PAX: Flounder, Blue (Bluewater), Water Wings, Jigglypuff, Staubach, Breezy, Clockwork, Amway, Sbarro, Hermes, Shipyard, Trickle
PAX (not in Slack): None
FNGs: None
COUNT: 13
Started with Ecclesiastes 5:10 – “Whoever loves money, never has enough: whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.” I then shared the cliff’s notes of how my wife and I got into some bad debt early in our marriage. Then fortunately found Dave Ramsey and got out of that bad debt in about 3 years and broke some bad habits. Then we coasted for the next several years. Never really fell behind in our finances, but never really got ahead. Expenses seemed to always match income.
Then a bit of a work/early midlife crisis led me to an amazing blogger names Mr. Money Mustache. I realized that I was focusing way too much on stuff for my happiness. Over a several year period, my wife and I become aligned (more or less…) on making some rather significant financial changes. We significantly reduced spending and significantly increased saving and investing. I ultimately decided to quit my full time job in 2019, but ended up being offered a great part time remote opportunity with the company, which I accepted.
We continue to spend less money than we did when I was working full time, yet don’t feel like we are missing out on anything. Quite the opposite. The substantial increase in time and flexibility with the new job has given us the opportunity to be together more and travel a lot more as a family. My wife was very skeptical of these changes at first. But now, I don’t think she could imagine what our life would be like if we hadn’t made those changes.
Some important take-aways from the discussion:
-Work is way better when you don’t need the money. Even if you like your job as-is, save, save, save. You never know when that situation can change. And having that extra money does make work feel different.
-Those with kids – you are not getting this time back. You can always make more money. You only get once chance to raise them. Make sure you’re balancing your time right.
-Consider what your purchases are really costing you. That vacation home is great, but maybe it means you’re going to have to work another 5 years. Is it worth it?
For those that haven’t watched the video embedded in this article yet, do it! It will be worth your time. Tip, you can increase the playback speed to 1.5X and it will only take 20 minutes, and is still completely understandable.
www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/10/10/how-to-be-happy-rich-and-save-the-world/
If you have any questions or want to talk more about anything we discussed, hit me up. I would love to talk.
Finally, if I left you off this backblast, I’m sorry. I forgot that I needed to create one and didn’t do a great job memorizing who was there.