This month marks my 7th year working for Corporate America.
Over those last 7 years, there have been major changes in my life, including but not limited to:
- Buying a fixer-upper home
- Marrying the love of my life
- Bringing home a crazy golden retriever
- Introducing a baby into this world
But I won’t pretend life has been all sunshine and rainbows, I have also:
- Been diagnosed with a chronic medical condition
- Gotten screwed over by every type of home contractor possible
- Experienced years of money dysmorphia
The list goes on and on.
It’s honestly remarkable to reflect on how fast time seems to be fly by, with no possibility of slowing down. And how that invariable passage of time changes your perspectives on life.
Case and point, when I first entered Corporate America I remember first discovering the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) Movement. I absorbed myself in any and all literature that I could find on the topic. FIRE Blogs, FIRE Podcasts, FIRE YouTube Channels… you name it. Hell, I even started this website!
The idea behind the FIRE Movement is intoxicating: Just be frugal, save & invest every month, and then you will never have to work a job you hate again. And when you are young and single, it’s easy enough to apply these principles and chase FIRE.
However, as time continues to soar by, your life and goals will invariably change. And those changes will ultimately waver into our finances such as not being able to continously sustain as high of a savings rate that we were able to consistently achieve before.
Before you know it, we find ourselves at war with ourselves. We want to hold onto and maximize those financial habits that will help us FIRE but we also want to live our dreams. This can manifest itself in ways such as:
- Not traveling despite wanting to travel the world
- Not buying a house despite having more than enough money to do so
- Opting for the cheapest version of everything
The next thing you know, we end up becoming misers. After all, that’s what we have to do in order to have freedom tomorrow, right?
However, the truth is that tomorrow is not guaranteed. Even Barbie knows that…
Despite understanding this, I would continue to struggle with the absurd idea of not doing things that I knew would enrich my life today at the expense of my lowering savings rate.
However, I forced myself to act on my dreams: I bought a fixer-upper, purchased my dream car and brought home my dream dog companion… Yet, I continued to feel like a failure because I wasn’t doing “FIRE by the Book:” you know, driving a 20 year old Honda and shopping at Aldi for everything.
Fast forward and I ended up finding myself in the hospital with my first-born in my arms. There is simply no other feeling in the world that compares to that amazing experience. You just want to spend every moment you can with them.
Despite my spouse staying at home with our child and me working from home, it never felt like there was enough time in a day to be with my family. I would wake up, 10 minutes would go by, and before I knew it the day was over. I began pondering more and more about how short life really is.
And these feelings of never having enough time in the day, personal disappointment in my lackluster savings habits and not allowing myself to be happy with spending money on things that would 100% enrich my life began to exponentially grow over the months and years.
There then came a point where I didn’t sleep for four days. Between the exhaustion and extreme tightness in my stomach and chest caused by all these stress-inducing thoughts, I ended up checking myself into an Emergency Room at 2:00 AM.
30 minutes and $4,000 later, I left feeling worse than when I arrived. But I will surely rant about that at some other point…
And despite that incident being a hell of an experience, it opened up my eyes.
If I were to pass tomorrow, I wouldn’t have died a happy man. Despite having any incredibly blessed and amazing life, I never allowed myself to really be happy. I began accepting the fact that my life’s primary driver shouldn’t solely and inexplicably be linked to money.
Now, that doesn’t mean that I am giving myself a free pass to turn into a Jay Gatsby and throw frugality completely out the door. Instead, what it does mean is accepting that I’m at completely different stage of my life than where I was at 7 years ago.
And that I don’t need to save as much as I used to. And that’s OK.
My focus won’t be figuring out how to maximize numbers on a screen at the end of each month.
Instead, I want to create memories with my spouse and daughter, grow mangoes, learn how to speak Hawaiian, write for my websites and volunteer for causes that I’m passionate about. That to me is happiness.
Don’t get me wrong, I still want to leave my 9-5 just as much as the next guy. However, I wouldn’t ever wish away the time for the future. I’ve seen ‘Click’ too many times to know that a lifetime of memories is worth far more than just working and trying to earn an extra buck.
Thank you for reading 🙂
RE@54 says
Funny how life continually throw curve balls at you. Well, not “funny”, but you know what I mean…
Keep flexible and it is ok to change your thinking to fit your current circumstances.
We moved from our house of 24 years to a luxury apartment. We like where we live next to coffee shops, restaurants, bike trails, and stores. We thought we were in our forever home before, but the house was too big for us after the kids moved out. We will be retiring in nine months when I will be 55 and she will be 52.5. Life is good and enjoy the moments as you have figured out.