Paint a Picture of FI

I am usually hesitant to bring up our financial goals in conversations with friends and especially coworkers.  It’s usually not a productive conversation, with the following themes:

• Feeling judged for spending money in a certain way.

• Jealousy that it is a possibility for someone near them, and assumption that we’re weird in some way to be able to pursue this goal.

• My wife and I must have family help / a large inheritance / a trust fund.

• Why would someone even want to retire in their 30’s or 40’s anyway?

To clarify those first few points, yes, my wife and I are weird for so many reasons.  That doesn’t mean what we’re pursuing with financial independence isn’t applicable to other people, however.  We also did not receive external help to get where we are today - to the contrary, we each started with $40,000+ in student loans.  And finally, my goal with presenting this information isn’t to judge others for spending choices.  It is to present an alternative that I feel most people are not aware of, and that some people might consider if they did know of this option.

But that last question I feel deserves more attention.  Once I became aware that there was an alternative path for money that allowed me to be more independent, I started to dream about what that could look like.  The first version of that dream was what most people assume when they think of retiring early: relaxing on a beach somewhere with my family.  My wife and I love to travel, so we will definitely include vacation time in our future.  But then I started to think about what that would look like in practice.  My first daughter will be in school in a few short years, so practically speaking, we’ll be available for vacations in the summer for the foreseeable future.  That leaves the whole rest of the year.

Which led me to think about a bigger life question: what would I do for work if I didn’t need to care about the money?  I started to dream a bit about the things I could do:

• Start a small business without the pressure to have it succeed immediately.

• Volunteer my time at somewhere like Habitat for Humanity.

• Have the time for home repairs that sound fun, like building a deck.

• Be able to cook more meals at home.

• Maintain a vegetable garden.

• Simply be able to enjoy the trails, forest preserves, and other attractions around me when they are not busy.

Unfortunately, most people I talk to are still struggling to get through level 2 of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  For those not familiar, this theory posits that an individual progresses through 5 levels of needs:

1. Physiological (food, water, shelter)

2. Safety (health, stable finances, a safe neighborhood)

3. Love (friendship, intimacy, sense of connection)

4. Self esteem (achievement, confidence, respect from others)

5. Self actualization (creativity, spontaneity, meaning)

When my wife and I were first married, it was hard to look past the $100,000+ of debt and think about what else we could do with money.  We knew that having this much debt stressed us both out, so that seemed like motivation enough to keep going.

I remember hitting a point in that debt payoff journey where I finally thought “hey, we are actually making our way through this.”  I believe that was around the point we had 80% or so of our debt paid off.  I started to dream about what could be next, because if we successfully were able to pay off over $100,000 in debt, what else could we do?

I encourage others to dream about what’s possible if money were no longer an issue.  My wife and I were able to find enough motivation to finish our debt payoff journey based on past negative experiences with money, but we would have felt even stronger conviction about our chosen path had we started to dream sooner.  Most people get stuck on a picture of financial independence that involves big houses, fancy cars, and drinks on a beach.  I encourage you to think past that to paint a more vivid picture.  What could you do if money were not a primary concern?