It seems like the world is buzzing these days with talk of financial independence and early retirement. Jaime and I big proponents of the power of financial freedom, but it’s healthy to recognize that for many people, it may seem like an impossible dream.

After all, here’s what the state of retirement savings looks like for people in the US:

Is that enough? Most people think they’ll need $1,000,000 to retire comfortably. If that’s the case, I highly doubt that having $172,000 at age 60 puts someone on track to comfortably retire with $1,000,000 at age 65.

For the majority of Americans, the concern isn’t retiring early. Their concern is retiring ever.
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If you’re trying to answer that question, then this is the guide for you. Let’s go through how to figure out if you’ll ever be able to retire.

Will I Ever Be Able to Retire?

It’s not a simple question and there are certainly many ways to look at answering it. Below, I’ve got an approach (with embedded calculations for your situation along the way) that lets you measure what you’d need to retire and how long it’ll take you to get there.

Disclaimer: any retirement calculator out there - this one included - operates on a wide variety of assumptions. While these assumptions usually come based on some data about how things have worked out in recent history, there’s no guarantee that the future will look the same. Consider this guide an introduction to retirement calculators. I highly encourage you to look at others as well.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s get started with the first question we need to answer.

How Much Will I Spend In Retirement?

The first thing we need to understand is what your annual expenses will look like. If you’ve ever tracked your spending, you’ll likely have an idea of what your spending would look like in retirement.

If you haven’t tracked your spending before, you might consider using the MIT living wage calculator to estimate your annual expenses. This won’t provide for a lavish retirement with cruises and getaways, but it can help answer the question of whether you could ever retire.

To use the living wage calculator, enter your location (either your zip code or your state/county).

Scroll down to the “Typical Expenses” section and find the row labeled “Required annual income before taxes” at the bottom of the table.

We’ll assume you aren’t taking care of children in retirement, so the only question is whether or not your retirement funds are for you alone or if there’s a spouse in the picture.

If you’re single, find the number under “1 Adult”. If you’re married, find the number under “2 Adults”.

Enter that number here:

How Much Do I Need to Save to Retire?

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll use the 4% rule to estimate how much money you need to retire. With this rule, you need to save up 25 times your annual expenses in order to retire.

Based on the annual expenses you entered earlier, here’s what you’d need saved up to retire today:

But unfortunately, that doesn’t tell us how much you’ll need saved in the future. You know how the cost of milk (and everything else) goes up a bit every year? That’s what we call inflation. With everything costing more next year than this year, you’ll need more saved by next year to retire than you would have needed to retire today.

We’ll assume inflation is 2.5% every year. If something cost you $10.00 to buy this year, you could expect that inflation to bring the price up to $10.25 by next year.

Here’s what inflation would do to your retirement target for next year:

Bummer, right? The good news is you can work to “beat” inflation by investing your retirement savings instead of stuffing it under a mattress.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at savings and investments.

When Will I Have Enough Saved to Retire?

Do you have anything saved for retirement already? Maybe you’ve put some money in a 401k (or 403b) or an IRA. If so, that’s great; Enter the amount you’ve got here:

With any money set aside, you’re already on the way to retire at some point; it might just be “too far” down the road to be meaningful. After all, if your nest egg won’t get big enough to retire until you’re 120, that’s not going to do much good for you, is it?

If you don’t have anything set aside for retirement, don’t fret. Keep reading and we’ll handle that situation later.

For your retirement, let’s presume you choose to invest your money instead of just putting it under a mattress (or in a low-yield savings account), you can get a return that not only beats inflation but actually grows beyond that. I won’t get into the details on why to invest in index funds, but let’s say you do and can get an average annual return of 8%.

Even without putting any more money into that account, it’s going to grow - beating inflation and then some.

In fact, that investment would eventually grow to the point of hitting your retirement number, even if you didn’t contribute another penny. This concept in personal finance is called “coasting” or, as I like to call it, retirement freedom

It’s a cool concept, but what age does that put you at when you get to retire?

Will I Get To My Retirement Target While I’m Still Alive?

Put in your current age here and see what that means for your retirement prospects:

Based on what you’ve entered so far, your investments would build up for you to retire when you are:

So now, the million dollar question - are you still going to be around at that point? There are no guarantees, but here’s your life expectancy based on your current age (courtesy of the Social Security System Actuarial Life Table):

To retire “ever”, you need to get to that point before you die. So, getting there before you hit your life expectancy is a pretty good measure. If your coast retirement age is less than your life expectancy, then you’re on track to retire at some point even if you don’t contribute another penny.

How Much Faster Can I Retire If I Invest More?

Depending on your situation, those figures may have been exciting or terrifying (or perfectly reasonable). No matter what the case, there’s one thing that should hold true - your retirement date should get better if you make regular contributions.

So, let’s build those in and see where you’re at. To keep things simple, we’ll use a “percentage of income” approach to figure out how much you’ll put toward retirement investing every year. With that in mind, go ahead and put in your household income and the percentage of that income you can save for retirement every year. If your employer includes a “401k match”, don’t forget to include their portion here as well - that money counts!

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll assume you get annual cost-of-living income increases at the same rate as inflation.

With what you put in, here’s where you end up:

If this age is less than your life expectancy (see above), then you should be on track to retire assuming you can continue to work and make the investments you entered above!

What do you think? If you’re not happy with the results, don’t worry - not all is lost. The result is based on what you entered above and you’ve got the power to adjust your path.

Adjusting Your Path

While this calculator made a lot of assumptions, you still have some flexibility. To accelerate your timeline, increase your income and/or your savings rate in the How Much Faster Can I Retire If I Invest More section. Otherwise, you could reduce your needed spending by changing your expected annual expenses in the How Much Will I Spend In Retirement? section.

What’s Next?

There you have it. Consider this an “entry-level” retirement calculator. There are plenty of others out there to explore as you dig into the details. Many of these will let you tweak the assumptions and try more complex scenarios. Here are a few I recommend you give a shot:

• When Can I Retire? When Will I Be Financially Independent? from ESI Money
• Early Retirement Calculator from Millennial Money
• Ultimate Retirement Calculator from Financial Mentor

And here are a couple retirement-related calculators I’ve worked on that might help you think differently about your path to financial freedom:

• Would You Trade $25 for an Extra Day of Freedom?
• Introducing Retirement Freedom
• Annual Savings to Walk Away Calculator
• Savings Rate to Walk Away Calculator

Happy number-crunching!

What if you were granted every conceivable luxury of life, financial freedom and even more, but it came with expectations that made your soul miserable? Would you let the money dictate your life or would you be willing to let it all go for a different type of freedom? This is the battle that Liz endured. She was forced to make a decision she never imagined. Here is her story:

Everything I Had

My childhood was one of fairy tales. I grew up in a mansion with staff attending to my every need. My every desire was granted. This was all thanks to my father’s success.

My father has a business empire that sprawls across the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, China, and Singapore. As I grew up, my father enticed me in taking an interest in helming his empire. I started traveling with him to all these exotic places, marveling first-hand at all his business acquisitions. We stayed in the fanciest hotels and enjoyed the most luxurious transportation. Nothing was off limits. I certainly saw the benefit in joining my father’s business empire!

Before I could join my father in running his business, he insisted that I go to law school and work at a top law firm for a few years. I completely understood and entered law school without hesitation. One semester in, however, I found my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t enjoy what I was learning and I was terrified of the cut throat culture. I ended up crying myself to sleep most nights, dreaming of becoming an author, a musician, or a linguist. Although I dreamed of pursuing a different career, the thing I desired most was making my dad proud. With this as my priority, I buried my dreams and persevered. Not only was I going to join his business empire, I was also sitting on a 9-digit inheritance.

Losing It All

While I was pushing myself forward through law school, I fell in love. This relationship meant the world to me, but I was nervous to share this part of my life with my parents. I was afraid they wouldn’t be accepting of my partner - a beautiful girl with the heartiest laugh and warmest embrace.

Before telling my parents, my partner and I came out to our closest friends. I was nervous introducing my partner to my Christian friends. I even expected resistance, but there was none. Their warm response gave me the courage to talk to my parents.

My parents’ initial resistance to my relationship didn’t surprise me, but I thought they would come around to accepting us. Instead, they tried to manipulate me into ending my relationship. They took away my allowance, my credit cards, and forced me to return the $250,000 that they had previously gifted me for my 21st birthday. Then they wrote me out of their wills, leaving a nominal sum to prevent me from contesting their wills.

Related Post: The One Life Lesson I Wish I Had Learnt, Before I Lost My 9-Digit Inheritance Overnight

That was hard to endure, but it continued to get uglier. They told me I was no longer fit to helm my dad’s empire. They felt that I was now poor and would have the inclination to steal their riches. They kicked me out of their home and accused me of being a “useless f*cking daughter”. All this just because I started dating someone they didn’t approve of. All the effort I had made in trying to make them proud of me was discounted.

I became a homeless, penniless 22 year old with no future. All the love and support I once had from my parents became non-existent. The loss I felt was more than I could endure. I became depressed with anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, insomnia, and thoughts of suicide took over. My once-perfect life had vanished.

Tug-Of-War Struggle

The next two years of my life were a struggle for survival. For every step I tried taking forward, I felt like I was pushed back a step or two. I graduated from law school with dismal grades. This resulted in only 1 out of the 200 jobs I applied for taking a chance on me. Unfortunately, that employer took complete advantage of my desperation, paying me very little for my hard work.

Related Post: The Time I Was Paid $0.10 an Hour at a Corporate Job

The money I made wasn’t enough to cover all my expenses. Luckily, my partner’s father opened his house to me when I became homeless. My parents didn’t like this and insisted that I move back home. I agreed, hoping we could salvage our relationship, but it only made things worse. My relationship with my parents got so toxic that my partner told me that I needed to break up with her. She knew that I had a lot to lose, and she thought that maybe, this relationship wasn’t worth all of that. That broke my heart, but no matter how tough things got, my partner and I always found a way back to each other.

Eventually, I got to the point where I couldn’t keep living this tug-of-war. I could no longer try to salvage my relationship with my parents and find happiness. No longer could I keep trying to succeed in a career that made me miserable. If I was going to pull myself out of my depression, I needed to change my focus.

