Financial Independence Blog

We've spent $22 fueling our electric car in the past 5 months

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:21:01 GMT

And we didn't spend a penny until we landed in Albuquerque in late August.

Those elevation changes driving between Santa Fe and Albuquerque really eat through the juice!

We spent $0 through Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona.

We've logged approximately 3,000 miles since we bought the car. That's not even a penny a mile!

And the battery is still in top shape.

Safe to say that so far it's been an excellent purchase and definitely paying for itself.

The RV's fuel mileage isn't really affected by the weight of towing the car w/ dolly. We're still averaging ~7 miles per gallon. So it's much cheaper than when we used to drive our pickup truck separately.

Our electric car purchase is mostly a financial decision...but with other perks as well

Sat, 13 Apr 2019 21:08:00 GMT

A Nissan Leaf to replace our GMC Sierra

We're selling our 2004 GMC Sierra and have purchased a 2013 Nissan Leaf to replace it.

The gas savings with this move is obvious just by moving to a smaller car. The truck, while versatile, isn't easy on the gas budget. We're already fueling the RV, so another truck just doesn't make sense.

We also can't tow the truck behind the RV due to it's weight. So Yana would have to drive it everywhere the RV went. That's TWO vehicles to fuel with every stop.

Technically, like our RV purchase, this was an impulse buy.

Yep. We were traveling through Seattle and thought, "let's buy a car while we're in this overpriced city!"

We know impulse purchases are generally discouraged in the financial independence world. However, we found a great deal when we discovered this car (it was the 2nd one we looked at) and we couldn't pass it up.

We paid $7,500 USD for this car. It had 27k miles. And when we took it to Nissan, they told us the battery had no degradation and had been well taken care of. The first Leaf we looked at was priced higher, had slightly more miles, and the battery was degraded 20% For this reason, we pulled the trigger and made the transaction.

We are VERY happy with the purchase.

The other benefits it provides are:

We can now ride in the RV together as a family instead of Chris driving the RV and Yana driving the truck
We can tow the Leaf and stay under legal weight limits (this keeps mileage on the Leaf WAY DOWN)
We can "fuel up" the Leaf many ways
- Using our generator (costs fuel $)
- Plugging it in at RV park (costs $ to stay there, but money we'd pay anyway...so free-ish)
- Plugging in at businesses which offer customer charging (free)
- Quick-charging at stations located all over the world (some are free/some cost money...but still less $ than gasoline)
We drive around at lower costs when we explore local places, as the car's dashboard actually helps drive better (more efficiently)

What do you think of our decision?

We'll see how this affects our fuel costs. Obviously we'll use a little more fuel in the RV to pull the electric car (with the tow dolly trailer it adds a little under 4,000 pounds). So far the mileage we're seeing has been pretty close to what it was before adding the weight. We'll average out the MPG once we accumulate some miles and fill up the RV a few times. That should give us a baseline.

Let us know in the comments below and give us a thumbs up or down!

Fired from my job and it feels great!

Sat, 09 Mar 2019 02:44:00 GMT

Yep, you read that right.

I got fired today!

Don't be gloomy, though...we're not.

It was an amicable split and simply not working out. It happens.

The reason it feels great is because the Whitsons got their freedom back!

We'd been waffling back and forth about giving up on the idea of me working for a living several weeks ago. In the end it's the right move.

After all these years of being able to go where we want, when we want, and how we want...we're stoked to get that freedom back. It's a feeling few people get to experience and the reward is well worth the hard work it takes to reach this level of financial independence. It was a tough decision to get a regular J-O-B in the first place and at first I was excited. But our family and structured routine just done mesh well together.

We like to keep things lively!

So in keeping with that tradition, what did we do hours after getting canned?

We got PB (our trusty motorhome) out of storage and are re-commissioning her for more voyages:

We're not 100% sure where we're going (that's normal...for us) but the most important thing is that we get to spend ALL our time together as a family again!

Stay tuned to find out where we'll be spending that time...

Have you ever felt a big weight lifted off your shoulders after leaving a job? Tell us about it in the comments!

Currently on another site...

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 02:53:42 GMT

We've just created the Financial Independence section

Until we get things moved around and fill it up with meaningful content, check out our Retire Earlier Blog here.