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We are onFIREfamily from Portland, Oregon. We are a family of four living out our dream. We’ve got a plan to become financially independent, retire early, and go on a year-long epic family adventure.

Here’s Our Story

Seth and Jennifer met in college. We were both studying to get Chemical Engineering degrees. After graduation, we got married, both got jobs as engineers, and started our lives together.

We were living the traditional American dream. Bought a house, racked up some debts, pretty normal stuff.

When we decided to start our family, we got serious about our financial situation. We learned about Dave Ramsey and started Our Total Money Makeover.

We paid off $265,000 in debt (including our house). We have two amazing children (Madeleine and Mason).

Because we were debt free, we could afford Jennifer quitting her engineering career when they were born to begin her new career as a stay at home mom.

Being at home allowed her the flexibility to homeschool our kids when we figured out that’s what would be the best for them.

Our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Bella, joins us on our adventures.

Family Is a Priority Around Here

We’ve each got our own personalities and we do our best, as flawed humans living in close proximity, to make it through life together.

Our dream is to become financially independent (so Seth can escape the rat race) and retire from his cubicle while our kids are still under our roof. As a busy homeschool family with lots of activities, Jennifer and the kids could use an escape from their over-scheduled life as well.

No Guarantees This Side of Heaven

We know that life is never guaranteed. Seth is a survivor of Stage 4 Lymphoma and has a bunch of hardware in his spine holding him together. None of us ever knows what the future holds, but today he is cancer and pain free so we’re excited to embark as soon as possible on our adventure.

The Adventure

The vision we have for our grand family adventure is a year-long boat trip around the eastern part of the United States. It’s called the Great Loop. We hope to begin in the summer of 2022. We’d love for you to follow us as we do all of the hard work to get ready to hit that target. We also invite you to come along on our adventure as we blog and YouTube our experience. We want to show you what is possible and how we’ve become fortunate enough to be able to pull this off.

We’re not financial experts or travel influencers. We’re just an average middle class family with a dream and aren’t afraid of working hard to make that dream a reality.

More About Seth

I’m Seth, Dad, Dreamer, Planner, Nerd, Saver, Doer of epic things.

If I could be summed up in a tshirt.

I don’t do anything halfway. I’m what Gretchen Rubin would describe as an abstainer. I’m either all out or all in. I like to crank the dial up to 11. My philosophy could best be described as “Work hard, play hard.”

I’d consider myself a minimalist-in-training. I’ve seen too much how things can own you (rather than you owning them) and don’t desire that for my life. I am thrifty. I am handy. I DIY to a fault. I prefer old things because “they don’t make them like they used to” and I can fix them up and maintain them myself.

Of course one shirt isn’t enough to sum me up! Ha!

I over-think and over-engineer things. I’ll spend more time engineering a better solution to a problem than simply getting to work fixing it through brute force.

More About Jennifer

I’m Jennifer, Mom, Teacher, Spender (sort-of), Doer of hard things, etc….

If I could be summed up in a tshirt. (Except it would be gray.)

I’m a multi-tasker extraordinaire. I over-schedule our lives and try to figure out how we can keep the most balls in the air at any one time. I’m an extrovert and thrive on connections.

I am chill. I can be happy pretty much anywhere. This is what makes me compatible with Seth in that I don’t necessarily dream big dreams but I’m happy to go along for the ride.

In contrast to Seth, I’m a moderator. I can eat just one cookie from the jar and be okay. I’m not an all or nothing sort of person, I live in the gray areas. If there is a job to be done, rather than over-think or over-engineer it, I’m the one that just gets down to work and knocks it out. It may not be the fanciest solution to a problem, but it gets solved and we move on. 

I’m the opposite of minimalist (maximalist?). I tend to hang on to things (Seth says I’m a hoarder-in-training, but I think I’m more of a lazy sentimentalist). On the nerd-to-free spirit scale, I’m somewhere in the middle. I get the math due to my chemical engineering background, but my tendency is to be a spender and giver. I don’t mind a goal or a plan but I’m not all caught up in the process like Seth is.

Together, we form the unsuspected, ill-equipped, and humble superheroes behind onFIREfamily.  Welcome to our story!