So I started focusing on what I had left, not what I had lost. I had a loving partner, the freedom to pursue something different, and the ability to change my future. I was finally ready to let go of trying to make my parents proud of me. It took me two years, but I was ready to start pursuing my own life, my own dreams.

The Blessing

My parents had taught me that a life without riches is a sad life. For a very long time, I had believed them. Until the day I became utterly broke - financially and mentally. But in the midst of all that, I realized that I had amazing friends and a partner that loved me as I was. That gave me the strength to fight for myself. So I started fighting for my own happiness. No longer was I going to look to my parents as the only source of acceptance.

I saw for the first time that I could have a wonderful life without a 9-digit inheritance. Better yet, I saw that I could have a wonderful life without much money at all! I only needed enough money to pay for shelter and food. I could find joy in spending time with the people who loved me. I found joy in writing, reading, and making music. I enjoy the sunshine and walking through the park. I started seeing joy in the very simple things in life. And I’ve come to realise that, as cliché as it sounds, some of the best things in life are absolutely free. All the money I had before had blinded me from this truth. But I’m happy to have found a life beyond power, business empires, and millions of dollars.

Related Post: How to Live a Life of Freedom – A Comprehensive 5-Step Guide

These days I’m working as a lowly analyst in a small company. I don’t get paid a lot, and I don’t love what I do, but it allows me to take care of myself and build a comfortable amount of savings. After everything I’ve gone through, I’ve learned the importance of having money set aside for the unexpected. And I’m learning to be proud of myself for accomplishing this much despite all the pain in my life.

While I don’t have the luxurious life that had been planned for me, I have a life of my own. I have a life with unconditional love and a simple joy that money could never buy. I’ve even started to focus on pursuing one of my dream careers on the side, by writing and trying to inspire others on my blog. It’s only a matter of time before I quit my job and start chasing all my dreams. I may have foolishly buried these dreams before, but no longer will they stay buried in my new life.

If there’s one thing I can say for sure, it’s this - My new life is a blessing I never could have imagined before.

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

Two weeks ago I looked at our Food Budget and this week I’m moving forward to tackle another budget category.

Our Household category needs to be overhauled! Do you have a budget category that you feel is out of control? Our household spending has been all over the place. Just to show you how bad it is, here is a look at August and September.

August: $545.35 September: $231.96

This is crazy. When I looked into what I was actually spending this money on, it began to make more sense. I listed toilet paper, toothpaste, toothbrushes, cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, etc. These were all necessary and needed to be replenished. Then I saw I that I listed a new beach bag, glass containers for the kitchen, new water bottles, etc. These items made life nicer/easier, but don’t need to be replenished from month to month. When I took these items out of this category, here is how the spending in August and September looked.

August: $185.76 September: $189.96

With this knowledge, I’ve decided to separate out those nice to have items from the consumables. The consumables will be our Hygiene Budget, while we will move those other purchases over to a Fun Category (I’ll address this in another post).

In an effort to help be a bit more conscientious of our spending, I’m making a goal to only spend $150 in October. We’ve spent $102.52 so far, but I think we are pretty set. If we can make this happen, I can save us $30 a month and hopefully a lot more by not disguising those fun purchases as necessities!

Is there a spending category you feel you need to split into two different groups? Or have you found a unique way to save on your hygiene budget?

Do you know what you want your future retirement to look like? Or where you want to be? Jen and Tom found their ideal retirement in Door County, Wisconsin. Here’s how they discovered their ideal lifestyle.

Discovering Our Ideal Vacation

We desperately needed a break from our home in southern Indiana. The sweltering heat and humidity of summer was draining our family of four. We needed a vacation, a true vacation, where we could relax, get a break from the heat, but still enjoy the summer with our boys.

I racked my brain for a good vacation idea and remembered an article I had read in Midwest Living Magazine about Door County, WI. I don’t remember what it said, but it must have reminded me of my childhood. My parents used to take my brother and I on fishing vacations when we were kids. We would stay in a cabin on a lake and spend our days swimming while my dad fished and my mom hiked/read novels. Door County sounded like a step back in time. Maybe this is where my husband, Tom, and I could create our own version of a fishing vacation with our boys who were 9 and 12 years old.

A few weeks later we were on our way to Rowley’s Bay in Door County. I had booked a cabin for four nights at The Wagon Wheel Resort. It was a long nine hour drive before we parked in front of our little rustic cabin getaway on the edge of Lake Michigan!

The drive had been long, but well worth it. The next morning I got up before anyone else and made a pot of coffee before strolling outside in the cool morning air. It was refreshing beyond belief. With my coffee in hand, I found a place to sit back and take in the beautiful scenery. I even saw newbies get an early morning kayak lesson!

When my husband and boys woke up they were ready to take to the lake. My dad had made tackle boxes for the boys and they were eager to catch their first fish. Every day, they tried, but it didn’t come easy. Then, one day a gull swooped down and grabbed the cork on my 9 year old’s line and tried to fly away with it! That story went down in family lore as the day Drew caught a gull! When the boys weren’t feverishly trying to catch a fish, they were swimming in the lake or biking with their dad along the cedar lined roads. We kept our meals simple, using the cabin’s kitchen and always ended our day with a family board game. It was exactly what our family needed.

That week was pure bliss and went by quickly. We were all sad when it was time to head back home. We had learned that this type of vacation - a simple cabin with outdoor activities - was our favorite. We didn’t need a lot of money to take a vacation, just a bit of time. With this realization, we decided to return to Door County the following Summer. It quickly became a yearly summer getaway for our family!

Creating a Vacation Home

As the years went by and the boys grew up, we continued to visit Door County. After 10 years of summer getaways we realized that this wasn’t enough. We wanted more time at our favorite place. My husband and I started dreaming of retiring here and talked about the possibility of buying a vacation home so we could return whenever we wanted.

We looked around for five years before we found a place that fit us perfectly. There was a condo for sale in Egg Harbor with water front property. At 1,250 square foot, ground level, and a deck looking over beautiful Green Bay of Lake Michigan, we knew it was exactly what we wanted. With the condo, we could come and go without worrying about yard work or snow removal and could fully enjoy the laid back vibe of Door County whenever we were here.

When we closed on the condo, Tom was still working full time and I was caring for my ailing parents. We made it back whenever we could, even bringing my Dad with several times. He loved it there and we nicknamed the second bedroom Pop’s Room. We spent a number of years driving back and forth between our home in Indiana and the condo in Door County before Tom and I started talking plans for actually retiring in Door County.

Retirement Living in Door County

About two years ago we started talking seriously about retirement. More specifically, early retirement. I had retired several years prior, but now we were both 57 years old and were considering our ability for Tom to retire early as well.

My parents had passed away and our boys had moved to Florida and Kentucky. With no family in Indiana, we figured we would sell our home and move into our condo full time. Tom announced his early retirement at work, but his company asked him to stay on as a senior adviser and work remotely. He would still need to go into the office every 6-7 weeks though. This meant that we would still need a place to live in Indiana.

We weighed our options and felt that the offer to stay with the company would work wonderfully for us. Not only would it be a great transition towards full retirement, it was less hours, offered flexibility, had a salary that would cover our expenses (no need to dip into our retirement savings yet), and included our health insurance until we are eligible for Medicare. Plus, Tom loves his job!

Since we could spend a majority of our time in Door County, we didn’t need our big family house in Indiana. We decided to sell and rent a duplex near Tom’s work. The transition has been really easy.

It’s been over 2 months since we made this change and we are enjoying the blissful lifestyle of Door Country we discovered 20 years ago! Life here is relaxing yet active. We head over to the YMCA most days and I spend Wednesday afternoons with an awesome knitting group. We’ve even found a tiny church with a big heart in Fish Creek! Tom works out on the deck during the summer while and I read. And when we feel like doing a little something special, we take an afternoon break to visit one of our favorite coffee shops for coffee and biscotti!

We love our life here, but we do take a break from the cold winter in January and February by visiting our son in Tampa!

Then, over the 4th of July our boys and their families return to Door County for a week of vacation! I love that we are keeping our little family fishing vacation alive! It’s amazing how 20 years ago, the need to find some family rejuvenation led us to where we would eventually find retirement bliss!

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

So, you’ve figured out whether you’ll ever be able to retire. Now you are itching for that next step - figuring out how to retire early. After hearing all of these amazing stories of people retiring in their 30’s and 40’s, you want to know the secrets to getting there on your own.

If you’re ready to go there, I’m ready to take you through it. The trick to retiring early is beating inflation. Today we’ll go through how to do that with a one-two punch.

A Typical Money Situation

Let’s build a baseline scenario to understand why the combination of earning and frugality are so powerful.

A 2018 college graduate can expect an average starting salary of roughly $50,000. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey, let’s say the average person making $50,000 is spending about $48,500. That’s a savings rate of about 3.5%.

Let’s call our hypothetical worker Mo Ney.

From this point on, if Mo does an adequate job, we can expect annual raises that are roughly in line with inflation - about 2.5% each year.

While those raises might look fine on paper, they aren’t really making anything better. If Mo’s income goes up at the same rate as the cost of the stuff, Mo will be stuck at that 3.5% savings rate for the rest of time.

The personal finance community lovingly refers to the distance between the earning and spending lines as “the gap”. And as the experts will tell you, minding the gap is the most important money lesson you can learn.

With this scenario, Mo hits age 65 with about $725,000 saved up for retirement, which falls well short of a 25x spending goal of $3.5 million.

So, we need to find a way for Mo to either increase earnings or decrease spending. In both cases, Mo is currently tied to inflation, so this is really about beating inflation.

Beating Inflation with a Frugality Punch

What if Mo could have a “personal” inflation rate that’s less than everyone else’s? By being smart about spending, looking for deals, and doing some things by hand (instead of hiring someone for every little job), what if Mo could keep to a personal inflation rate of just 1%?

The results are staggering. The spending and earning lines move further apart from each other every year by a bigger amount. That’s a gap that’s improving by leaps and bounds.

By the time Mo reaches retirement age, we’re seeing a savings rate of nearly 50%!

With this one simple change, Mo could retire early at age 55 - with $1.8 million in the bank.

