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Welcome to theFIREstarter! If you are interested in themes such as Financial Independence, Retiring Early, Downshifting, or simply just working less and living more then please stick around, I think we’ll get on just fine 🙂
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A totally non-perfect scene from our recent holiday
They say that “perfection is the enemy of good” and I wholeheartedly believe in this mantra.
But it is usually applied to situations around either business/entrepreneurial endeavours e.g:
You can’t wait to ship your product until it’s perfect because that will never happen.
Or artistic and creative ones e.g:
You can’t expect every article or sentence you write to be perfect otherwise you will end up suffering from crippling writers block and never actually get around to finishing anything.
But I think this rule actually applies way more generally in life and can deeply affect someones outlook on life and therefore be a major blocker to their internal and long lasting happiness.
I’ll demonstrate this with the customary way of doing so on personal finance blogs, with a story about eggs.
We spent just over 2 weeks in France in caravans (3 of them!) and although at least 2 of them were pretty swanky by caravanning standards (the decidedly non swanky one is shown in the picture above!), I have to say that I missed the comfort of our high-tech memory foam mattress specifically, and our modestly sized 3 bedroom terraced house in general.
I’ve talked about this kind of thing before… but while I respect people who can and want to do the long term travel thing, I become more and more convinced that I don’t think it is for me/us any more, or at this stage of our lives at the least. Things could sway back the other way as we get older as well of course!
Look, I know that comfort and luxury is just another weakness, but I am finding more and more as I get older that I miss my home comforts, and Mrs T is the same. Having a rugrat in tow as well is surely part of it as well, although there are plenty of people doing the travel/living abroad with kids thing. Again I can’t say enough how much I admire those people for doing what they are doing and living an awesome life, but I just can’t see myself being happy with this lifestyle.
As mentioned in a few of the previous posts, I have gone a bit radio silence on the blog for the last few months, especially with regards to the monthly updates.
The truth is I haven’t updated my FI spreadsheet since the December update in January!
I know I should really get around to update this before it gets too much to catch up on, but in truth I feel the boat has already sailed on this one already. We’re off on holiday on Sunday for over 2 weeks and I am pretty sure I am not going to do it before then, and by the time we get back that’s nearly 6 months of the year that has gone.
The ironic thing is that I feel we’ve been doing pretty good on the spending front, and also completely smashing it on income, so the savings rates should be sky high. As in record high (for us) maybe even >60% for the year so far.
Alas, I cannot report an accurate figure because of the above laziness.
Or is it laziness? Maybe just more that we are now cruising on auto-pilot, and tracking so closely has started to seem a little pointless?
Probably a bit of both!
I’ve certainly not been putting my feet up though, with the Each way betting side hustle going better than ever, putting in the hours at work and the rest of the time trying to be the best parent and husband I can be, and OK I’ll admit, also actually having a fair bit of fun as well 🙂 , we’ve definitely been keeping ourselves busy. It’s just the enthusiasm for this tracking malarkey seems to have faded, which has coincided weirdly just at the point where you’d have thought it would have been the most fun to keep track of. Go figure!
As parents to a 3 year old girl who, weirdly, loves chocolate (!?!) we naturally had to engage in the yearly tradition of going for an Easter egg hunt last Sunday.
She loved it!
Since then it’s been requested that we do another egg hunt pretty much every day, and most days we’ve just gone along with it, with greater or lesser effort; sometimes just hiding one small egg which she then gets to eat 1, other times stringing out the fun for longer and hiding the full accompaniment of eggs she received.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am pretty sure that if we refused to let her eat at least some sort of chocolate at the end of the hunt, there would be a lot of kicking and screaming, but apart from that it seems pretty obvious that the enjoyment of the hunt is at least approximately as much as the prize at the end.
This happens a lot in life, mainly around when you are purchasing something:
For many people, just going to the mall or the high street and shopping itself creates just as much buzz (sometimes more so, just ask all those shopaholics!) than actually owning the product you end up buying.
Online shopping can be just as bad – researching and buying some strange or techy item we’ve never owned before. I will admit, I really do enjoy the process of finding out all the tech specs, comparing products, and then comparing prices to find myself the best bargain!
House porn – People tend to really enjoy watching TV shows about moving house or doing up their current one. Some people even make a day out of going to look at new houses in their area even if they have little intention of moving!
One area that we maybe do not think about as much as we should do is applying this theory to the long arduous march to FI and/or RE.
We would do well to consistently reflect upon this insight and savour the hunt in this case, rather than wishing our lives away for the chocolatey goodness of FIRE that could be a decade or two away.
So enjoy the hunt of FIRE as much as you will do when you get there!
Notes:
Even at one a day I think she’ll still be eating them come August *rolling eyes emoji* ↩
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I am not a professional anything, and you should treat all the words you read on this site as ones that exist for your infotainment only. Even the ones in this disclaimer. I will not be held responsible for any kind of outcome from you following the advice or hint of a suggestion made on this blog, and will not be liable for any emotional damage inflicted by the stinkingly bad puns contained within. Read at your own risk. Some of the links on this website may be affiliate links, if you support me via these links I will be forever in your debt, not in any monetary sense of course. Like I'd actually put that in the disclaimer! Hah!
A totally non-perfect scene from our recent holiday
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