Kronk
Full time employment: Posting here.
I picked my title to be somewhat heretical. But this is a realization that I've come to fairly recently, though maybe this is just common sense.
The goal in life should be to have the best life you possibly can, given your personal constraints. Each individual has his or her own path to happiness, and since we're reading an Early Retirement board, presumably that's part of our respective paths.
I've been finding, though, that too much emphasis on achieving FIRE is unhealthy. My FIRE date is at least 10 years off, and that would involve everything going really right. My life is very different now it was 10 years ago, and it certainly wouldn't surprise me if things changed significantly again within the next ten years.
Focusing too much on FIRE has involved sweating the small stuff too much. I'm saving more than I'm spending ($4-5k/month savings, $4k spending), so there's plenty of leeway there. Worrying about periodic overspending (so I "only" invest $3k that month) is dumb, as long as the spending is something that will improve my #1 goal, which is enjoying life. If the tradeoff is ER'ing a bit later (47 instead of 45), so be it.
Deferring gratification goes along with saving, but I'm finding that it is stupid to go through a decade with the outlook of "yeah, I'm unhappy now, but when I ER in 10 years I'll be loving life." Start loving life now and let FIRE take care of itself.
Anyhow, for me this is more of an attitude adjustment than anything else. My work lunches now involve takeout (~$8/day), because brown bagging for the last 4 months has been ticking me off. As an independent consultant, I can take time off (as long as I don't mind not getting paid), so I'm taking days off here and there. But the biggest attitude adjustment has been about my job itself -- I still don't enjoy it, but I've somehow managed to be less uptight about it because of the mental shift. Between no longer "racing" to get to ER and just deciding to have a more positive outlook while at work, I'm feeling happier -- so I'm achieving my life's goal.
(Of course, that part about a positive outlook while at work might undergo a bit of stress when things slow down a bit again at work, which they will shortly...)
The goal in life should be to have the best life you possibly can, given your personal constraints. Each individual has his or her own path to happiness, and since we're reading an Early Retirement board, presumably that's part of our respective paths.
I've been finding, though, that too much emphasis on achieving FIRE is unhealthy. My FIRE date is at least 10 years off, and that would involve everything going really right. My life is very different now it was 10 years ago, and it certainly wouldn't surprise me if things changed significantly again within the next ten years.
Focusing too much on FIRE has involved sweating the small stuff too much. I'm saving more than I'm spending ($4-5k/month savings, $4k spending), so there's plenty of leeway there. Worrying about periodic overspending (so I "only" invest $3k that month) is dumb, as long as the spending is something that will improve my #1 goal, which is enjoying life. If the tradeoff is ER'ing a bit later (47 instead of 45), so be it.
Deferring gratification goes along with saving, but I'm finding that it is stupid to go through a decade with the outlook of "yeah, I'm unhappy now, but when I ER in 10 years I'll be loving life." Start loving life now and let FIRE take care of itself.
Anyhow, for me this is more of an attitude adjustment than anything else. My work lunches now involve takeout (~$8/day), because brown bagging for the last 4 months has been ticking me off. As an independent consultant, I can take time off (as long as I don't mind not getting paid), so I'm taking days off here and there. But the biggest attitude adjustment has been about my job itself -- I still don't enjoy it, but I've somehow managed to be less uptight about it because of the mental shift. Between no longer "racing" to get to ER and just deciding to have a more positive outlook while at work, I'm feeling happier -- so I'm achieving my life's goal.
(Of course, that part about a positive outlook while at work might undergo a bit of stress when things slow down a bit again at work, which they will shortly...)