Beating Inflation with an Earnings Punch

What about the flip side? What if Mo can be a top performer at work and get 4% annual raises instead?

Once again, the spending and earning lines are diverging - creating an even bigger gap every year. By the time Mo reaches retirement, we’re once again seeing a savings rate of nearly 50%.

With higher earnings instead, Mo could retire early at age 58 - with $3.2 million in the bank!

Beating Inflation with a One-Two Punch

When you put the two together, the gap grows big and it grows fast. In less than four years, Mo breaks a 10% savings rate. In another four, that jumps to 20%. By retirement age, Mo’s savings rate is almost 75%!

What does a 75% savings rate mean? That means in Mo’s last year of employment, one year of earnings is buying Mo three years of retirement. That’s one heck of a ratio.

And here’s the best part; increasing your earnings and decreasing your spending can be done at the same time. Getting a huge raise doesn’t mean you need to spend a whole lot more money. Pretend that raise never came and increase your spending only as you need to.

Putting these two together lets Mo retire at age 48. What do you think Mo could do with an extra 17 years of freedom?

What could you do with an extra 17 years of freedom?

Up Next - Learn to Punch

Hopefully this gave you some great motivation around beating inflation so you can improve your financial situation. Your next step? Check out our post on how exactly to beat inflation with both frugality and earnings: Earn Like a Boss, Spend Like an Intern.

In our last post, I talked about the key to retiring early: by beating inflation twice - in both your earnings and spending. Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty details about how to do each.

If you’re going to grow “the gap” between your earnings and spending, here’s a mantra that can really clarify your vision:

Earn like a boss, spend like an intern (Tweet this )

Today I’ll share what we’ve learned over the past 15 years about how to manage both sides of this equation, with the goal of getting you well set-up to do the same. Along the way, I’ll link to some books that I’ve read that have really helped me in each of these areas. Every book on this page is one I’ve read and loved.

How to Earn Like a Boss

Below are the methods and approaches I’ve used over the last 15 years to grow my income an average of 8% a year (definitely beating inflation of about 2.5% during that same time period).

I can’t promise these will work in every situation. That said, if the things below don’t bring you success in the company you work for, you may want to look for a different company!

1. Keep the mission first

When you and your team have something important you’re working on together, everything becomes a whole lot clearer.

Decisions are easier, priorities are clearer, and everyone just seems to work together better.

If you find yourself in a job where everyone seems like they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, then there’s a good chance your team is missing a worthwhile purpose. What do you accomplish? Why do you exist? (and no, “to make money” is not a good enough answer).

Spend time talking with your team members and bosses about what the mission of the company and your team are so you can make the biggest impact there. Most other things are just a distraction.

Recommended Book on Team Purposes: Start with Why by Simon Sinek

2. Improve yourself

The skills or potential you showed that got you in the door at your job aren’t going to be enough to keep you successful for the rest of your career. You need to keep learning and growing.

Sure, your employer has an interest in contributing to this, but make it your responsibility to identify how you want to grow and how you want to do it.

If you’re struggling for ideas, go out and grab a few leadership/business books from the library or the bookstore.

Recommended Book on What Makes Businesses Successful: Good to Great by Jim Collins

3. Improve your team

Improving yourself helps your company a bit and you a lot. Improving your team helps your company a lot and you even more.

This might come in the form of sharing things you’ve learned with your team members. Or it might come in the form of suggesting and implementing improvements to the processes your team uses.

If you see something in your team that isn’t working, come up with a solution.

In the end, if you’re looking to make your team more efficient and effective, you will be a great asset to your business and show that you’re more than a person who can “do the job” - you’re a person who can “improve the job”.

Recommended Book on Things That Are Often Wrong In Teams (And How To Do Them Better): Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

4. Take on the hard or undesirable jobs

This is one of the biggest ones. There are always going to be pieces of a job that people avoid because it’s hard or undesirable. These things always get left for last and the person stuck with them usually complains about having to do them.

I’m going to suggest something unconventional. Volunteer for these jobs.

Undesirable jobs are ones that can almost always be improved (see #3 above) and hard jobs are the best places to learn (see #2 above). By tackling the jobs that nobody else wants, you’ll also show major initiative, which will go a long way with your bosses.

Having a reputation as an employee that has a clear understanding of the mission, is continuously improving themselves and the team, and is willing to take on the tough jobs puts you in a position of being an employee that every manager wants to keep around. When you do this, you’ll find yourself better able to advocate for raises, promotions, and increased responsibility.

Taking this road gives you the ability to increase your income at a rate way faster than inflation, which puts you on the path to financial freedom.

How to Spend Like an Intern

Ok - the income side is looking good. Now let’s take a look at spending. Below are the methods we’ve used to keep our annual spending growth to roughly 1% a year over the last 10 years (much better than inflation at 2.5%).

But first, some backstory on what my life as an intern was like :)

I had an 8-month internship during my time in college and it was a great experience. Beyond all the benefits of building my career, one of the best things that came out of it was the financial environment.

I was making pretty good money - better than any hourly job I’d had in high school or over summer break. But even though the money was coming in, I was still living on-campus in the same environment I’d been in while I was getting my degree.

I hung out with the same friends, did the same activities, and lived roughly the same lifestyle. By spending like I was still a student, I ended up padding my bank accounts quite a bit during those 8 months. It didn’t really hit me until years later what the important lesson was here, but it’s an eye-opener:

1. Your spending can (and should) be independent of your income

It’s that simple. The fact that someone makes $100,000 doesn’t mean they need to spend like they make $100,000. Some people in this situation spend like they make $200,000. Others spend like they make $50,000. Either way, there’s a lot more choice in spending than what most people think about.

Here’s another lightbulb - when you get a 10% raise (or 5% or 3% for that matter), you don’t have to increase your spending to go with it.

It’s tempting to look at increases in our income as an opportunity to “reward” ourselves for a job well-done. But what’s a better reward - blowing your raise on an overpriced new car with higher insurance costs, or using that money to secure your financial future?

I know it may sound boring, but future you would be delighted if your raise went toward paying off your mortgage or buying months or years of freedom.

So, how do you keep to the mentality of spending like an intern even while your paychecks grow?

2. Remember that you can have fun no matter your lifestyle

Look back at the times in your life that you were the happiest. Most likely, the reason you were happy wasn’t because of some infinite pile of cash at your disposal.

No, most likely your happiness came from a different kind of abundance - relationships, purpose, or adventure.

If you can find joy and fulfillment in life without incessantly swiping the credit card, then why wouldn’t you go that route?

Rather than “investing” in stuff, try investing in your friendships, family, skills, knowledge, and experiences.

But won’t you feel deprived if you’re not buying all the shiny new toys?

3. It’s not about depriving - it’s about prioritizing

Remember that it’s not deprivation if you’re prioritizing something better. If you’ve got dreams for a life that’s got more freedom, more travel, and less stress, then choosing to spend less now is putting what’s most important to you at the top of your list.

Take the time to think about where you want your money to go. Do you want to buy new furniture every 12 months to keep up with the latest styles or do you want to travel the world?

Do you want the convenience of not having to cook or do you want to eliminate that last bit of debt?

Do you want to spend on short-term conveniences or do you want to invest long-term in your values?

Your answers might be different from mine. But until you take the time to think about these questions and ask yourself what your values are, you can’t know whether your money is going to the right place.

Recommended Book on Prioritizing: The More of Less by Joshua Becker

So how can you make sure you’re sticking to your values in your spending?

4. Track your spending

As the quote goes, “That which gets measured gets managed.”

If you want to know whether your money is going toward your values, the best way is to track your spending.

We’ve used Thrifty to track our spending for the last three years and it’s done wonders in our ability to measure and reduce our spending. We’ve found a ton of bad spending habits that we’ve been able to fix, saving us thousands of dollars a year.

Plus, as a bonus, tracking our spending means we’re not only able to grow our gap between our spending and earnings - we’re able to measure it and see it improve over time!

Putting It All Together

So, there you have it. Putting these two together should put you in the position to beat inflation both on the income side and on the spending side. If you can do that, you should be well on the path to early retirement. From there, you can refine and improve your approach on both sides to get there even faster.

What about you? Any tips on how to earn like a boss or spend like an intern that you’ve used in your own life?

I’m excited to bring Caroline’s story to you! Her story shows that you don’t have to choose between living in the city or being able to retire early. You just have to be very intentional about making smart money decisions along the way in order to get there!

Living in New York City is not cheap. If anything, it’s the opposite of cheap - it’s ridiculously expensive! So expensive that many people choose to leave the city in order to live more affordable lives. That thought never even crossed our minds though. It wasn’t an option. My husband and I grew up in the city. Our families live in the city. And we LOVE this city! We love how convenient everything is, the cultural diversity, and the thriving art scene. There is never a day that goes by that you can’t find a show, fair, or museum to enjoy. This is where we wanted to live, to raise our family.

Affording NYC

With that decision made, we had to figure out how to afford this life - this crazy expensive, but awesome life! The first decision we made was to take on the highest paying jobs we could find early in our career. This ended up being in management consulting. We worked nonstop and traveled constantly! Not only did this allow us to pay off our student loans quickly and max out of 401k’s, we could afford to live right where we wanted - the creative, hip East Village of Manhattan, close to all the major transit hubs and our families!

During this time we had our first daughter and life became really full. My husband and I tried to arrange opposite travel schedules so one of us was home in the evening. When we couldn’t avoid overlapping schedules, our family was right there and able to help. Luckily, we had the money to afford a full-time nanny and the energy to keep going. We stayed in these jobs for about five years, setting us up to be able to downshift to corporate jobs that allowed us more time with our daughter and baby number two! By the time our daughters were 12 and 6 years old I was able to leave my office job adn start a consulting business with a former colleague that allowed me to work flexibly and remotely, and my husband was able to switch to a non-profit job he loved!

While our first jobs helped us set up a solid financial foundation, we needed to be very intentional with our money if we were ever going to be able to retire at age 65! With everything in the city being so expensive and housing prices so high, we needed to live small and be frugal. We had to make our 2-bed, 1-bath, 1,000 square foot apartment in Manhattan comfortable for a family of four.

