Letter #39 – ✍️ Writing in Seattle 🌲

This week’s newsletter:

• Deepening connections

• End-of-year reflections, together

• So yes, we’re officially FIRE… but not by choice

• And you think that’s the only BIG news? 🤭

Hi friends and fam, ♥️

It’s been a while, the longest while.

The last newsletter went out in September.

Since then, we traveled through Europe for a month, spent Thanksgiving with Tyler’s family and met our nephew for the first time, and a lot of life has unfolded in between.

How have you been? 💛

November, the month we went FIRE, was a true emotional rollercoaster.

Then December arrived and surprised me with the calmest days of 2025.

Even now, I wake up with a subtle jolt of joy and a deep sense of contentment flowing through each day ✨

I’ve been meditating for almost ten years. Tranquility visits from time to time, lightness drifts through now and then, but contentment? She’s a rare guest.

So I’ve been savoring this state of mind and wrapping myself in it.

Even the relentlessly gloomy, rainy Seattle days haven’t been able to bring my mood down ☔️💙

Deepening connections

We spent the final weeks of 2025 surrounded by dear friends. Lots of gatherings, lots of togetherness.

We hosted a Christmas Jingle and Mingle night at our place. 🎄 I’ve always wanted to play the holiday games I kept seeing on social media, and this year I finally made it happen.

Then on New Year’s Eve, we hosted again. This time, it was a Stranger Things watch party to finish the second half of the season finale. It felt especially cozy against the foggy Seattle night.

We are endlessly grateful for the friends and community we have here. They make us feel deeply rooted. 🩵

If we had to name one theme for 2025, it would be deepening connections. Not only with others, but also within ourselves.

One of the most beautiful parts of not being occupied with a job is the space it creates. Space to enjoy the fun, the mundane, and the quiet moments of everyday life more fully.

End of year reflections, together

On the very first day of 2026, Tyler and I finally sat down to do our year-end reflections.

We started with the Wheel of Life assessment.

It’s a framework that visually maps satisfaction across key areas of life. Here are our wheels. It’s pretty easy to guess whose is which. 🤭

Next, we reflected on life’s two main areas: WORK and LIFE. What’s working, and what isn’t.

Then came our 2026 Vision Boards.

I used to hesitate with vision boards because I associated them with manifestation and reinforcing desire and attachment.

But this felt different. More inspirational than desire-driven.

It felt less like “this is what we must achieve” and more like a gentle reminder of our priorities. That shift felt surprisingly liberating.

These are our vision boards. One of us clearly has a lot more vision than the other 😆

Our final activity was something called the Quarterly Quest.

This exercise was inspired by this video from Ali Abdaal, where he challenged traditional yearly resolutions and suggested focusing on just 90 days at a time instead.

He reframed goals as a “Main Quest” to make them feel more adventurous and joyful rather than obligatory.

So Tyler and I each created our Main Quests for the first quarter of 2026, one for Work and one for Life.

Tyler’s approach was to set the minimum, almost impossible to fail goals. Mine was the opposite. A fun and subtle glimpse into how differently our minds work. 🧠

11 days into 2026, and we’re going strong.

Get to know each other more deeply

One day, I asked Tyler why we don’t schedule dates.

And he was genuinely confused, “I thought every day was our date. It definitely feels like one to me.”

I guess I never fully counted our nature walks as dates. 😅

But these reflection exercises opened a different kind of quality bonding. One that lets us see how each other views life and how we aspire to live it.

May we welcome 2026 with clear minds and full hearts, deep connections, and the ability to find joy in any moment life offers. 🙏🏼

So yes, we’re officially FIRE… but not by choice

After six years of intentionally working toward FIRE, life threw us a curveball 😅 and suddenly we found ourselves figuring out early retirement in our 30s.

We’re still processing it, honestly.

During the emotional ups and downs, I found comfort in video journaling. And now, we’re sharing that with you, our dear friends and readers.

In this video, we share
• Our unexpected journey to early retirement
• The unplanned start of our FIRE life
• Retiring to versus retiring from
• The unexpected realities of post-FIRE life
• Navigating post-FIRE finances in a volatile economy
• Why we’re sharing our Life After FIRE journey

As always, thank you for being here with us 🤍

And you think that’s the only BIG news? 🤭

After reaching financial freedom while globe-trotting half the year, officially going FIRE, and now finally living in that hard-earned freedom, we wouldn’t want to keep it to ourselves.

I thought I already knew what freedom felt like from being semi-retired for a few years before we officially FIRE.

But this newfound freedom blew my expectations out of the water. It’s not excitement, but a deep sense of peace, contentment, and ease.

We can say this with certainty now. Financial freedom is the very BEST thing we’ve ever bought for ourselves. 🥹

And we’d love you to experience it too. 💛

And it’s not impossible. In fact, you don’t have to work that hard with your money to get there.

So we decided to start our YouTube channel. To explore a different format and share our lessons and reflections along the Stroll to Freedom in a way that feels lighter and easier to digest.

We’d love for you to join us as we share the real, unfiltered side of life before and after Financial Independence.

The hard parts, the unexpected wins, the weird moments, and everything in between. 🩵

Hope it's helpful for your journey to Freedom 🙏 

Love you to freedom and back, 🫰

Angie & Tyler

Things We are Loving Right Now  ♥️

• 📔 Hobonichi Techo: OMG, just a few weeks in and we are fully converted. 🤩 Two HUGE Hobonichi fans over here. The Japanese nailed it again. The paper quality, the thoughtful little sections in the back, everything about this notebook has taken my journaling and planning to a whole new level. 🔥

• 👩🏻‍🍳 Cookbook | Dishes from the Middle East: We picked this for our Cookbook Club in December and completely fell in love with the dishes. They’re so healthy and bursting with flavor 🤤 Plus, the author lives in the U.K., so her dessert recipes are much less sweet than typical American ones. 🤌