About

Hi, I'm BlackBoxFI, a 30-ish software engineer living in San Francisco. That's me, just a little black box.

This blog is a record of my plan, progress, and hurdles in the pursuit of financial independence and beyond.

But, why?

The world is rife with financial independence blogs, why write another one? I enjoy blogs with personal stories and case studies, but I only know of a few that I enjoy reading. I think writing my own will be fun and maybe it will resonate with you too.

While retiring early seems like the norm for engineers, I have never earned close to 500k a year (yet) and I don't want to leave San Francisco (yet), so this might be a slightly more novel story.

But, not...

I'm not going to write about the minutiae and "how to" of personal finance, investing, how to live on your portfolio, etc. There are tons of books and websites that can explain better than I can. I'll make a page with my favorites so you can read on your own.

Some rules

• I will never monetize this blog.
• I will never create a community or allow comments.
• None of this is financial advice. Seek a professional for your personal situation.

I have nothing against blogs with monetization or communities, I just have no interest in them for this project. Whether you intend to or not, monetization definitely changes incentives.

Some notes

• Time and dates will be fuzzy, except for current events (Covid, wars, etc). This is mostly to protect my anonymity.
• Most dollar amounts use inflation data (CPI) to show the equivalent amount in the current year.
  • For example, if I write a post in 2020 about spending $10, the inflation adjusted amount for the current year will come after in parenthesis. Like this: "I spent $10 ($12 in 2024)." If I am writing about the current year, the conversion will be hidden.
• You can convert the amounts on my blog to be relative to your city's cost of living. Read more on the Cost of Living Conversion page.

Email me if you want, but I do not guarantee a response.