I was constantly decluttering and questioning every purchase that would be brought into our home. Every nook of our apartment had a purpose, or multiple purposes. I focused on buying groceries in bulk, shopping at flea markets, and using craigslist in order to save money. When we wanted to go out and enjoy the city, instead of paying high prices, I learned to look for bargains and take advantage of Free Admission days. Developing these skills kept our cost of living down in New York City so we could allocate more money towards the future.

Investing In Our Future

Besides maxing out our 401k’s we looked into other ways to invest. I had always been interested in real estate so we decided to try investing in this market. We bought a small weekend house in New Jersey that appreciated well and allowed us to obtain a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) in order to buy our next property. We found two great places in Asheville, NC that we were able to purchase at a low cost and have profitable rent right away. With this investment being a success, we decided to use our profits to expand our real estate portfolios to Jacksonville FL, Indianapolis IN, and Tamarindo, Costa Rica - all places where the numbers worked in our favor!

I like to think of our real estate portfolio as a type of geo-arbitrage. Instead of making money in a high cost-of-living geography and then moving to a lower cost-of-living place, we did geo-arbitrage with our investments - making our money in NYC, but investing elsewhere.

Between our frugality and successful investments, my husband was able to retire last year at the age of 46! We hadn’t set out to retire early, but discovered the possibility as we were moving into our non-corporate way of living. Learning about FIRE gave us the inspiration to keep making financial decisions that would allow us to have the flexibility we desired.

Our FIRE Life

As our oldest left for college and our youngest was starting high school, my husband and I were talking about how we wanted to live in this new stage of life. We found ourselves less tied to Manhattan. We love NYC, but we didn’t feel like we needed to be in the middle of it all.

We ended up finding a comparable 2-bed, 1-bath, 1,000 square foot apartment in the Bronx we fell in love with. It was in the Riverdale area near the NY Botanical Garden in a lush, quiet, close-knit neighborhood. To make it even better, it was an estate sale, so there was a big discount! This place was a fraction of the cost of our Manhattan home and would allow us to still get into the heart of the city easily. It was an easy decision for us to move and we are enjoying our new home the change of scenery.

Looking back on this journey it’s easy to ask - Could we have moved to the Bronx earlier and retired earlier? Maybe, but choosing to stay where we really wanted to be helped us figure out our priorities and forced us to make smart money decisions early on. Had we moved out of the Manhattan we may not have been so focused. We may not have been able to retire early. Choosing to stay in Manhattan when the girls were little allowed us to be a quick walk or ride to school, activities, and family. That was completely worth it for us. We have enjoyed our journey along the way to FIRE - and that’s really important too!

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

After visiting Costa Rica in July, Chris and I knew we wanted to return with our girls. We had fallen in love with Nosara and decided to come up with a plan to return to the little surfing town.

A Second Home

We found an Airbnb that seemed perfect for our family. The Sea Shack had two bedrooms, a kitchen, an outdoor living space, and a pool. We booked this home for four nights over the week of Thanksgiving. As our departure date arrived we were bursting with excitement. When our flight landed it felt surreal to be back. As our shuttle dropped us off in Nosara my heart filled with joy. And as we walked up to the Sea Shack, I felt a comfort that I can only explain as home.

This home, our home for the next 4 days, was tucked back in the jungle off the main road. We could easily walk to shops, restaurants, a small organic grocery store, and a fruit stand selling the tastiest mangoes the girls have ever eaten. A little further down the road the beach welcomed us with soft sand and waves the girls loved jumping in. Hearing their giggles as a wave almost knocked them down was music to my ears. There is nothing better when you see pure joy in your children’s faces.

While we loved the beach, we spent the majority of our time at the house. We didn’t go zip lining, take surfing lessons, or go horseback riding. Instead, we just lived and loved.

One of our main goals with this trip was for Chris to work while in Costa Rica. We had talked last winter about someday living in Costa Rica for an extended period of time, but if Chris couldn’t get a good internet connection for remote work, that wouldn’t be an option. So for three days Chris planned to be working 8 hours on his computer while the girls and I figured out our days. Our outdoor living room became Chris’ office space while the girls jumped in the pool and I read a book with my legs dangling in the water.

When the girls were taking a break from the pool, I was usually walking to the grocery store, to the farmer’s market, or the fruit stand. This was a dream come true for me - grabbing fresh fruit down the street on a daily basis is the best!

When Chris finished work for the day we would go to a restaurant or make a simple dinner. We ate at our outdoor kitchen table as the sun set and we waited to be greeted by howler monkeys. The monkeys never stopped by, but we did hear them a few times.

After we cleared the table, we pulled out a game for the five of us to play. Our favorite ended up being a card game called Fab Fiction. The goal was to weave a story out of the words on the card. As we passed the card around the table we added crazy plot lines, funny characters, and filled the air with laughter.

Our time in Costa Rica was short and we were sad when it was time to pack up. Chris had successfully worked while in Costa Rica. I had learned how to navigate the town. I wasn’t ready to go. I wanted to learn more Spanish. I wanted to walk back down to the beach. I wanted to see the monkeys that hadn’t stopped by yet. I wanted to buy my girls more fresh mangoes. I wanted to experience more life here.

As we boarded the plane to come back home we were excited to see our family and friends, but we were also leaving a part of our hearts in Costa Rica. Chris turned to me at one point and said, “I feel like we have two different lives. One in Wisconsin and one in Costa Rica. When we are in Wisconsin our life in Costa Rica is on pause. And when we return we pick right back up where we left.” I couldn’t have agreed more! We are hoping that the next time we return to Costa Rica, the space we like to think of as our second home, we’ll be able to stay for an entire month! There will be more to navigate, and more to learn, but I’m excited to take on it all on!

Our Budget

Since this is a personal finance blog, I’ll also share our budget for this trip. We planned a $6,000 budget for a one week vacation in Costa Rica. This included all of our transportation, food, shelter, and any other expenses during this one week.

A brief review of our trip:

• Saturday November 17: Flew into San Jose, Stayed the night,
• Sunday November 18: Took a shuttle to Nosara, Stayed in Nosara for 4 nights
• Thursday November 22: Took a shuttle to Monteverde, Stayed the night
• Friday November 23: Took a shuttle to San Jose, Stayed the night
• Saturday November 24: Flew home

We ended up spending a total of $5426.00:

Back in the day, people were encouraged to put money aside for retirement. Retirement was deemed the time when you no longer worked. Generally, this was at age 65. Why? I’m guessing that for many people, their aging bodies wouldn’t be able to continue at the 9-5 pace much longer. They needed to slow down and take care of themselves. And soon, they would hit the point when they wouldn’t be able to physically work. The money they set aside needed to be able to cover their living expenses when they could no longer earn a paycheck.

We accepted this way of life. People found jobs they could stay at for 45+ years and figured out how to enjoy life. Things may not have been perfect; but it was simple, predictable, and safe. When it was time to retire, we were thankful that we had been able to set aside part of our paycheck.

Then something changed. People started wanting more out of life. They didn’t want to work the 9-5 until age 65. Why wait to travel until you’re too old to enjoy those experiences? We started craving more time, or at least more time during our younger years to do the things we enjoyed.

I wonder… Is this because our expectations for life changed or corporate’s expectations for us changed? I’m guessing it’s both.

Losing Work-Life Balance

I remember hearing about people who worked 8 hours 5 days a week, received a certain amount of vacation days, a pension, and a really nice healthcare benefit. Slowly, these incentives started to fade away. Employees were asked and soon expected to work longer hours. They were even encouraged not to use their vacation days. The pension disappeared and the healthcare benefits got worse each year. Companies started expecting their employees to live for the company’s success - working them to exhaustion and keeping them from their families. Can I say that corporate America lost its humanity?

We let this go on for a while, but as employees got burnt by their employers, we started questioning whether it was all worth it. We started looking for a change. We looked for a solution. One that would allow us to enjoy our lives more.

Solution Number One: Early Retirement

We weren’t able to fight against the long work days, the lack of vacation time, or the diminishing pension. The one thing we could control - our retirement date. Incomes were healthy and if we could just optimize how we saved, we could put away enough to retire early. We could take that vacation before age 65!

Retiring a few years earlier wasn’t enough though. We were still burnt out. We came to hate our jobs. We needed to get out sooner! This is when we learned about Mr. Money Mustache retiring at age 30.

Solution Number Two: MMM Retirement

We decided we wanted the Mr. Money Mustache retirement. But this was hard. We had student loans, credit card debt, mortgages, and families. We tried budgeting. We tried fighting against impulse purchases. While we eliminated debt and became more intentional, we found ourselves past the age of 30. If we couldn’t retire by age 30, we wanted the next best thing - retire as early as possible! But how were we going to make this happen?

Solution Number Three: The Hustle

We started hearing about other people retiring early. They were making it happen at age 40! How were they doing it? We learned that they had buckled down and began to hustle. Not only did they work their 40+ hour job, but they began to look for other ways to make money outside of their day job. This allowed them to pay off their debts faster, to put more money away towards retirement and increase their net worth.

Basically, if we were to hustle we needed to invest more time and energy into making more money. This would finally allow us to retire earlier. Having learned this, our desire for early retirement became all-consuming. The more we worked, the more we made, the sooner we could retire. But as time went on, we found ourselves burning out again.

A New Solution: Let Go

Here’s the thing, FIRE was never meant to be about the hustle. (Tweet this )

People look at what Mr. Money Mustache has achieved and gloss over the entire premise of his story. It was never about the money, it was about living by his values. It was about making choices, such as not taking on debt. It was about figuring out his personal priorities and sticking to them; not letting the world cloud their judgment. He and his wife looked at their life, at their paycheck, and decided to be intentional from the beginning. They knew their values, the life they wanted, and figured out how to live life on their terms in the 9-5. Along the way, they realized that they could retire early.

What if we did this instead? What if we worked our 9-5 and talked about our own values. What if we didn’t focus on early retirement, but on living a fulfilling life now and in the future. Not a glamorous life, but one where we turn our focus back towards our loved ones come 5 pm, where we look for work that fulfills us instead of burns us out. And instead of making FI our life goal and getting burnt by the hustle, we slow down. What would happen if we let go of FIRE so that we can reevaluate our goals and find balance?

