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“What were your biggest sacrifices for financial independence?” is a common question I get. Today, I reveal why my family hasn’t made any sacrifices for achieving financial freedom and how you can do it too. Because if the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) journey means sacrificing your happiness today for later in life, you do it wrong. Let’s dive in.
Contents
ToggleFinancial Independence (FI) means having enough in passive income from your investment portfolio and retirement savings to cover your living expenses – either partly or completely.
So you need quite some money in the form of passive income. For many in the FIRE community, this passive income comes from their stock market portfolio, such as dividend payments.
However, to get there, you first need to save and invest a lot of money. This may seem like you have to make many, many sacrifices to achieve this. Sacrifice when it comes to your lifestyle choices, your spending habits, and how you spend your time. More on that later.
Your reward? Achieving financial freedom and financial security in life so you can make the life choices you want and that are best for your family without being limited by your finances. You may want to read our story on Why We Aim For Financial Independence As A European Family.
But the ability to shape your life the way you want (later in life) comes with making many sacrifices (today), right? Wrong. Let me explain why.
What is the definition of the term sacrifice? Sacrifice means giving up something you value for the sake of others. You surrender one thing, one possession, one dime for another thing or something else. So, you experience a loss by giving up something. But you do this usually for the sake of a better outcome.
However, you have the choice between two options. That is neither convenient nor comfortable. Because you have to ask yourself what you truly value in life. Do you spend your money on the right things? Or are you doing it habitually? If you truly question this, you will experience inconvenience. Because you will experiment with spending your money differently and making sacrifices for financial independence.
I was born in Romania, a communist state. At that time, people had no choice about whether to make a sacrifice or not. Farmers who harvested their food had to give it to the state, which separated the food for the people. They were left with nothing and waited in line for hours to at least get something to eat. Mothers of newborns had to leave it at home (with strangers to care for it) and return to work, a day’s journey away. Everyone has suffered from these sacrifices.
Now imagine you decide not to go out this weekend and invite people over to your house for a board game night. You won’t order dinner but will enjoy home-cooked food. Would you feel any pain?
When we talk about making sacrifices for financial independence, we need to put things in perspective. Because there is a big difference between suffering from a sacrifice and simply feeling uncomfortable. It is very powerful to realize that this choice itself is pure luxury and should not make us feel miserable.
But even if we recognize that we have a choice, that doesn’t mean making sacrifices for financial independence is any less inconvenient. We still feel very uncomfortable about questioning what we really value in life. Because we tend to think that we naturally spend our money on the right things. We think it is appropriate. We even think that we have to spend money on something to feel joy or happiness. And for some things in life that can be very true. But for far more things, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s why.
No one wants to rob you of a fulfilling life in the pursuit of financial freedom. Nobody wants you to save more and more just to save money. The FIRE community is not about saving more. It’s about spending and investing money wisely. It’s about making lifestyle choices, adopting spending habits, and using your time in a way that truly makes you feel good. Because unfortunately we rarely question that. And that’s exactly what the FIRE movement is all about.
Just ask yourself this ONE question to decide on a sacrifice: Are you spending your money on what you really care about in life and what brings you value and joy (rather than stress)? Let me give you one example.
After becoming a mom for the first time, I fell into the trap of thinking my child needed educational toys. So I bought a lot of them. I sat for hours teaching my little girl how to properly play with these toys so she could develop her skills. My second daughter showed no interest in these educational toys. Nevertheless, she has developed just as well. Now that I’m expecting my third daughter, still no one actively plays with these toys unless I encourage them to. They just want to play with each other.
Today, I stopped spending my money on educational toys. This is the ONE sacrifice my family made to save more and stress less. And, we all couldn’t be happier with making that “sacrifice”.
Saving money, by not buying those educational toys, truly added value to our family’s life. Because our kids simply do not enjoy playing with those toys. They barely even look at them.
These educational toys just added stress because I needed to maintain that mountain of toys. I needed to keep up with toy rotation. Or at least, I tried to. Toy rotation is just a fancy term for putting one toy away (into a box) and taking another one instead (out of the box).
It took me years to stop spending money on those educational toys and declutter them. Now my husband is trying to sell this mountain of toys. I can give you many of these examples where spending money brings neither value nor joy but only stress into our lives. Money that could have been put to much better use in saving and investing.
Here are some common “sacrifices” people in the FIRE community like to make in favor of saving and investing while living a happy, fulfilling family life:
After reading that list above, you may have started to think about your own lifestyle choices, spending habits and time use. Maybe you have already detected one area that you could pay more attention towards.
Here are 7 actionable tips to start making “the right sacrifices”:
I have written a couple of blog posts about how I personally made the mental shifts required to save more and waste less:
Today, when someone asks me if I missed out on enjoying life for saving money I have a simple answer. No. Here’s why. Firstly, I partied enough to last two lifetimes and lived life to the fullest. That was during my teenager years and as a student. Second, after I landed my first real job when graduating from university, I „enjoyed“ spending all of my money on all kind of luxuries.
I traveled (a lot and luxury travel), I loved going out (150€ per night was normal), I’ve bought expensive clothing, cosmetics and many more. I always like telling the story of my husband and I who had driven the car our German cancelor drove too. Of course, on the weekends. That was at the peak of our excessive consumption. You can read about our story here.
I never felt like missing out on enjoying life for saving money because I know how it is to not save money at all. I had done that for years if not decades. But at some point, it became boring to me. I wanted to do something else with my money. And today, that’s what I do.
Honestly, I can’t say that an expensive lifestyle is more fulfilling than a frugal life. On the contrary. I experience a frugal life as a more meaningful life with deeper connections. Especially if you have children. Because you practice slow living and simple living more often. Which is a relief, especially if having newborns or toddlers at home.
I’ll give you an example. My younger self would always go to a park with kids on a family Sunday, order pizza for dinner, and buy all sorts of things like toys that day. The result would have been that we would have outsourced, so to speak, every aspect of our everyday lives (which would have expanded our massive toy collection even more).
Today I occasionally go to a park with my children. The result is that my children value this experience much more. They also argue much less with us and with each other because they are not overstimulated. By that I mean they can unwind from the day at home without having to play with new toys (they actually don’t care about) with while I enjoy (I really do) cooking a home cooked delicious meal for my family.
Now, I’d love to hear from you: Do you know of a similar example where saving money didn’t mean giving up joy?
When you walk away today with at least one new idea to improve your financial journey, I’d love to show you some more in the next post. If you haven’t already, you can apply to become a part of the community to not miss any new release. For that you can subscribe to our newsletter below in the green footer.
In our next blog post I reveal the benefits of waking up early as a mom. You will be surprised!
Title image source: Fuu J on Unsplash
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