Financially Independent, Retired Early(ish) at 57.
Sometimes it’s the little things that turn an ordinary day into a good one.
Normally, I practically have to carry a whip and a chair into my year 8 class to keep them quiet and able to learn. But today? Three boys were away.
I was able to read ‘The Outsiders’ to the class without a single interruption.
I love my job today!
Anyone have any other ‘little things’ that make an ordinary working day seem special?
I had a busy weekend. My blog post came second place in the Rockstar Rumble and I went out to see two plays with Evan22, one on Friday night and one on Saturday night. I did a lot of reading on Saturday – when I start a new book I can’t help but gallop through it till the end. (This one was NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. It wasn’t bad.) Sunday I Got Practical Things Around The House Done.
This meant that I didn’t do much writing. Those of you who’ve read my post on my ‘Goal Setting’ chart might remember that I have a goal to write on this blog 3 times a week. I dragged myself into work today feeling as if I didn’t want to be here and cross that I didn’t have an article ready to post today.
Every Monday for the first 10 minutes of the day we have ‘Mindfulness Mondays’, where the teachers direct their classes in a Mindfulness session. Up until now, I’ve been doing sessions totally directed by me, where we concentrate on feeling how they’re breathing, how their feet feel in their shoes, how their bodies feel in the chairs etc.
When I run out of things to talk about I direct them to look at the ‘Mindfulness Tree’, which is a gum tree outside our second-floor window. I get them to look at the leaves, how they’re blowing in the wind, how the sky looks behind it and so on. But I was getting a little bit tired of doing the same old thing every week.
I walked into the staffroom and decided that this week I was going to do something different. The kids were going to colour in!
This is actually quite a good mindfulness technique. While colouring in, you’re effectively in the moment, focused on the selection of colours and what the pencil is doing. I passed out the sheets and the Tibetan bell chimed over the loudspeaker to begin the session.
The kids were silent. Engrossed. I’ve never seen this group of 12-year-olds so intent.
The minutes slipped by. They were totally absorbed by the task. Each child started at a different spot on the design and used different colours to fill in the spaces. Vikki wanted to keep reading instead, but I made her put her book away and start colouring. “We’re here to be mindful in the life we’re in now, not escaping to other worlds!”
I wasn’t sure how much they would finish in the ten minutes. I haven’t coloured in anything for decades! When the Tibetan bell sounded at the end of the session, hardly anything had been finished. But the kids had been working so hard.
“Can we keep colouring?” one little optimist said.
“No, we have to get on with work,” I said. “But how about if everyone puts their name on the top and I save them for next week?”
They liked that idea… well, probably everyone except Vikki! I collected them up and we went on with the lesson.
It’ll take another 3 or 4 lessons, no doubt, until the pictures are complete.
It was when I was wandering around the room as they worked that I saw a parallel to our FI/RE treks.
Given time, all of the children will complete the task.
They all started from different spots, with different materials. Some had only a couple of pencils, some had heaps; one boy had a single grey lead.
Now that they know where they’re headed, some kids will prepare and make sure to bring extra pencils to class next week. Just like someone finding out about FI/RE and beginning to educate themselves by reading books and blogs, going to Meet-ups and rearranging their finances.
When the time is up, it won’t matter what they started with or where they started from.
They’ll have finished the task and they’ll have a beautiful picture to enjoy.
I’ve never had a ‘budget’ as such. Too many numbers and maths calculations for me! I run our household under some rigid rules, that oddly enough, gave me great flexibility to pivot financially if I needed to.
Fear not! I’m not going to give you a bullet point list of savings tips that you’ve read a hundred times before. Instead, I’m giving you the principle I followed to keep our financial house afloat:
Any dollar that you manage to put into a savings account, try and keep it there for as long as possible.
I love seeing my savings accounts go up. I loved it even more when I was a young Stay-At-Home Mum with 4 small boys depending on me. I’ve always worked on a fortnightly system and sometimes in those days the end of the fortnight and what was left of my money would go down to the wire.
But we never had money owing on a credit card and we didn’t borrow from friends and family.