Maybe, just maybe, we won’t get burnt out anymore.

Our eight-year-old daughter shared this with me when she came home from school the other day:

“Dad…I told my friends at school how much money I have and they laughed at me…“

At the time, she had $1.28. Many of her friends told her they had $40 or more.

Who knew keeping up with the Joneses started in the second grade? (Tweet this )

I’ve got three daughters that are experts at wrapping me around their fingers. There was a big part of me that wanted to be the “hero of the moment” and slide her a couple twenties. But that’d be counter to everything we’ve been trying to teach our kids about money.

We’ve been working on teaching our kids about the value of a hard-earned dollar. So I used this as an opportunity to circle back on the lesson once again.

Our children have the opportunity to earn money through “extra chores”. That may range from $0.50 for wiping down the kitchen table to several dollars for cleaning a bathroom.

Our daughter explained that her friends get money as handouts or a regular allowance.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with allowances per se. They are great for teaching some money lessons (saving, investing, budgeting). But giving your kids a chance to earn their own spending money is wholly different. Let’s see how through an example.

Teach Kids to Earn

Our daughter told us something else on the day she had her money discussion at school. She also told us she wanted to buy a stationery packet from the school catalog. Envelopes, letters, stickers, and stamps - all in a cool designer case. The cost was $10.50 and she had $1.28, meaning she needed to earn another $9.22.

Knowing she had a long way to go, our daughter lobbied us to give her extra chores so she could earn the money she needed. The following Saturday, we had a full line-up for her. She wiped down the kitchen table and cleaned the bathroom. She vacuumed the living and dining room. And she cleaned up all her toys (and her sisters’ as well).

Every time she finished a chore, she tallied up how much she had earned. Then she’d figure out how far away she was from her goal before asking for another opportunity.

It took only a few hours before our house was clean and our daughter’s coin purse was full.

As we filled out the catalog order form, the grin on her face lit up the room. She was so proud of herself for the hard work she’d done and for achieving her goal.

As parents, we were proud too. We weren’t only getting caught up around our house. We were parenting - helping our daughter learn important life lessons.

Here are the major lessons our daughter took away from the experience:

Advocate For Yourself

If our daughter hadn’t pushed me to keep finding chores for her, I would have stopped coming up with ideas. I wasn’t going to force her to earn money and achieve her goal. That drive needed to come from her.

When she finishes high school and/or college, she’s going to have to be proactive in finding a job. She is going to have to make resumes, contact recruiters, and sell her abilities to employers.

Once she’s in the workplace, she’s going to need to advocate for her own career advancement - for raises and new jobs.

A part of growing up is learning to advocate for yourself in every aspect of your life.

But we don’t want her to have to learn these lessons the hard way at twenty-two. Learning them in a safe environment at age eight is so much better.

Hard Work Pays Off

Life, in general, has a rule:

If you don’t put in the work, you won’t reap the reward (Tweet this )

Yes, we all know of exceptions. There’s the person who got lucky (or unlucky). Or people who were born into favorable (or unfavorable) situations. But even for those people, there’s some level of correlation between the work you put in and the rewards you reap.

Working for three hours on a Saturday might sound like torture to some kids. But when it’s for a goal you’re passionate about, it’s completely different. Our daughter didn’t complain at any point through the process. She hopped from one job to the next with her eyes on the prize and a proud smile on her face

In the end, her hard work paid off and she was able to make the prize her own.

Know What It’s All For

Once she’d achieved her goal, she asked if I had any more jobs for her. I told her that I’d give her $3.00 to clean her entire bedroom (which she shares with two younger sisters). She peeked in the room, then looked at me and said, “Nah, I’m good for today”.

This is the biggest lesson of all. She learned that there’s a shrinking benefit for every hour of your life you trade for work. Our daughter learned to measure whether work is worth it.

After she had reached her goal, she was ready to take a break and play with her sisters. She’d worked hard, earned enough, and got to order her stationery packet.

The Opportunities Are Out There

Choosing not to take me up on that last offer may have seemed like she was leaving money on the table. But in that decision, our daughter showed some real maturity.

She knows that the kitchen will get dirty again. She knows the carpet will need vacuuming soon. And she knows her sisters will cover the floor with toys before I finish this post. She’s confident that she’ll be able to get more money when she wants it.

If you believe that money is scarce, you’ll spend your entire life working. And you’ll never enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Lifelong Lessons

When she goes back to school, her change purse will be empty but her sense of accomplishment will be full. And if the topic of money comes up with her friends, I’m hoping she’ll remember what she earned and what she learned.

How did your parents teach you about earning? What are you doing to teach your own children?

Thank you to Qoins for sponsoring this story!

Life isn’t easy. It takes perseverance to reach your goals. During the journey there will be small wins and big setbacks, but everything that happens is preparing you for the future. Looking back, Christian can see how his drive to make his dreams a reality helped him start his own business and help others conquer debt!

Losing My Job

After college, I landed a job at a startup in Atlanta, Georgia. I enjoyed my work and started thinking about how I was going to pay off my student loans and credit card debt.

I found myself wondering if there was a simple way to work towards debt freedom without it feeling like a huge burden. I started brainstorming during my lunch breaks and found my passion for debt freedom consuming my evenings. As each day went by, my idea started to take shape. I even met Nate, who shared my vision and became my partner in turning my idea into something real.

While I spent every spare moment working on this project, I found myself at a plateau. I knew that I had the beginnings of an awesome startup, but In order to keep making progress I needed to dedicate more time to it. Unfortunately, I was maxed out.

The only way to gain more time was to leave my job. I wasn’t about to take that leap, but then my boss let me go. He knew I had been working on my own project and this was his way of telling me to go for it. He gave me the nudge I needed to focus on my own startup. He even helped with the transition.

Persevering

While the extra pay did help, it wasn’t going to sustain me. I was still going to need some income to pay the bills while I tried to launch my own startup. As I started the search for a job that would allow me to pay the rent without taking up my days, an old friend reached out about a temporary job. They were looking for a brand ambassador manager. While the hours were long, there was a lot of flexibility and down time. I decided to give it a go and hope for the best. It ended up being a perfect fit, allowing me to focus more on my startup!

Nate and I were making huge progress on the beta version of our business idea when another obstacle threatened to stop our progress. I became really sick with an internal heart infection (endocarditis), a risk factor from previous heart surgeries. There was talk of needing surgery again, but my doctor prescribed me a medication first with the hopes that it would do the trick.

For two miserable months I battled the infection. I couldn’t work. I barely had enough money to pay my rent. My saving grace during this time was that I was still young and under my parents’ health insurance.

Luckily, the medication worked and I slowly started to feel normal again. Going through that scary time gave me a lot of time to think. Did I want to keep going forward with my own startup? I knew I really did! I had gotten through the heart infection; I could certainly get through other obstacles!

It’s been about two months since I made that decision to keep moving forward. Nate and I officially launched our business - Qoins! It’s an App that rounds up your purchases and automatically sends your spare change to pay down your debt! We’ve already been able to help multiple families pay off their debts. I’ve even used it myself to pay off my $4,000 of credit card debt!

A Life Of Preparation

When I was let go I stepped into the unknown. I didn’t know if I would succeed, but I had the confidence to persevere. I knew how to hustle and not give up. I had been doing it all my life.

In elementary school I sold my artwork in order to buy ice cream. In high school I started a lawn care business in order to buy my own truck. In college I found work at a pub crawl in Spain so I could afford my rent. I had never let an obstacle or lack of income stop me before. All those experiences had built up my ability to persevere when the going got tough. It taught me how to navigate obstacles so that I could come out on the other side. Each season helped me get where I dreamed of being - starting my own business and helping people become debt free!

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

There was a time when we felt stuck. We felt like our dreams and hopes were unattainable. We felt defeated. We struggled during this time in our life (and in our marriage), but we found a way to pull ourselves out of that hard place and into a better financial situation, allowing us to make our dreams a reality. You can do it too - here are 3 steps to help you get started:

Question Everything

One of the first things we did that helped us in our journey was to question everything. When we entered adulthood, we let the world take control of our lives. It told us to focus on our careers instead of our marriage. It told us to impulsively spend our money instead of focusing on our values.

Chris worked long hours and added an MBA program to his schedule. I worked late into the evenings and every other weekend in the fitness world. We spent our paychecks on Pottery Barn furniture and expensive clothing. We never took a vacation or slowed down to enjoy our marriage. Our life became about finding our value in what the world thought of us.

It wasn’t until we became a family of five that we realized we were broken. We had a nice home and a good job. And while we were grateful for this, we found ourselves unhappy. Why? We wanted more time together. At first, it felt like there was nothing we could do. Chris needed to work his 40+ hours. We needed the paycheck.

But what if we didn’t need the paycheck? What would we do? Chris talked about working in a job that allowed flexibility, remote work, and ample vacation time (maybe even entering the world of entrepreneurship). We talked about taking weekday hikes, traveling around the world, and walking our girls to school.

Once we created this vision, a vision that aligned with our own values, we found the strength to question more. Were we handling our money in a way that was leading us in the direction we wanted to go? Were our current possessions helping us live the life we wanted? What changes could we make to our life that would get us closer to the life we wanted?

Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment

After asking ourselves all those questions we realized that we wanted to simplify our life and make room for our dreams. Simplifying can be daunting, especially if the changes are going to be permanent. How would we know if we were making a mistake? But here’s the thing - we didn’t have to make permanent changes right away. We could practice, pretend, and experiment.

We parked our Prius in the garage for one month, choosing to only drive our minivan to see if we could make it work. We boxed up clothes, toys, and other household items, storing them in the basement, pretending we didn’t have them. We experimented with floor sleeping. We closed off parts of our house, pretending we had less square footage and a single bathroom. Chris asked to work from home on Fridays, getting a feel for remote work.

Take Action

Our experiments gave us the confidence to take action in changing our life. We realized we could live with one vehicle. We sold the Prius and with the money we received we were able to pay off our minivan loan and make a nice principal payment on our mortgage. Most of the items stored in the basement were donated and sold. The money we made was helpful, but more importantly, we realized we didn’t need to buy more stuff, saving us money in the long run and making room in our budget for travel. Pretending to live in half our house turned into selling our home, moving into an apartment, and building our Little White Shack - coming summer 2019. The money we made from selling our home allowed Chris to take a one year mini-retirement and find a remote job he loves.

