Contentment is a Dream
When I was freshly 21 I was living within an hour’s drive of the Bourbon Trail. Me and my friends in an effort to be more snobby and arrogant than the fireball shooting peers of ours, decided to dabble in the high class of sipping whisky. We did a tour of the Wild Turkey Distillery located in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.
At the time of our trip Wild turkey was promoting its new line called Russell’s Reserve. During the tour our guide mentioned that this was the company’s way of telling Jimmy Russell that it was OK to retire. At the time Jimmy Russell had been the master distiller at Wild Turkey for 49 years, was 69 years old and he STILL came to work every day with a smile on his face. At that time, still in college (nearing the end of) and still had no idea what I wanted to do for work, I thought, “OK, that’s what I want, I want a job that I am happy to go to for ever and still love it after 50 years of doing it”
Well, a few short years later at about 28, I had worked many jobs across an array of industries. I had taken the MCAT with aspirations of medical school along with every other Biology major that mistakenly chose a broad category to major in. I made it on the cusp of military research grants on another project. I worked in several labs, did field research, traveled the world on employers’ dimes, and on and on.
What I came to realize is the facade of the American Dream and the Dream job. I worked one job as a zookeeper and was severely underpaid because the industry knows it is a “dream job” and they secretly consider that as part of the compensation package. Bullshit. The Dream job can and does work out for a select few people, and good for them. I came to realize that I personally wasn’t ever going to be overly passionate about any line of work. What I am passionate about is my hobbies. Being home, being with my family, traveling at my discretion. I love it when I wake up and the day is unplanned for me to do whatever the wind brings me. Thus my FIRE journey was born.
So I have lucked into a life that provides this, while paying me enough to achieve my FIRE goals by 45, while giving me subsidized health insurance in the meantime. I work a variation of a firefighter schedule (though I am not a firefighter), where I only work about 5.5 months worth of days in a year and get to live my life in the meantime. Thankfully my passions are frugal in nature anyway.
Another way to look at this, for those that want to retire ASAP, is to go the way of the Millennial Revolution. She recommends in her book, Quit Like a Millionaire to get a degree in some type of engineering, get a sweet deal of a job and save that $200k like crazy for about 8-10 years. THEN when you’re financially free, go and get that less lucrative English degree and write, sculpt, work with the dolphins, or what have you. The dream job CAN be a real thing. But for the vast majority of us, it is prudent to postpone it rather than achieve it at 18 years old before you’ve actually found what that dream is.
Finding contentment with your situation is one key. But the key to the FIRE part of all this is to find what will make you ultimately content? I’ve found, as far as spending goes, there is a space where a little bit of more spending increases quality of life significantly. When I was living in an HCOL area, making $50,000 we were spending the bare minimum. All the bare essentials were paid (student loans, rent, vehicle fuel, etc) we tried to save every dime after that. But we finally got to a point where we thought, you know what, $15 extra per month for netflix, significantly raised our quality of what little leisure time we had. So we committed to only using one streaming service. We were still only saving $12,000/year: enough to max out the IRAs and a small amount more.
There is another point, where spending the same $15 more per month doesn’t actually improve our life much. Now that we have more suitable income, maxing all the tax-advantage accounts, and saving some extra after that, deciding that I need a 3rd streaming service is an impulse buy not a conscious decision that will improve the quality of life. Lifestyle creep is a real thing, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative thing. Like most things in life, moderation is key.
So how much do you actually need to be content? Imagine you won the lottery. I’ve played the powerball lottery exactly twice in my life. Both times the jackpot was over $1 Billion. As a physics major (basically math with a purpose), I understood the probability math, but what the hell, I could afford $20 for 10 chances at $1 Billion in lieu of a movie date. Spoiler alert, I did not win.
But let’s say you won the $1 Billion jackpot and you elect to take the lump sum (mathematically the lesser option). Let’s say Uncle Sam take’s 40% of it leaving you with $600 million in liquid cash. Now, spend as much of it as you can in one year without killing yourself. Every time I do this thought experiment with the Mrs. We can dream up what to do with a maximum of $15 Million. This includes upgrading our home, another getaway home, buying homes for our siblings and parents, new cars, lavish (to us) trips, private school for Junior, the whole nine yards. Perhaps we just aren’t flashy people. The moral of the story is that being content frees you from always needing more and more.
We spend about $4,000 per month, or $48,000/year. This covers our rent, utilities, food, and everything else. We are planning that we may want to live slightly higher on the hog in retirement. So our FIRE number is based on $60,000/year. We use the 3% rule rather than 4%, so that puts our goal at $2 Million. We have a little more than 10 years left. But until then, we are content where we are at, and can enjoy life responsibly in the meantime.