Once I deposit money in the bank, I try to keep it there as long as I can.
That means cash flowing expenses as much as possible.
For example, Scout’s operation cost me just over 3K. I had the money in my 5K “pet fund” in my savings. I could have fronted up at the vet and paid cash. But I used my credit card. This bought me time to swing my wage into gear.
Unless I have a fortnight of crazy expenses, such as a 3K vet bill or a whole heap of bills coming in at once, I can count on having around 1K/fortnight of money that I don’t need to deploy on debt or living expenses. I have no debt.
By using the credit card and then putting my wage onto that card when I got paid, I cash flowed this wage’s ‘excess’ 1K straight off that bill. That leaves only 2K left to pay. I have another pay period before the due date of that credit card. Assuming nothing else goes wrong, I’ll have an extra 1K to throw straight at the bill then. That only leaves 1K to pull out of my savings.
I’ve protected my savings by leaving as much of them alone as I can.
Obviously, when I get paid after that I’ll repay my savings to get the ‘pet fund’ back to its original level.
Is this fun? Not particularly. I have a couple of projects that I’m itching to get started on and that money was supposed to go towards those.
But my overarching goal is security. So the top priority is to keep my savings intact. Whenever I empty a savings fund, I refill it before I do anything else.
I love seeing my savings accounts going up in value. But it’s almost as good just seeing them stay the same and not go backwards.
It’s hard for most people to be able to squirrel away money for a rainy day. So when you succeed – I think it’s wise to keep it there for as long as possible. Cash-flowing expenses from your wage is one way to protect your savings and keep making progress towards your goals.
“Cut your coat to fit your cloth.”
That saying used to run through my mind quite a bit when the boys were younger. It’s not a dressmaking tip – it’s about knowing how much money/’cloth’ you have and then not allowing your expenses/’coat’ to exceed your resources.
I did this ruthlessly in the early years when the boys and I were living off the sole parents’ pension and child support was intermittent at best. I had a credit card that I ran all my expenses through – still do, in fact – but I paid it off in full every month.
I know what it’s like to have to cut expenses down to the bone to get by. A quick look at my ‘About’ page will tell you that.
Back in those days, I figured that I got us into this mess by my poor choice of husband and then choosing to stay until we’d produced 4 children, so I didn’t want to hold out my hands for help.
I got the kids and
So I got very good at making sure that the mortgage and bills were paid, then food, then (if there was) anything left over, I threw it in an emergency fund. Back then I called it a ‘Buffer Zone”. Once I had around a thousand dollars in it, then I could relax a little and give the boys a few little treats.
That credit card never had a cent of interest paid on it. Well… that’s a fib. Twice I paid it a day late and was charged interest. Boy, was I mad at myself!!
Some people say that frugality isn’t as important as raising your income. I can see the logic – there’s only so far you can cut costs until there’s no more room for any more cuts – but I’ve found that a person discounts frugality at their financial peril.
Raising income is good – when the kids grew older I did it myself and it definitely helped us to get ahead – but frugality is the bedrock on which everything rests. If you raise your income but keep merrily spending, you’re going to end up broke no matter what your income is.
I used to make it a game. Particularly with the grocery shopping, I’d see how many days I could stretch out between shopping trips. Everyone knows that you always buy more than you think you’re going to when you go food shopping, so my solution was to go as little as possible.
When I started putting this little ploy into action, I found that there was often a little more “cloth” for me to cut my coat from.
I love this saying. Even now, when I’ve been back at work for over 15 years and those lean, hard days are all in the past, I still practice many of the things I did to survive back then.
The most important one – the one that I will never ever break – is to never let my outgoings exceed my incomings. My coat will always be amply able to be cut from my cloth.
A few days ago I read a blog post by a reader here. It was exploring a corker of an idea called ‘Homework for Life’, which sounded a little bit like a Gratitude Journal. It’s a simple idea, much like the things I talked about in my post about The Secret to Happiness about taking time to notice the little things, but it takes it a step further by getting you to actually write things down.
I read the post through a couple of times, then posted it to Twitter, tagging in a couple of my teacherly friends, saying, ‘Wouldn’t this be a fantastic thing to do with our kids?
