A working dad, starting a long journey to reach FIRE, contentment, or both.
So, I’ve been away for a while. Anything happen in 2020?
Obviously, this past year has been…different. Once again, I’m glad I didn’t try to set resolutions for 2020, seeing as virtually nothing went anywhere close to the way I had hoped. But, I do like to look back at the goals I set and figure out where to make changes and/or improvements for the next year. So, let’s rip this bandage off and look at how 2020 turned out for me, and then we can move on to my 2021 goals.
So…for the last couple of years, I’ve set goals instead of resolutions. I said resolutions are such an absolute concept that they generally lead to disappointment, at least for me. (Aside: if I had made some of my old resolutions this year, I would have already broken some. This rather solidifies my reasoning.)
Each year, I like to look at last year’s goals to see where things went well and where I could improve. After that, I like to plan out my goals for the coming year.
So, let’s move toward my 2019 results and 2020 goals.
“I know where I’m going. Where I’ve always been going. Home. The long way around.”*
If you pay attention to the FIRE** blogging community for more than, oh, I don’t know, ten seconds, you know that there are a whole lot of people who are bent on retiring well before standard retirement age. Many of them want to retire before 40. Some are even aiming for before age 30.
But is that the best way for everyone? Do I need to make that my highest priority, giving up everything else to get there as quickly as I can?
Of course I don’t.
And so, apparently, I’ve become part of the Slow FI movement, if that’s a thing.
Or have I?
Financial experts (and bloggers) always have lots of ideas of things one might do to try to improve their financial situations. There are lists of side hustles. You can take any number of surveys. You could try the latest get-rich-quick scheme. (Okay, maybe those don’t come from real “experts”.) But the fact of the matter is that there is just not enough time in the day to try every idea that comes across your screen…or my time management skills need work. Either way, it’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way: I can’t do it all.
Last year, I said New Year’s resolutions had the tendency to be depressing. They set absolute standards, which lead to disappointment when the standard is missed. I said I didn’t want to make resolutions anymore. So is the new year time to reflect and make changes, or not?
Of course it is. Only now I set goals. It gives me a chance to improve through the year by setting smaller goals as part of a the larger one.
So, let’s talk about this new year and my goals as we begin 2019…
When 2018 was about to start, I set a few goals for the year. I didn’t make any resolutions, because I don’t do that anymore; they seemed to absolute, and once broken, resolutions are easy to forget entirely. Goals allow me to work toward something. So…how’d I do? Let’s review 2018.
Continue reading “Did I meet my goals this year? A review of 2018”
Today, I have a guest post from Patricia Sanders, writing about how to achieve FIRE, which occasionally seems far away for this working dad. It probably doesn’t help that I’m batting about .400 with this list of suggestions. (And yes, the caption on the picture is mine.)
How can you achieve FIRE? Here’s how to do it…
Who doesn’t want to achieve FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early)?
Working becomes fun when you do it because you enjoy it, and not just for
money.
In my last post, I wrote about being content with my station in life. I didn’t win the Mega Millions jackpot; my job situation hasn’t changed; and, at the moment, I certainly am not pulling in the readers the way other bloggers have done. Contentment is more of an exercise for me than a character trait. I ask myself: what do those other bloggers have that I don’t? (Well, other than popularity.) The first answer that comes to me is that all of them have, or had (for those who reached FIRE*), a plan.
In the last few months*, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about what I want from this page. There are somewhere on the order of a bazillion blogs about money, so what could I offer here that hasn’t already been done? That was the start of refocusing this page, ever so slowly, into sharing my journey. No one else has shared that, because no one else has had my unique set of experiences. And I have realized that my journey, above all else, needs to be toward contentment.
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions anymore.
Nothing against those of you who do make resolutions, but to me, making resolutions can be really discouraging. “This year will be the year that I finally stop…” All too often, it becomes a recipe for discouragement sometime around January 10. “Ugh…once again I failed…” And after enough years of this, I don’t want to do that anymore.
So, while I do look at a new year as a chance to reflect and make changes, I’m not going to make any resolutions. Instead, I will be setting goals for 2018.