If you are feeling stuck in life right now, start questioning the constraints you are living within. Then start experimenting with how you can make changes. And after you’ve followed through on those experiments and found answers to your questions, take action to make a significant impact on your future!

What would you accomplish if you questioned the status quo and experimented with a new way of life?

Now that you know how to get unstuck, it’s time to focus on living with intention. But what does this mean? If you’ve figured out what you value and have made actionable steps to start living by those values, you’re ready to start living with intention (well, you’ve already started). There are three things to know that will help you keep the course. It’s not always easy, but it is always worth it!

Exercise Willpower

Living with intention usually means going against the flow of society. The world wants us to spend our money frivolously. These purchases make us feel good in the moment, but usually don’t help us live by our values. This is where willpower comes in.

I used to go to Target for diapers, formula, and toilet paper. Every trip I would also stop by the $1 section, walk the home decor aisles, and browse clothing all while sipping my Starbucks. This usually resulted in my shopping bill being $100-$200 dollars over my original intentions.

I would come home excited, but a few days later I would look at my credit card bill and be baffled by the total. How did I spend that much? I honestly couldn’t recall all my purchases. That shows how important and useful they were, right?

When I realized that shopping at Target wasn’t good for our budget I stopped going. I bought toothpaste, toilet paper, and cleaning products from the grocery store. This helped significantly. There did come a day when I finally stepped back into Target. It was difficult to walk past all those bright colors without grabbing something. I had to remind myself I didn’t need that item and place it back on the shelf.

When I returned home without those extra purchases, I was really proud of myself. But that doesn’t mean it was easy. With continued practice, my shopping cravings lessened - mostly because I was seeing results. My credit card bill no longer depleted my bank account. I even had money left over to save for vacations. This continues to give me the willpower to continue. I haven’t been perfect, but I’m still making progress on our freedom dreams.

Don’t Be Afraid To Spend On Your Values

Things will pop up in life that you don’t expect. Decisions will need to be made. But how do you make the best decision in relation to living an intentional life? Consider your values and available resources.

When my plans for a weekend trip to Arizona got canceled, a decision had to be made. My ticket was non-refundable. I could forgo the trip and take a $500 loss, or we could spend more money to get Chris a plane ticket and turn it into a short getaway. Had this happened a few years ago, Chris would have said to take the loss. He wouldn’t have been able to come to terms with spending money on something unnecessary.

But now that we know our values, Chris recognized the quality time that this trip would provide. We also had the funds to make this happen. We had decided a few months prior that we would set aside a nice amount of money each paycheck for vacations. Choosing to spend more money, especially on short notice, was the right decision for us. It fell within our value system, making it an easy yes.

(Follow up on that story: After dropping our girls off at my parents for the long weekend, our departure flight ended up being canceled due to the weather. We decided to take the refund instead of rescheduling due to our limited time in Arizona and spent a kid free weekend relaxing, watching movies, eating out, and taking a trip to IKEA. It ended up being a fantastic weekend.)

Learn and Move Forward

When you take action in changing your life (maybe it’s unplugging the TV, choosing to eat out once a week, or taking a vacation), keep moving forward. Keep progressing, learning, evolving, and doing.

After our first family road trip we were eager to continue. The following year we had a successful trip to Florida - maybe even better than our first! Then we planned our third road trip.

We were full of confidence, pushing ourselves to the next level, excited to explore out West. We covered over 4,000 miles in twelve days, spending over 60 hours in the minivan. We had several four hour stints of driving that resulted in screaming fits. We had a child with her first loose tooth who refused to eat anything but milkshakes. And over half of our hotel stops made me cringe. By the time we reached our last motel of the trip I made Chris make a U-turn in the parking lot and keep driving until we found a Holiday Inn Express. The closest one was three hours away! The next morning the girls and I were like stubborn donkeys that refused to move - we did not want to get back in that minivan!

That experience could have been the end of our road trips, but we valued the quality time and experiences this trip had provided. We hiked at Glacier National Park, Mt. Rainer, Yellowstone National Park, and Mt. Rushmore! We never would have had those experiences if it weren’t for that road trip, so no regrets. But we did learn lessons.

We crammed in too many miles for a twelve day trip. Our next trip needed to be slower - fewer miles driven each day and time to relax at our hotels. When we planned our next summer road trip out East we kept this at the forefront of our minds. It turned out to be one of the best trips we’ve ever taken. We loved hiking in New Hampshire, walking around Central Park, and swimming in the ocean in Delaware.

We didn’t give up on something we valued because it became stressful or challenging. The answer wasn’t to stop doing what we loved, but to make some adjustments so that we could live according to our values even better. Because of this, we were able to move forward in our journey with more knowledge and better results.

Are you living with intention? What has helped you in your journey?

Do you think your dreams are unattainable? In addition to 3 Steps To Get Financially Unstuck and 3 Ways To Live With Intention, we have come to realize a few other components that have made a huge difference in turning our dreams into a reality.

Change Your Mindset

For most of my life I told myself I couldn’t. Everything seemed out of reach or too complicated. Because of this, I didn’t even try to make my dreams a reality. One thing I really wanted to do was paint all the woodwork in our first home white, but I wasn’t the best painter and there was a lot of woodwork. I didn’t even know the right way to go about it anyway.

In 2015 my confidence was at an all time low and my depression at an all time high. I needed to do something for me, to lift me up. I still wanted to paint the woodwork and finally decided to give it a try. I bought primer, paint, tape, and a paintbrush. I turned on the radio and got to work. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing it anyway. I figured I would learn along the way.

After two layers of primer and paint I pulled the tape away and found an uneven paint job. Instead of feeling defeated, I grabbed the wall paint to fix the mistakes. Then I noticed that the gaps between the wall and woodwork made it difficult to create an even look. I was determined to figure out how to get the look I wanted. I continued to tweak my approach. Eventually my process looked like this:

1. Fill gaps between trim and wall with 3M Patch Plus Primer, using baby wipes to smooth the spackle before it dried
2. Two coats of primer and paint on trim and spackle
3. Tape woodwork, paint wall color just above the tape
4. Finally, fix small mistakes with very thin paint brush

It took multiple tries and revisions to get to this point, but in the end I had really crisp lines! In the process I realized I had also changed my mindset from I can’t, to I can try, to I will figure it out!

Allow Yourself To Have A Beginning

Back when I told myself that I couldn’t, I spent a lot of time feeling that I wasn’t talented or financially successful. When I wanted to remodel our first home, I watched Fixer Upper in awe of their talent, knowing I didn’t have any of those skills. When a friend moved to Australia, we wished to visit, but felt we would never be able to save enough money to make it happen (cost $3,000). I truly believed that I was destined to float through life with dreams unfulfilled.

Then I read Capital Gaines and learned that their story didn’t start with a remodeled farmhouse and a TV show. Chip started with fixing up small homes he rented to college students. Joanna started by decorating their first home in various themes. With each small project they took on their knowledge and talent grew. Their first projects were imperfect. They faced roadblocks and struggles on their journey. What we see on TV is the culmination of all those experiences. They had a beginning.

When we wanted to travel to Australia, we had a hard time saving money. We made good money and spent freely in our day to day life. It never dawned on me to change how we spent our income. When we finally took our first family road trip (cost: $3,000) five years later, we didn’t magically have the funds to travel. In fact, our expenses with three kids had increased more than our income had. Instead, we started tracking our spending and tried to decrease our expenses one category at a time. We decreased our grocery bill, followed by spending less on clothes, and then eliminated our auto loan by selling our second vehicle. Accomplishing our dream of being able to save up for travel started with making small changes that led to many road trips, traveling to Hawaii and Costa Rica, and still on the wish list - Australia!

If you have a dream, don’t expect to be able to do it right away. Allow yourself to take small steps that build upon each other. Remember that everything has a beginning. You have to start somewhere to get to the next place.

Create Your Support System

My belief that we couldn’t accomplish our goals came from negative self talk and letting people convince me that we wouldn’t succeed. Creating a strong support system helped stop the negative self talk and build the confidence we needed to move forward.

I needed people in my day to day life that lifted me up. When my husband supported me in remodeling our home, his belief in my skills helped me to persevere. When I found a therapist that understood me, she helped me create the tools I needed to build my confidence and follow our dreams. And when I found friends who love me in the midst of my unconventional dreams, I found strength in following my values.

We’ve also found that reaching out to people who have more knowledge on the things we want to accomplish has helped us move forward. When we researched moving to Costa Rica for 9 months, we connected with a principal of an international school in Uvita who was willing to help us navigate challenges and answer any questions we had. When I decided to design our new home, The Little White Shack, I found a builder who was willing and had the experience to help me bring my vision to life. And when Chris wanted to take this blog to the next level, he reached out to the the personal finance community for support and advice. So many people freely lifted Chris up, including but not limited to: Grant, Jillian, Nick, The Groovys, J. Money, Fritz, Cait, Mystery Money Man, Jim, Jay, and Scott. Creating these support systems took stepping outside our comfort zone, but it was worth it.

We are so grateful to everyone who has supported and believed in us and we want to pay that kindness forward. Chris and I would be happy to be a part of your support system - just reach out!

So much has and is changing in our finances this year. Chris is back to having a regular paycheck. We will move out of our apartment this Summer, move into our new house, and be back to having a mortgage. While we aren’t excited about the mortgage, we are thankful to be able to build our dream home, the Little White Shack.

We definitely want to pay off our mortgage as soon as possible. I know we will be tempted to take every extra cent and throw it at eliminating this debt. For some people that is the right decision, but I want to make sure that we don’t neglect our other values, mental sanity, or relationships in the pursuit of debt freedom.

For us, this means contributing to charities we believe in, investing in travel, and spending money hosting dinner with friends. Sure we could postpone these things and pay off our mortgage crazy fast, but it would leave us feeling empty. That’s not what we want.