A few days ago I tried it with my year 7 English class.
I asked them to sit silently for a few moments and think back across their day so far. I asked them to recall any pleasant moments that have happened. They could be big if they were desperate, but preferably they’d be really tiny. Things like noticing a pretty flower in someone’s garden on the walk to school, or patting a cat and hearing it purr, or laughing with your friends about something funny that happened.
The point is that it should be something that was a small thing in the scheme of things… something so small that it would soon be forgotten if it wasn’t written down.
Little smiles began to appear on people’s faces as they began remembering.
I set the timer for a couple of minutes and we all began writing.
After we’d finished, everyone read out what they’d written. There were some beautiful moments.
Of course, this is something that we can all do.
As we’re going along the path that leads to financial freedom, it’s all too easy to put all our focus on the future and forget to enjoy all of the little things that make each day a good one to be alive.
Why not jot down one thing that made you smile each day?
My friend Blogless Liz has kept a Gratitude Journal for years. At the end of the day she lists the things that have brought her pleasure that day. She told me that she told her year 8 class about this, and then a few days later one of the boys hung back after class and said, “Ms Blogless Liz, After you said that, I’ve started keeping a Gratitude Journal too and I’m feeling much happier.”
I’m going to start doing this. I fall into the trap of becoming impatient with the pace of my impending Financial Independence and I want it to happen NOW!!! I have the feeling that I’m not the only one.
Having something concrete to leaf through when we’re feeling like this will probably be helpful in making us remember that yes – our present lives are actually pretty darned good and we should enjoy it more as we finish off the job of becoming FI.
Even having the discipline of knowing that we have to have at least ONE thing to write down at the end of the day will make us notice the little things more – which of course is The Secret to Happiness.
**Just an update on Scout after her surgery. It’s now been two weeks and you’d never know that she was so sick. Her stitches are out, she’s still ball-obsessed and life is back to normal – but with an added dollop of thankfulness every time I look at her.
I love Staycations, even though it’s no secret that I also love to travel. I’ve blogged extensively about my trips to the UK, Europe, North Korea and Thailand on my personal blog, while this blog has 4 posts summarising what I saw in North Korea. I
Even though I have a hankering for more freedom I’m choosing to continue working for another few years. It’s mostly because I have a number in mind that I’m working towards, but the number is based on my love of travel. When I eventually pull the pin on my job, I’m planning to travel overseas at least once a year. Australia is pretty isolated, so international travel is often very expensive. My FIRE number is higher to account for this.
So, even though I love to travel overseas, most of my holidays are Staycations. I’ve always been a delayed gratification type of girl, where I’ll put off what I want to do today to REALLY enjoy it tomorrow. But having said that, the truth is that I LOVE a Staycation.
Honestly, if you don’t like hanging around in the place that you live in, then you’re doing it wrong.
Your home is the place where you can be yourself – a place where you shut the door behind you and you can simply “be.” And after all, a holiday doesn’t have to be a time to run yourself ragged – it can also be a time to regroup and chill, enjoying what’s around you.
Home is the perfect place to recharge batteries and do -(or not do)- all those little things you’ve been meaning to get to but couldn’t when your time was taken up with a job. Little things like reading a book, lunching like ladies and sorting through that filing cabinet, one drawer at a time.
I had a 5 week Staycation at the end of the school year, right at Christmas time and then on into January. I was so tired when that holiday started, I’m pretty sure I looked like Moon-Moon here in the meme below:
Yes, that’s an accurate representation.
When the holidays start, I take the first few days slowly. I sleep in for as long as the dogs allow me to. There’s only so much ‘claws scratching against floorboards’ noise that I can take before I get up. They probably circle the bed like sharks around a shipwreck victim, waiting for me to wake.
I need downtime. Time to slowly move through the day, doing whatever seems like a good idea in the moment. That’s why I love a Staycaion.
I indulge myself with gobs of freedom.
