Well, my 20s are over. I knew it would happen eventually. There were the early years full of anger and judgement, the middle years when I started to figure this out and finally reached the escape velocity needed to start doing the things I really enjoy, and the later years full of impossible job situations, a diaspora of friends, and strange new directions.
When I was younger, I made a habit of latching onto various grandiose purposes of one form or another. This would happen every year or two. Every purpose was dashed in some way, at some time or another. Just like trying to time the market, I’ve given up trying to time God’s hand and learned to accept my amorphous fate. Oddly enough, the subject of money is the one subject that never goes away.
On the one hand, life itself means more than money itself, but on the other hand, you really can’t subtract money from the equation. It can be a provider, an encourager, an enabler. Some people kill for it and lose themselves in the process, while others ignore or even shun it, and pay a heavy price.
The limits of money are often illustrated with a short and rather unspecific tale of the rich but unhealthy man who would trade all of his riches for health. When I’ve encountered this little story, though, what’s never described is that there is such a thing as “enough health”, and there is such a thing as “enough wealth”. The healthy but impoverished man is unlikely to maintain his health for very long, just as the ill but rich man may not survive long enough for his money to matter. Give all your money for health? No. Some of it? Most of it? Maybe. More likely. This is often ignored. It’s also easy to criticize wealth when you don’t have any of it. I did this for a very long time.
Which leads me to the real goal of this post: what exactly am I trying to accomplish with money?
You see, I don’t believe that careerism is man’s natural state. I think careerism is for people who lack ambition and creativity. Not, of course, that careers, themselves, are bad, just that this fanatical devotion to them is the lifeblood of uninspiring people. Just my opinion. I also don’t believe that homeownership makes you financially responsible; I think you should never become a homeowner unless you already are financially responsible. I’ve wanted to write on these subjects more, and it may happen some day.
I wish I could tell you what my goals with money are. They are unclear. There are several very general options:
- Seek financial independence in the United States. This will take a long time to reach.
- Seek financial independence to United States standards then hit the globe and no longer give a shit because you can come back whenever the hell you want.
- Seek financial independence overseas, return status unknown.
- Seek quasi-financial independence that allows for cool, weird options and job choices, high-income not required
- Seek ass-hauling, long term mega-wealth and command legions of dollars to various parts of the church and/or family and friends.
Five general numbers roughly illustrate these options (not in the same order):
- $300,000 invested – using the 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate (Google this if you wish), this would generate a nice, clean, $1,000 per month. Great number to have for living employment-free in third-world or otherwise really cheap countries.
- $600,000 – easily enough for a single person to “retire” on, if you’re smart about it, since it would generate $2,000 per month. Would also likely grow quite a bit if you spend time in a third-world country, so yeah, you could still return fairly easily.
- $1,200,000 – enough for a frugal family to “retire” in the United States, giving off $4,000 per month (typically post-tax, but this is a subject for another day). Maybe not if you want to live in San Fransisco, or maybe even Denver, or maybe if you have a bajillion kids, but it’s the de-facto Financial Independence standard among people in the FI community.
- $2,000,000 – only attainable by very high-income earners or a longer, more typical work-toward-age-65 life. Also known as Fat FIRE, it’s basically for people who enjoy spending more money and are willing to trade time in exchange for it.
My original goal was $300k, but I have no idea where God actually wants me. These are just the ideas in my head. I could end up anywhere on the spectrum of life choices. It’s possible I may not make it even to that! I simply have no idea.
Make a good salary? Interested in living below your means? Oh, yeah. These goals can be reached. But I’m realizing that what’s really important is being open to a future you may not have imagined. The deep interest I have in money management is there for a reason. It’s not a fluke, and I’m not wasting my time. I’m certainly not depriving myself of life in the process. But all I can do is take things one step at a time, one paycheck at a time, one year at a time, sometimes one day at a time. When my 401k shot past $50,000 a month or so ago, I couldn’t believe it. I still remember shooting for $20,000 by age 30, and smashing that record last year. It’s definitely not all me, I can tell you that. But it sure feels good when living below your means adds up. I could have bought a sports car, or some such toy. And it probably wouldn’t have been wrong to, either. But I am glad to have overlooked those things. I’m glad to see the money adding up, and goals getting closer.
There are a lot of things I enjoy about programming, and my life will be very closely involved with it for the foreseeable future. I will probably always stay involved with it, to an extent. But I also think there are other things to do with life, and I just need to reach those opportunities before I know what to shoot for.
The strategy continues. I have spent quite a bit lately, and I’m almost painfully reminded just how much some of these purchases do not contribute anything particularly good to my life. The possessions have accumulated, and I’m starting to feel the claustrophobia of busyness settling in again. Whereas Thoreau stated that things are much more easily acquired than gotten rid of, I still assert that things are much more easily acquired than made use of, and I have to be very cautious on boring days that I don’t go out seeking excitement in stores or food.
I have begun to establish some non-trivial travel objectives, however. But it will require physical conditioning, planning, and some changes in attitude. It is still very preliminary, but the seeds have been planted.
It is, sadly, too often thought of as a tremendous sacrifice to ‘do without’. For me, I’m finding that to be half the fun. I’ve had regular heartburn for the past decade plus, and only this past year did I start to realize that this is caused by a few very specific ingredients. My safest bet for food is in common staples, and I’m suddenly presented with this world of really cheap food, if only I would reach out and take it, rejecting some of the key garbage foods I’ve become habituated to. People often state that healthy food is expensive, but I really don’t believe this. I also don’t believe the dichotomy between life and money is nearly what some people make it out to be.