Financial Independence for Colorado Teachers Part 1: The Concept

TL; DR: This is the first in a series of posts that will lay out a possible path for Colorado teachers to achieve Financial Independence and retire* early. This post looks at the concept of Financial Independence and discusses a little bit of the “what” and the “why”.

*Retire only if you want to, but certainly achieve a “work optional” stage of life much earlier.

This is the first in what will be a series of posts discussing how Colorado teachers can achieve financial independence. (Actually applies to any Colorado public school employee, not just teachers, but will focus on teachers.) This post will focus on the concept of financial independence: what it is, why you might want to achieve it, and the basic outline of what it takes to get there.

There are many, many, many excellent resources online (some of which I’ll link to at the bottom of this post) that are better written, broader in scope, and more in-depth. But I decided to write this series because, as far as I know, there is not any that are devoted specifically to Financial Independence for Colorado teachers. The path to Financial Independence is different for everyone, but there are certain aspects of being a teacher in Colorado that make this an easier path and are worth exploring in detail (notably Colorado PERA and the specifics of the Colorado state tax code). My hope is that this can be a resource for Colorado educators to adapt some of the terrific information that is available elsewhere online in light of the added options that PERA and the state tax code give you.

If you’ve ever explored anything financially related online, you have probably come across the acronym FIRE, which stands for Financially Independent Retire Early. (I will include some links to resources at the bottom of this post you might want to investigate.) While the FIRE concept may seem to be pretty well defined, there are many different approaches, definitions, and opinions about exactly what it means, so let me give you my take as a frame of reference for this series of posts. (Not that you have to agree with my take, but just as a common understanding for these posts.)

It seems to me that there is often a misconception of financial independence that it’s all about money. In my view, it’s not. Money is the means but not the end. Financial independence is, at its essence, exactly that – meaning that you don’t have to be employed and earning income in order to meet your financial needs. When you “achieve FI”, that means you have enough savings and investments to live off of even if you never earn another dollar at a job. That doesn’t mean you have to retire, the ‘RE’ part of FIRE, but it means you can if you want to (or circumstances dictate that you have to). Some people refer to this as a “work optional” stage.

So if FI is not about money, what is it about? I think it’s about living your best life and the life you want to live. It’s about making the most of your limited years (time is not a renewable resource) and about maximizing the time you have to do what you want. It’s about being intentional about life and not just letting life happen to you, but taking a little bit of time to plan the life you want to lead, one that aligns with your values, and then take the steps to allow that to happen. Perhaps that doesn’t seem all that different than what most people do, plan for the future. But this is taking it one (or two) steps further than most people do and being much more granular about the financial aspects of your future in order to achieve the life you want to live.

One of the unfortunate things about American society (I’m focusing on the United States in these posts) is the lack of knowledge and open discussion about money and finances. In many families, money is a taboo subject, and most schools do little or no real financial education. As a lifelong educator, it saddens me that we don’t make an effort to really educate our students about money and finances. Not because money or wealth is important in and of itself, but because of the tremendous impact finances and financial decisions have on everyone’s life. (If I was pressed to name the two most important subjects we should teach in K-12 education, it would be Physical Education and Financial Education, as those are so important throughout everyone’s life, yet we devote very little resources to teaching them.)

That doesn’t mean society doesn’t talk about “Money” with a capital ‘M’. We are inundated with stories about making money and wealthy people, bombarded with marketing encouraging us to buy things, and often social pressures to look and dress and own the correct things to fit in. But that’s as far as it goes for most folks, we get the pitch for all these things that are “desirable”, but not the knowledge and resources to manage our financial lives in a way that matches up with our goals and our values. FI is about achieving your goals and living your values. That may include retiring early or it may not – it’s about making decisions that optimize meaning and happiness. Once you achieve FI you may still continue to work, but you’ll continue because you want to do the work, not because you need the paycheck. And if at that point in your life you are ready to do something else, you won’t be restricted from making a change because of the need for that paycheck.

I think most folks would think that my family has done really well financially along the way, and we have, but if I knew what I know now back when we were first starting our careers, we would have achieved financial independence much earlier. So this series is intended to help some of you, if you decide this is the path for you, to do it better than we did. So what does it take to get there? Future posts will go into more detail, but it generally boils down to spending less than you make, and then saving and investing the rest. It’s also about making smart lifestyle choices (living within and actually below your means), and understanding the math of things like compound interest and how your taxes work.

Below you will find links to subsequent posts in this series (as the posts are written, the links will become active), as well as links to some excellent FI(RE) bloggers and other resources that you may want to investigate if you want to go down the rabbit hole and learn much, much more about this idea.

Part 2: The Process
Part 3: The “What ifs?” and the “Yeah, buts”
Part 4: Tax optimizing/401k/403b/457/Section 125
Part 5: Case Study: Teacher Married to Another Teacher
Part 6: Case Study: Teacher Married to a Non-Teacher
Part 7: Single Teacher

Some excellent resources to learn more about FI(RE)