I leisurely move through the first few days, reading, taking a nanna nap after lunch if I feel like it. Aw, who am I kidding? I usually do feel like it – those Spaniards are onto something with the siesta! If I have the energy and inclination to tackle a task that needs doing, I’ll do it. Otherwise, I’ll ignore it until later in the holiday. I have the time to either use or squander, depending on my mood.
Later on in the holidays, whether it’s the 5 week summer break or the regular 2 week breaks between terms, is when I tend to Get Things Done.
Bigger tasks that need some extra time or boring things that still have to be done whether I like them or not – they get knocked off my mental ‘To Do ‘ list.
Well, mostly. I made soap for Christmas presents in the September holidays and I was going to make more in the summer. We’re down to our last bar of home-made soap and I still haven’t made more. I’m not saying a Staycation makes you perfect – just more rested and chilled.
And probably better looking due to all the relaxation.
I remember when the kids were younger. Life got pretty frantic at times, particularly when you add a young family into the mix. I was working, the children had their own schedules of school and activities and socialising to be worked around; life was lived at fever-pitch and was scheduled out to the minute.
So if every holiday is lived at that frantic pace as well – how is that doing anyone any good?
Revel in a staycation. You’re definitely not depriving yourself. They’re wonderful.
This morning I got up when my alarm went off at 5:55 AM, let the dogs out and then fed them their breakfast. I fed Scout her chicken neck in the front yard and Poppy and Jeff in the back yard. This started from when Scout was a puppy and was so much smaller than the others and the routine has simply continued from there
When I let her in and she started trotting down the hallway to get to the doggie door to the backyard, she stopped and looked around at me, her eyebrows raised. She’s been doing this for the last week or so. When I said, “Outside!” she turned and raced up the hallway to the doggie door, tail wagging – the picture of joy.
‘Well, I guess this is a new part of the morning routine,’ I murmured as I went to put the kettle on for coffee.
This got me thinking about how much we humans rely on routines to set up habits – both good and bad – and to get us through the day.
Scout’s new ‘thing’ in the morning is harmless. For some reason unclear
The best, most productive routines are the ones that you’ve put in place for yourself, knowing that they’re most likely going to get you the results you want.
The routines that work best for me are things like:
Routines like this are great because they’re aligned with your personal values and there’s an intrinsic motivation to keep to them. I’d love to hear in the comments about any routines that you’ve made yourself stick to.
It’s not quite the same when a routine is imposed upon you.
Work routines are like this. Being a teacher, my work days are defined by bells. Classes start at set times and finish the same way. I know that Mondays and Tuesdays will always begin with my year 7 classes, while the last 2 periods of the week will always be with my year 12 Theatre Studies kids. Unless there’s a fire drill, there’s usually no surprises.
Lunch is at the same time each day, as is recess, whether you’re hungry or not.
It takes a month or so before I know which classes I have on which days and which rooms they’re in. The working week takes on a familiar ebb and flow for all of us. But these routines are dictated to me by the timetabler. She has decided that Wednesday and Thursday are my frantic days, while Monday and Friday are cruisier. Personally, I prefer to start off the week busy busy busy and then ease off as the week goes along. But I have no choice in the matter.
To mix things up a bit, because I’m a wild and crazy rebel, I drove a different way to work this morning. It took 5 minutes longer but I got to nod hello to ‘Maisie’, a beautiful little tree on a nature strip on a busy road that I used to see every morning until I found a more optimised route to school. Tomorrow? Odds are I’ll be back to the usual routine. It’s quicker.
There’s nothing so wonderful as when a bolt of inspiration hits, or you get into the flow of doing an activity and time seems to vanish. Moments like this are golden. But, as William Golding, (above), said; it’s a matter of getting into the habit of hammering out the material. Every day, making sure that you’re doing something to advance you along the way to where you want to be. Stephen King, the novelist, writes about this in his fabulous book On Writing. He writes 2,000 words every day, without fail. He won’t switch off his computer until those words are done… and coincidentally, he’s completed over 65 books.
