I made a post on July 7th, 2021 called: You Are a Lot Closer to Your Ideal Lifestyle Than You Think.. and it turned out to be very true. Now that we sold my husband’s vehicle, we have accomplished everything on my “dream life/ideal lifestyle” list that is near the bottom of the aforementioned blog post. Everything except, have a child & go down to part time work.
Here is the list:
- I’m healthy in every way, including spiritually.
- Prioritize my relationships; non-toxic folks only.
- Debt free, except for mortgage.
- We are working part time, or only as much as we want/need to.
- Have a child.
- Do what we can to support a more sustainable environment.
- No more social media, except Pinterest & Instagram.
- Help others financially through the Money For Everyone podcast, this blog, & my time.
- We have one car & 2 bikes.
As for the items on this list we have not yet accomplished:
We now have enough money saved, decreased our expenses enough, & have gotten raises to the point where we could both easily go down to part time work & maintain our current lifestyle. Or we can survive on just one of our incomes. So, we are partially financially independent now. (My husband and I are only 23 & 24 right now.)
To see how we got to this point, you can go to my Monthly Financial Updates page where I have tracked our financial journey since May 2020; or you can check out my Financial Advice tab too.
As for having a child, we are planning on working full time until we have a baby, which we have no idea when that will be since a lot of that is out of our control. I also wouldn’t tell people (except a few close friends & family members) until I was successfully out of the first trimester, since 20%+ of pregnancies end in miscarriage. This does not count still births or numerous other things that can go wrong during pregnancy & birth. You never know, so I am not putting any pressure or expectation on our “have a child” goal.
Even if we successfully have a baby, we are not sure who would go down to part time or stop working. There are so many unknowns & variables. Such as, what if we have twins? What if the baby is alive but has health issues? What if I have postpartum depression and/or anxiety? What if our baby is easy & chill? What if I feel fine after a couple weeks & want to return to work? What if we have fertility issues & can’t conceive so all of this wondering, worrying, & planning is pointless? Who knows! We won’t know the best choice for us as a couple until after the baby is here.
It should feel like a relief now knowing one of us could lose our job (or quit) or choose to work less hours, and everything would be fine, but I, for some reason still feel just as worried about our finances. It doesn’t make sense, we’re more secure than we’ve ever been, but I feel even more anxious recently.
My hypothesis on why I think I’m feeling this way: When you have more, you have more to lose, which is scary. We have not inflated our lifestyle, in fact, we’ve deflated it, so I’m not talking about losing material possessions. I don’t care about that as long as we can keep our very modest house. I also think I don’t want to miss out on money I could’ve had & I’m worried about not taking advantage of every opportunity to get as far ahead as I can. Of course I want to work less if I have worked hard to get to that point financially, but there is still that fear of not achieving enough, for me at least. Millennial Revolution made a post about this recently, called Why Freedom Can be Scary, that explains this further. Another reason may be, with more freedom & control, there comes more decision making & responsibility. I’m not as worried about this since I am a decisive & responsible person, but I think my husband greatly struggles with this (or will once we are fully financially independent), he is insanely indecisive.
I think I’m just stressed out from work too. It’s not stress that is screaming in your face, but more mild & constantly buzzing in the background reminding you of the 50 things you have to get done, but the buzzing is growing louder. My job has gotten far more complicated now with my new work role, so I decided to go back to my Office Administrator role. It just wasn’t worth it.
Even so, I feel more calm & confident about leaving work than my husband does. This is because I’m the one who does all of the financial planning, money management, & calculations, so I know for a fact we would be okay. I think he also likes his job more than I like mine, but I’m not certain.
It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that we’re already partially financially independent, when we were at 0 net worth & just starting this journey exactly 3 years ago. I’m thinking that around 3 years from now we will have our mortgage totally paid off, with our monthly expenses somewhere around $1200-$2000/month. At this point, we will both absolutely go down to part time work, & maybe have one of us not be employed at all. The main goal is for me to be self employed through this blog & EYFP Instagram, & have Brandon work part time at his job, that’s it.
As always, thanks for reading! Our September Financial Update will be out Monday, October 4th, 2021.
-Meghan
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