Mr and Mrs Why925 are a couple from 2 different continents living on the third continent as a husband and wife. We came to Australia from Korea and Czech Republic in 2001 and fell in love with our new home country and each other, got married and never looked back. We were always puzzled what the life is about (especially working life). We have done lots of reading and web research and we liked topics like Financial Independence, Early Retirement, Self-Sufficiency, Travel, Simple Living, Frugality, Anti-consumerism, Geographic arbitrage and similar. And that’s what we would like to share on our website.
Our background is in Accounting (Degree) and Finance (decades long self study). We are quite interested in investing and also residential real estate.
We love traveling and in 2013 we got very lucky and our bosses signed off on our 5 months leave (paid and unpaid), which we used to spend our time in 18 different countries of South East Asia, India, China, European countries and also Morocco in North Africa. It was trip of our lives and we cannot wait to repeat it. Also this was the time when I have started to write my first posts on blogger.com Other my hobbies are soccer, surfing, martial arts(so far I have done 4 years of teakwondo and couple of years of brazilian jiujitsu) and reading.
One question which inspired me on my financial independence journey and writing blogs was actually Why nine to five? How come that none of the people I have asked it, did not question it. Why we should work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year over 40+ years? Is it what people always did? Who said so? Can I change it? What is the purpose of it? I always distinguish between working for money and doing something what you love. I guess vast majority of people are working for money. And even they don’t question 9 to 5 lifestyle. This got me to start looking if there is something else. Obviously you can start business, get rich and enjoy the money. Somehow with odds 9 failures out of 10 start ups made me think again. Financial independence movement shows the way for average, not so smart Joe like me how to get to the point to be able to do whatever you like. I tried it, got my wife on board and we got there. It did take a bit of time but it was not hard. All it needed was to be consistent.
We were consistent enough to achieve certain degree of financial freedom and we would like to share it here. If we manage to inspire just one reader to go similar way like ours it would be considered great success. We have managed to pay off mortgage on house in Sydney within about 5 years and get 7 digit rainy days stash putting us in position to explore the world and our lives because we believe that “TIME IS FINITE’. All that on average Australian salaries, with imperfect English and strong Asian and European accents starting, at the bottom washing dishes and going through University second time in our thirties after finishing our first degrees in our original home countries. Why it might be inspirational for many, is that we have not actually experienced any significant career or financial break through. All happened just through consistent determination without too much hard work or huge commitment which makes it reasonably easy to replicate to certain degree for many others.
We have beautiful twin boys. Currently (since 2017) we are both full time parents (though don’t call it retired) living mostly off our rental income. We have bitten the bullet. Mrs Why925 did not go back to work after maternity leave and Mr Why925 realized that his support in raising twins is needed, plus after 12 years in the same job we thought it was time to put in practice what we were learning about financial independence.