With those things in mind, we are creating a general spending plan for the year. To help wrap my mind around all the different types of spending that come up throughout the year, I divided each category into one of two groups: needs or wants. And since we have been tracking our spending in Thrifty for over 3 years, it was fairly easy to come up with spending estimates. Here is our plan:

This brings our total spending plan to $170,860. This definitely isn’t a normal year for us, mostly because we are building our house. The $90,000 for the Little White Shack has already been saved up, so that won’t affect our bi-weekly paycheck. Along with that, some of our healthcare costs are covered via Chris’s employer ($3,240 healthcare premium) and an HSA account ($2,890 balance remaining as of January 2019). When you take these expenses out of our total, our spending plan is $74,730!

Halfway through the year, we’ll let you know how we are doing! We’ll tell you if we estimated any category wrong, over-spent, under-spent, and where we land on our mortgage!

If you read enough personal finance articles, you’re bound to have come across numerous discussions about needs versus wants.

If you take the messages at face value, you’ll come away with a sense that the majority of your financial issues come from an inability to minimize your wants.

This sage advice comes from all over, whether it be from your favorite personal finance blogger or musicians from the 1990’s.

It’s not having what you want
It’s wanting what you’ve got
Sheryl Crow

At the end of the day, most financial “wisdom” these days seems to tell you that wants are bad and you should get rid of those urges altogether.

Live like a caveman and you can retire in 3 years!

While I appreciate the sentiment, I think people often take this too far.

Money is a tool. A tool that is meant to be exchanged for things that are of value.

So, why are wants bad? If your wants are things that align with your values, aren’t they completely worth spending on?

Frivolous Wants

The problem is that unfortunately, for most people, the wants they spend are not in alignment with their values.

It’s the cute, but frivolous, serving tray from the Target Home Decor aisle that they didn’t even know existed until they entered the store.

It’s the awesome new thing on Kickstarter that is such a cool idea (and look awesome!) but solves a problem they don’t really have.

It’s habitual spending on in-app purchases, whether it’s a new outfit for a digital pet or a new gun to kill those pesky zombies.

These purchases are wants in the moment, but aren’t usually an accurate reflection or real values.

How do I know? Because Jaime and I have been there.

We have always wanted to travel. But despite making a decent income, we never seemed to find the money.

Disappointed that we couldn’t afford to travel, we’d blow our money on ice cream treats, carry-out dinners, revolving household decor, and kitchen gadgets.

And, because we blew our money on these, we never had the money to travel.

It was a vicious cycle.

But once we started tracking our spending, everything changed.

We started to see how much we spent on ice cream. How much we spent on carry-out. How much on decor, and how much on gadgets.

And when we saw the totals, it was staggering.

Values-Based Wants

Seeing the big picture of our spending helped us understand the crazy amount of money we were spending on frivolous purchases. When we saw those numbers rolled up, we knew we could shrink our frivolous spending without feeling any real pain.

Cooking six nights a week instead of four would save us hundreds in our food bill.

Cutting Target and Costco out of our shopping altogether would eliminate even more in impulse buys.

And with these thousands of dollars, we could afford to travel. We could afford to increase our charitable giving. We could prepay our mortgage and save for retirement.

Once we were able to look at our spending at a high level, we quickly saw that we had more than enough to spend on our wants - at least the wants that really added value to our lives.

It wasn’t about foregoing wants, it was about prioritizing wants based on our values. (Tweet this )

Over the last three years, we’ve refined this practice year-over-year:

• In 2016, we spent $104,000 total
• In 2017, we spent $92,000 total
• In 2018, we spent $83,000 total
• In 2019, we’ve budgeted $80,000 (not including our house down payment and initial furnishing)

And all the while, we’ve steadily increased our spending on value-adding wants:

• In 2016, we spent $4,400 on travel and $6,700 in charity
• In 2017, we spent $5,300 on travel and $2,750 in charity
• In 2018, we spent $19,000 on travel and $4,000 in charity
• In 2019, we’ve budgeted $12,000 for travel and $12,000 for charity

This is the spending that gives us joy. The spending that we feel aligns with our values, and I wouldn’t eliminate this at all. These aren’t bad wants - these are the wants that are most important.

What’s Next

Jaime’s going through the exercise of recategorizing all of our entries in Thrifty into value-based wants, “fun” (aka frivolous wants), and needs.

Once we get through that, We’re going to take a look at how our proportion between these has changed over time and we’ll share the results year.

Without seeing the numbers in front of me, I can tell you that we feel so much better about how we budget and spend today.

Having money carved out for our priorities make me completely comfortable saying “yes” to a last-minute family trip to Nevada. It makes us happy to increase our giving to great causes like The Hope Effect and World Vision.

This process has changed our lives. And I bet it can change yours too.

So, I challenge you.

Track your spending for three months. Measure how much you’re actually spending on those frivolous wants and see what real wants you could afford if you cut the frivolous ones in half.

Back in 2017, we took on the challenge to buy nothing new for a full calendar year. We wanted to break away from the consumerism that surrounds us on a daily basis. Our hope was that if we could get through an entire year of buying nothing new that it would help us become more intentional with our money.

We came up with five strategies to help us avoid buying new items:

1. Wear out - don’t replace items until they no longer perform their function
2. Fix - where possible, fix broken/torn items instead of replacing
3. Repurpose - do we already have something that can fulfill that item’s usage?
4. Self-provision - can we make it ourselves from other materials?
5. Buy used - can we find what we need used instead of new

While those strategies were useful, we knew that there were going to be exceptions. Chris and I thought hard and came up with 4 exceptions that we felt were in line with our values:

• Underwear, Socks, and Shoes
• Photo prints (school pictures and for our road trip map)
• Car maintenance parts (we know we need new tires next year)
• Home remodeling (we needed to wrap up current projects)

Our Experience

Chris and I were really optimistic when we started January 1, 2017. We even stayed within the rules! We did buy new carbon monoxide detectors, which weren’t on the exception list. But it was a safety issue for our family and deemed a necessary new purchase. The following two months we stayed focused and never broke our challenge rules. We went into month four thinking this challenge was going to be easy for our minimalist family.

Then my computer’s power cord finally gave out. We debated buying used, but we had already done that and it had not lasted long. So we broke the challenge for a good cause, buying a brand spanking new mac laptop power cord! It was a justified purchase. But that’s the problem right? Once you make one excuse, a few more follow. I bought one of our kids a costume as a birthday present. I told myself it was an experience, but let’s be honest - it was an item! And either way it was new.

The following month I bought some stainless steel straws. I still love them to this day, but it honestly was an impulse purchase. A week later I found myself having a pity party. My clothes all felt worn and frumpy. I felt worn and frumpy. I had errands to run and decided I would just have a look in one of my favorite shops. I walked out with an $80 summer dress from Title Nine. I felt a little guilty, but I came up with an excuse to justify my expensive buy. This is what I said to Chris when I showed him the dress:

“Our buy nothing new challenge is supposed to help us be more intentional with our spending. I want you to know that I very intentionally bought this dress!” (Tweet this )

I was really proud of myself for that statement! It was also the downfall of our experiment. The second half of the year was full of new purchases. We had multiple issues with buying second hand clothes for the girls. One was that we would later find holes in unfortunate places - so we gave up on buying used pants. I struggled with Sciatica and purchased a stability ball and foam roller to help. They were more or less impulse purchases that I used to delay going to a doctor. I now visit a chiropractor and don’t use those items.

Buying stuff in the second half of the year felt like binging on food after a miserable diet. In the following months we bought a lot of new items. We continued to try avoiding buying new, but our resolve wasn’t as strong. Buying used takes more time and patience (sifting through thrift stores). We were tired and buying new felt easier at times.

Trying to buy nothing new for a full year was tough. We finished the year with 90 new purchased items. This is far above our goal of zero, but the challenge did have an impact on how much new stuff we bought. In 2016 we had purchased 153 new items. We cut that by 40% in 2017. We also learned a few lessons along the way.

5 Lessons From Our Buy Nothing New Challenge

1. There will be unexpected necessary purchases (carbon monoxide detectors)
2. You will have a pity party at some point (my $80 dress, that I still love by the way)
3. Be diligent when you purchase used (holes in pants we didn’t notice before)
4. Don’t use purchases as solutions (stability ball)
5. When taking on a new challenge, start small (a full year is a long time, a three month challenge would have been a better first step)

Have you ever taken a buy nothing new challenge? How did it go for you?

I’ve been dreaming up different house plans for years. The square feet, number of bedrooms, and layout always varied, but the one thing that remained the same was my desire to create a functional compact home. For us, smaller square feet means a smaller mortgage and less to clean! This frees up financial resources to invest in other things we love to do (travel). It also frees up our time - I would rather spend my Saturday hiking than cleaning bathrooms!

Now that we have taken the step to build, all those different designs have melded together to become the floor plan below. While my focus has been on creating a small, multi-functional home, there are two areas that I loosened that focus in order to emphasize our values.

1. The first area we wanted to focus on was our screened-in deck. While we could have kept it small or even delayed building this feature to save money, we dreamed of having a mosquito free outdoor sanctuary where we could relax and spend time with friends and family. So instead of limiting this space, we extended the deck to be 20x10 sq ft.

2. The other area we extended was the kids’ bedroom. While we know the girls can survive in a 10x10 bedroom space together, I know that their need for privacy is growing. With that in mind, I created a 400 sq. ft. oasis with individual retreats (built in queen beds with shelf, outlet, light, and curtain) and an ensuite bathroom that maximizes privacy with three separate zones (toilet, sinks, shower).

   Note: You may wonder why we opt for a single bedroom instead of individual rooms for our girls: This has been an intentional choice. For Chris and I, the girls sharing a bedroom builds their friendship while also putting them in a situation where they have to learn to respect each other and resolve conflicts. Plus, the giggles we often hear after 7pm melt my heart - I wouldn’t want it any other way!

The remaining areas of the little white shack were designed to provide the biggest bang per square foot. For us, this meant creating multi-functional spaces that work for our family and lifestyle. This is how we made our decisions for each space:

1. Our minimalist lifestyle shows itself in our kitchen - a small galley that leads to the screened-in deck! There’s little counter space, limited storage, no microwave, and no cooktop range. Chris and I prefer simple meals, stay away from single purpose gadgets, and focus on using up groceries instead of stocking up. We have just enough counter space and storage to match our needs, haven’t used a microwave in years, and are opting to use induction hot plates that can be stored when not in use. It is a kitchen that exactly meets our needs!

