guest since early March, and I don’t expect anyone until maybe Christmas.
What other jobs I could do, I can’t, because I am waiting for a green card here, and not allowed to work. I think if I had a work permit, I might have gone out to supermarkets or something to stay busy.
I don’t need the income, so there might be an ethical conflict in taking a job someone else might need, but with unemployment paying $600 extra per week, it pays better to sit on the couch rather than go work for minimum wage.
I do volunteer around here, walking an elderly neighbor’s dog, and I am enjoying it. It gets me out of the RV, and I cycle there, it’s about 3 miles one way, so just under 20 minutes and I can use the fresh air.
I feel for people who do need a job and can’t get one right now. I am not sure how unemployment filings are going but it seems like some people can’t get through to claim.
So we are in the very fortunate category, even though I don’t work right now, I have enough cash to last a couple of years before touching my investment, and my military husband should have the safest job in the country.
He has two years to go before having to reenlist for the last two years though, and if they invent some budget cuts to pay for the trillions they’ve been printing, that might be a stressful time, considering if you don’t do 20 years you don’t get the pension, and at this point, it’s pretty much the only reason why he’s staying in.