I am a bit of a personal finance nerd and I love reading PF blogs. I will sheepishly admit that I’ve drunk the Mr. Money Mustache FI/RE (Financial Independence/ Early Retirement) kool-aid and am a complete convert. If you don’t know what I am talking about, here are a few links to illuminate you. I know this is mainly a blog about fitness and hiking, but since it is my blog I would like to include some financial goals as well. I know this idea is hard to swallow for a mainstream audience, the first argument being that it’s impossible and delusional. However, a cursory web search reveals multiple people who have been doing this for quite a while. The most relevant to our situation is Doug Nordman, who completely retired (along with his wife) after 20 years of military service over 15 years ago and is still going strong!
The reality is that it’s simply a balance of where your values lie and what you’re willing to sacrifice to get what you want. Most people who want to retire early are in one of two camps: they either hate their jobs, or they have other goals/ life pursuits that do not earn enough or even any money to support themselves. I am firmly in the latter group. A short summary of my life goals include:
- My first taste of wanderlust as a teen came after watching this video. I looked up all the locations in that video (and the sequels) and made my own mental list of all the places I needed to visit in my lifetime. This included summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro; seeing the salt flats in Bolivia; hiking to Everest Base Camp; going on an expedition to find gorillas is Uganda; Angkor Wat; Torres del Pain in Argentina; hiking through the Swiss Alps; and on and on. I did manage to visit Zanzibar and Angkor Wat in college (pictured above) and the experience was every bit as amazing as I thought it would be.
- I want to do an Ironman someday. I have done several Olympic triathlons in the past , so this is an achievable goal with the proper commitment and dedication to training.
- I want to complete a 50k, 50 mile, and perhaps someday even… a 100 miler.
- Completing a triple crown: Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail, and Continental Divide Trail. All three American iconic long-distance trails.
- Obviously since I love backpacking and hiking, there are shorter trails and hikes I’d love to do: Mt. St Helens, Wonderland Trail, John Muir Trail, Wind River High Route, the Sierra High Route, summiting Mt. Rainier, etc.
- Having time to visit close and extended family; it’s become so common for Americans to move for their jobs that I now have family in Florida, Ohio, Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia, and California, and with the meager vacation time offered to most employees seeing everyone is difficult if not impossible.
- Cycle-touring the trans-American route from Virginia to Oregon
- Living in an RV for a summer (or perhaps longer) and road-tripping to all the National Parks
- And potentially endless additional outdoor recreational pursuits, including long-distance cycling, various marathons, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, sea kayaking, white water kayaking, canoe-camping, mountaineering, climbing, bouldering, and the list goes on.
Are you tired yet? Obviously quite a few of these are absolutely incompatible with a standard 9-5 job and most of them are at least inconvenienced by it. These experiences mean more to me than any fancy house, nice clothes, dinners out, or expensive car. Therefore it makes sense that I’m willing to sacrifice those things in order to afford the experiences that I really desire. And honestly, I don’t really care what other people think of my choices and I definitely do not believe that having nice things is a requirement to have a happy life.
This is why I max out my TSP and Roth IRA every year and save as much as possible on top of that. It’s not uncommon among the personal finance world but I believe it’s very rare to do these things at a young age in the “real world”.
I could go on and offer counter-arguments to the most common protestations against this idea, such as not living up to your potential, not contributing to society, etc. but this blog post is long enough already. If you’ve read the 7 Habits of Effective People then you know that Habit #2 is Begin With the End in Mind. The End that I desire is not to be some corporate executive or even a high-ranking government employee, because those achievements are empty of true fulfillment. What I desire is to lead a full and satisfying life full of adventure and meaningful time spent with friends and family. And this is by far the best way I’ve found to achieve that.
By the way, being financially independent doesn’t mean you have to quit working; it can also give you the freedom to take a more satisfying albeit lower-paying job or start your own business. I’m not sure exactly what I will do when I reach that point, but I have a long time to figure it out!