2. We love our long narrow IKEA table and designed our dining space to fit it perfectly. This is where most of our life happens - family dinners, gathering with friends for pizza night, building puzzles, kids art projects, work, homework, and so much more. This table is at the center of our home, overlapping with the kitchen and open to the living room. It is the heart of our home, pulling us all together no matter what we are doing!

3. Chris and I have always wanted a fireplace in our living room. Sure, it’s not necessary and would save us close to $5k if we eliminated this feature, but it provides an extra layer of coziness in the winter. And this is exactly what we want out of our living room - a cozy welcoming space that invites you to sink in and relax. We don’t need a large room to make this happen. Instead we’ll be focusing more on the decor to maximize seating and create an atmosphere that encourages family movie nights, snuggling up with a good book, and chatting with friends.

4. We designed our bedroom to be useful day and night by installing a Murphy bed with a desk so Chris also has an office. We wanted to keep our room compact, yet comfortable. So when the bed is down, there is just enough space to comfortably walk around the bed and instead of nightstands, we each have our own 9 ft high cupboard that houses our minimalist wardrobe.

   Note: We love floor sleeping so much and don’t want to give it up with the Murphy bed. So the company making our bed is customizing our unit to accommodate our Japanese floor mat!

5. I wanted a single bathroom on the main floor that functioned as an ensuite and main floor restroom. In order to do this, I added a door off the kitchen that opens to a small landing space. That landing space has a door to the bathroom and a separate door to our bedroom. This allows Chris to work privately in our room during the day while also allowing anyone to access the bathroom. At night, we can close the kitchen door to create an ensuite feel.

6. In order to keep our home small, I needed to keep the mudroom simple. With five people in our family a large mudroom seems ideal, but I decided on a small hallway with hooks that just accommodate the current season. Off season shoes, jackets, etc will be stored in our unfinished basement where our laundry will also be located. In the end, it wasn’t worth the extra cost to us to make space for laundry and storage on the main floor.

7. We love being a single car family and plan on sticking with this lifestyle choice. We don’t want a two car garage, but we do want extra space for bike storage and maneuverability around our van. With this vision, I designed a deep garage with a little extra width - 16x28 square feet.

We feel so blessed to be able to build a home that matches our minimalist lifestyle. Most places wouldn’t allow a 1,112 square foot home with a single car garage due to neighborhood ordinances and deed restrictions. So when a narrow lot with zero restrictions in the middle of our town came up for sale we knew it was a match made in heaven. We can’t wait to enjoy life in the Little White Shack - a childhood dream come true!

Here’s the Little White Shack Floor Plan:

Have you ever vacationed with your entire family in a single house? I’ve always told Chris that I think the best time to spend with extended family would be in a neutral setting at a neutral time (no holidays please). This idea became a reality when my mom surprised us with an amazing gift.

My mom and aunts recently sold my grandparents’ house. With my mom’s portion of the sale she decided to take her family on a vacation. We joined my parents, two sisters and their husbands and kiddos in a beautiful three story home with a pool right on Bradenton Beach, FL. My Nana loved nothing more than being with all of her family so it was a wonderful way to honor her and my grandpa.

Anna Maria Island, Florida

Our days in Florida were slow and relaxing. Mornings were filled with coffee, cartoons, and taking in the view of the waves. The rest of the day was spent between the pool, beach, and foosball table! Lunches were simple sandwiches and fresh fruit. My brother-in-law rocked the grill at dinner time. And as the sun was about to set we would head to the beach to absorb the last of the sun’s rays.

We rarely left the property - a few trips to the beach wear and grocery stores filled our needs. Halfway through the week we had a girlie with ear pain at 1AM. We didn’t realize that my dad (with the dog) and sister (with the baby) were up as well. Had we known, Chris could have brought the dog and our nephew in the car when he made his late night run to Walgreens.

Sharing this vacation with my family allowed all of our relationships grow. We all helped each other out. My sisters would take N to the beach when the twins wanted to stay in the pool. I grabbed the baby when he woke up from his nap so my sister could stay on the beach a bit longer. Chris taught our two year old nephew the potato fries fist bump. The girls cuddled on the couch with my niece when they watched movies. And on a few nights the adults would stay up with a glass of wine and chat!

Before the week was over my sisters and I agreed that we would love to vacation like this again! It was the most relaxing, fun time we’ve spent with family. And while this trip was free thanks to my parents, we would gladly split the cost in the future because a week in paradise with my family was priceless.

Here’s a scenario I bet you’ve encountered:

You’re on your way home. It’s a familiar route. You’ve done this trip hundreds or thousands of times.

Your mind drifts to other parts of your day. You think about the grocery list, the latest challenge with work or the kids.

The next thing you know, you’re home.

You don’t remember the commute. You don’t remember the turns, the signs, or the stops. You know they happened and you feel like you were reasonably safe, but you must admit that you were, in essence, on autopilot.

Why do we end up on autopilot? Certainly getting home safely is important to us. The last thing any of us wants is to get in a car accident or to hit a pedestrian.

Here’s my theory - subconsciously, we’re making a decision to optimize. We know we only have so many minutes in the day. We can’t avoid the commute, so we choose to optimize our time by balancing a “sufficient” amount of attention to the road with the rest on other priorities.

If we can give enough attention to driving, isn’t it the best of both worlds to be able to mentally prepare for other parts of our day as well?

Optimizing is a driving force in our day. We optimize our time. We optimize our money. We optimize our skills, our talents, and our relationships.

When Optimization Goes Wrong

But optimization has a dark side. When we let our optimization be subconscious (instead of conscious), we run the risk of optimizing for the wrong things and getting further away from the life we really want.

Optimizing your time on the road might be worth the safety tradeoff if you’re spending that time figuring out a cure to a debilitating disease. But is it worth getting into an accident because you were trying to decide whether your Instagram photo of tonight’s tacos would look better with white or orange cheddar?

You see, optimizing on autopilot is risky; especially when you’ve got celebrities, carefully curated social media profiles, and advertising telling you what you’re “supposed” to value.

When you start combining subconscious optimizing with “adopted” values from others, you can quickly find your life spinning in the wrong direction.

Modern Society’s Preferred Optimizations

So what do those celebs, influencers, and marketers tell you to optimize for?

Two big ones come to mind, both of which are recipes for failure.

First, they tell you to optimize for your “image”. You’re told to optimize for how others perceive you. Get this car and people will think X. Wear these clothes and you’ll give the appearance that you’re Y.

But if you optimize for your image, you’re optimizing on other peoples’ perceptions instead of your own. You’re inherently placing your personal value in what other people think of you, which is something you should never optimize for.

Your worth isn’t defined by what other people think. It’s not even defined by what you think. God loves you and no matter how poor your image (self or otherwise) is. God determined your worth a long time ago and no one can take that away.

Second, society will tell you to optimize for convenience.

Between fast food, internet shopping with 2-day delivery, on-demand streaming, and instant answers from your phone (or a digital assistant sitting in your living room), we’ve been trained to think that convenience is king.

But is our ultimate goal on this planet to “get things easily?” Is that what you want on your tombstone?

Here Lies Chris
Loving husband and father
Found innovative ways to avoid lifting a finger
Rest in peace

Come on! God made you for bigger and better things than finding the easiest and fastest way to satisfy your compulsions.

I had a beer with one of our readers the other week (BTW, this is something I’m highly for and would love to do with any of you that are swinging by Madison, WI) and he shared a great example of how he and his family flipped convenience on its head and found a much better thing to optimize for.

Here’s the rundown:

Their family has three kids (one college, one high school, one middle school) and two working parents. Their college-aged son is home for the summer and working a second-shift internship on the other side of town. With only 2 cars, transportation can get a little bit tricky.

The convenient solution would be to buy another car - even a junker - to help ensure that transportation is easy for everyone. But this family knows that convenient doesn’t necessarily mean best, so they came up with another approach.

Every morning, the dad drives to work. When the son needs to head to work in the afternoon, he rides his bike to his dad’s office. When he gets there, he drops off the bike and takes the car the rest of the way to his second-shift job. When the dad finishes work, he rides the bike home. When the son finishes work (late at night), he drives the whole way back.

Is this convenient? Definitely no. Biking is exercise and that’s hard work. But it’s also good for you. Rain and temperature could make for some pretty rough riding conditions. But those conditions aren’t impossible to tackle.

It’s not convenient, but it does align with this family’s values. They didn’t want to spend the extra money on a car, gas, and insurance. They didn’t want to add more pollution to the air or another set of rusted out parts in the landfill. So they got creative and found a better solution to the problem for their family.

Optimize for Your Values

I love that story - not because that situation and solution precisely matches us, but because it precisely matches them. This reader’s family thought hard about what was important to them and optimized on their values.

Over the last several years, we’ve worked to do the same in our own lives. Here’s a small example:

In our old house, we had four bedrooms. With three kids, that gave us precisely enough space to allow each child to have their own bedroom as they got older.

But as we build the little white shack, we are building with a floorplan that has just two bedrooms and two bathrooms. All three of our girls will share a single bedroom and a single bathroom.

Keep in mind, we’re going to have three teenage girls in our household in the not-so-distant future, so this definitely doesn’t sound convenient from most perspectives.

But convenient isn’t what we want here. We don’t want a situation where our daughters all shut themselves off in separate parts of the house. We don’t want our house to just be a place we all happen to live; we want to be present and supportive in one another’s days every day.

And we don’t want to let convenience drive our finances. More bedrooms and bathrooms mean a bigger mortgage, higher property taxes, and higher operating cost. That expense comes at the cost of other things we’d rather spend our money on - like charity and family travel.

Will sharing a room cause some extra sibling fighting? Maybe. Will there be times that they scream and tell us we’re ruining their lives for not giving them their own room? Probably. But will they be forced to confront issues, work through conflict, and connect as a family? Definitely.

This piece of our floorplan may sound massively inconvenient to some. But for us, it’s a reflection of the values we think are right for our family. And that’s the perfect thing to optimize for.

What are you optimizing for? How does your life reflect your values (or not)? What optimizations are you second-guessing?