(highlight:: I recently read the top comment in the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/58a2bl/what_level_of_lifestle_are_you_trying_to_achieve/
Am I alone in not having a clue what I want? I'm 29 and have been saving a considerable amount of my wage since 23, but I still have no idea what I want out of the future. Is anyone else totally on board with FI, but with no real sense of what they want from it?
It seemed to have a lot of responses and that's how I felt/feel so I thought I would share my recent "revelations."
I write this as a word of caution and as a learning experience. My name is MrLlamaSC, and I'm a save-aholic.
About 3 1/2 years ago I graduated college and moved into the typical software engineer position in a low cost of living city like so many others here. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, I wasn't 100% in love with IT work, but I knew saving money to retire early sounded like a wonderful idea so I started down that path. I maxed my IRA, 401K, HSA, and opened up a taxable account for additional savings. My expenses had always been pretty low (paid off used car, cheap rent, not materialistic, etc) but I had read about lifestyle creep and what not so I really made sure to avoid that and maintained around a 75% savings rate.
After about 8-9 months, I met up with a girl I had dated a couple of years prior, and we started dating again. She was absolutely lovely, was a pretty good saver herself, and had an amazing job bringing home more than me. I ended up teaching her a lot about finances and helped show her how she could pay off her loans quickly so we could start building towards a future to retire early and then live life doing whatever we wanted to do.
She worked a lot of extra hours to make more money to pay off her loans, and I ended up picking up a side hustle (streaming) just for fun that ended up working out to make a decent amount of money. And of course, the more time/energy I put into streaming and the more time she put into working extra shifts, the more money we made; So that's what we did.
Her goals were more focused around loans and a house, while my goals were more focused around retirement, but regardless both of us had savings goals and I thought things were going really well. Then after 2.5 years of dating, she broke up with me and I had to evaluate my life and I found the following things:
We didn't have many experiences together considering how long we dated. I would sit in my chair and daydream about one day when we were retired traveling to Japan for a month or taking a cruise to the Bahamas or whatever, but often those things didn't happen. Additionally, a lot of smaller experiences never happened because it was always cheaper/easier to just stay at home and watch TV than go out to the bars with friends. Don't get me wrong, we didn't do NOTHING, but there was definitely less activities out because there was a focus on saving money.
I wasn't living a happy/healthy life myself. I worked 176 hours a month, streamed another 120-140, tried talking to her every night, threw in random workouts, etc. All in all I only slept on average 4 hours a night and that exhausted me to where I had no energy for anything else including keeping my apartment clean, cooking food, taking her out dancing, etc. This played a big piece into the lack of experiences as well. I was making great money, but there was a cost to it and that cost was my relationship and my life.
My mood about work and other things had become a lot more negative. I simply didn't have the energy to care and it for sure affected my performance and happiness. Every day I sat at work thinking about how quickly I couldn't wait to retire and be done with it and how much better life would be in the future. Any free time outside of work I did get I just wanted to try and nap.
What's amazing to me though is how I NEVER realized this until she broke up with me. I had focused so hard on my retirement goal that I almost based my life success on how well I was doing on getting to that. I was seeing my investments and bank account grow and I got so focused on the potential future that I stopped living in the present. Not only is this not attractive/fair to my partner, but it didn't grow me as a human being either. I never realized (until the break up) that if I'm miserable during the accumulation phase, I'm still going to be miserable afterwards. Because having 100K, 200K 500K, 1M means nothing if you aren't happy and not doing stuff you love/being with people you love.
FI is super exciting to learn about and pursue but after you get everything setup all you do is wait and then continue waiting. That waiting is your life and during that time is when you need to find out who you are and what you enjoy. During that time you need to figure out life that you want and then adjust your savings/goals to meet it. Live your life like you're FI but just in smaller ways (weekends, holidays, after work) and see what parts you enjoy and what you can live without.
I look back at the past few years of my life and at my bank account and I would gladly give away a hefty chunk of it and work longer if it meant I could have experienced more of the world and found more passions I could have for the rest of my life, especially with someone I had loved so much. I built my savings, but I never built my life.
What I found has helped me start down the changed path is simply 2 things:
Ask yourself questions and answer them. Without thinking about money or access or whatever, find out the things you enjoy in your life. Do you like renting an apartment, or would you rather have a house? What challenges do you enjoy in life? Who do you look up to? Etc.
Be open to new experiences, and allow yourself a decent budget for these. For my budget I went more extreme as catch up for the past few years so I'm allowing my friends to choose new experiences for us to share from things like climbing mountains in Canada and scuba diving in Hawaii to free/cheap things like driving to the Grand Canyon and spending a day geocaching around the city. Sure this is going to knock my savings rate down a little bit, but it is going to build my life up tremendously so that one day when I do retire I'll have somewhere to retire to instead of somewhere to retire from.
By doing this I'm not only improving my life and happiness now, but I'm shaping a life for my future and actually starting to see goals beyond "save $X and retire in year YYYY."
FI is amazing and we are so fortunate to even have the chance to attain it, but don't lose sight of your life. Make decisions that aren't just financially right, but also emotionally, mentally, and spiritually right for you as well.
Build the life you want, then save for it.)
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