Pace Yourself

Financial Independence (FI) is no more a destination than fitness is. We can’t do budgets or curls for months, see some results, stop what got us the results and expect the results to last.

Ask me how I know!

We have to learn to love the process and work to stay fit or FI. And we need to know what our goal of fitness or financial success looks like to us.

Is it ripped like a body builder, flexible like a yogi, or just remaining below a certain weight?

Is it to be a millionaire, have a comfortable retirement in the future, or just to get some breathing room in your budget?

I remember going on the Body For Life program in my twenties at the recommendation of my friend. I wasn’t even overweight. But I was single and wanted to look my best at the lake. The program required six meals a day of very precise measurements.

The program said that if you couldn’t eat that many meals, you could substitute a perfectly balanced shake that - SURPRISE - was sold by the company who wrote the book!

This lasted all of two weeks because it wasn’t practical. I couldn’t stick with lugging around a cooler of food with me everywhere. Or more precisely, I could lug a cooler around but the results weren’t worth the work.

Finances are much the same.

A financial fad diet can get you some big wins but it may not be something you are willing to stick with and the results might not be worth the cost. Finding a sustainable method will be more powerful AND will be something you can stick to until FI and beyond.

If we stop the practices that got us to fitness or FI, we’ll be unfit and un-FI pretty quickly.

I see some folks on Reddit who get excited when they find the “FIRE” (Financial Independence - Retire Early) movement and cut expenses to the bone.

They make some pretty big gains towards growing the gap between income and expenses. They build up some balances in retirement accounts or buy some rent houses. Then they resent the restrictiveness of their new way of life and say “forget it” and go back to having no financial direction - the financial equivalent of me ditching the food cooler for the value meal.

A budget that is challenging but sustainable will get most of us further than an extreme one that we’ll give up on after two weeks.

If we ate rice and beans every day at my house to pay off the mortgage, I would need a new mortgage for my new house that I would inhabit alone and I’d need some “body for life” shakes to get some six pack abs because I’d be single again.

This idea is tough to square with my other strongly held belief that we have to sacrifice to achieve greatness at something. I don’t think we can half-ass (as my dad would say) success.

But the sacrifice has to be sustainable.

If you want a financial six-pack and hauling a cooler around is worth it, then do it! But listen to yourself and if you feel yourself falling off the wagon, try to throttle back instead of ditching the plan all together.

• I now seek challenging but realistic goals that I can stick with.

• I exercise four days a week - not seven - I won’t stick to it.

• I think of where I want to be in a year, five years, and ten years in finance and fitness.

• I don’t carry a cooler of balanced meals with me anymore but I also don’t haul a cooler of beer like I once did (but that’s a story for another time). I know the fad diet won’t last and the beer takes me in the opposite direction of my goals.

This is the objective of my “aggressively moderate” goals these days. How is that for an oxymoron? I want to do big things but only in ways I can stick to for the long haul.

I hope you can set some audacious goals and a sustainable path to achieve them. Remember what Bill Gates says “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year but underestimate what they can do in ten.”

I hope this helps and, as always, keep the main thing the main thing!