Remember my chart of productive habits that I started at the beginning of the year? It’s now March and it’s working like a charm. It’s become a habit to mentally tick off the categories as I do them. For example, in today’s first lesson, I used the 10 minutes silent reading/writing to read from an actual book. *details at the end of the post. I can now tick off the ‘write every day’ box. I wiped over the bathroom before I left home this morning, so the cleaning one’s been done too.
It’s now become part of the dogs’ routine to expect a walk when I come home from work. Their delighted expectation makes this one easy to tick off.
The chart is a simple way to make sure that the habits I want to instil in myself are going to be formed.
We all have routines that are placed upon us. But if we have the self-discipline to impose routines that are meaningful and relevant upon ourselves, we’ve immediately optimised our chances of success
*The book I was reading is called ‘The Gay Galliard’ by Margaret Irwin. It’s about the relationship between Lord Bothwell and Mary Queen of Scots.
Yes, I know that the title hasn’t passed the test of time well, (it was written in 1944), and it’s very long-winded, but I’ve wanted to read it since I was young.
It’s a shame that Ms Irwin has the unfortunate gift of turning the Interesting into the Dull-as-Ditchwater…
I chucked a sickie the other day.
It was a Grammar Monday, so the kids would be working from their grammar books, which is easy for another teacher to set up. I had Things To Do that I’d been putting off, so it all seemed right. Plus the meeting that was scheduled to start at 7 PM that night might have had a little to do with it.
Every time I take a day off, the same thing astounds me.
The number of people.
People walking, people shopping, people sitting in cafés as if they have a perfect right to be there.
It’s insane. How can so many people not be working?!? Don’t they realise that everyone should be locked up in an office or a school somewhere, earning a living?
It’s funny how quickly your paradigms change. A couple of decades ago, I was one of these strange people who could roam at will during the daylight hours. I was at home with my four boys and I didn’t start working again until Evan5 was at school. It was perfectly normal to go to the supermarket in the middle of the
Now, after 15 years of being in the classroom?
The paradigm has completely shifted the other way. Now it seems perfectly normal to be unavailable to the outside world from 8 – 4. The Real World is right where I am and any awareness of an alternate way of living is pretty slight.
Sometimes, when I’m teaching upstairs in ‘A’ Block, I’ll stand by the window and see someone casually walking down the street, seemingly without a care in the world. Or I’ll see one of the neighbours serenely working in their garden.
It gives a little jolt to my brain. It’s a reminder that life doesn’t always have to be like this. People can and do live their lives on different rhythms than the traditional 9 – 5 work day.
It’s a reminder that one day I’ll be one of those people.
Blogless Sandy, my best friend, has paved the way a bit for me with the whole retirement thing. She and her husband retired nearly two years ago and it’s interesting to hear about the patterns of their days. They’ve chosen to delay any travelling while they still have their old dog with them, so their days are very much ‘in place’ with nothing tying then down except the things they’ve chosen themselves to include.
I had no idea there was so much on offer for people to do when they “should” be at work. It’s almost outrageous! Blogless Sandy gallivants around doing bushwalking, yoga, picking up litter on their beach, walking dogs in shelters, while her husband has picked up some art classes. They have a couple of grandchildren and they look after them a couple of days a week while their daughter picks up teaching work.
They’re on the peninsula, so they regularly choose a winery and they go and enjoy a leisurely lunch. Because they are there in the middle of the week, they have conversations with staff who, on the weekends, either aren’t rostered on or who are too busy with the massive influx of Melbournians who make the drive down to enjoy their limited weekend fun time.
A few months ago they were lunching at Montalto, where the restaurant uses produce from a large kitchen garden.
After lunch, there was no pressing need to go home straight away. Their time is their own. They went for a walk around the kitchen garden and struck up a conversation with one of the gardeners. They were looking at all of the heirloom vegetables that were growing and talking of all things gardening. At the end of the day, they went home with some heirloom bean seeds from the garden that the gardener gave them. Without the leisurely time and space that they had, that encounter would never have happened.
I’m writing this on a Sunday. It’s nearly 9:45 AM. It’s a glorious sparkling summer’s day. In a second I’ll pop the dogs’ leads on and we’ll go for a gallop. This time tomorrow, I’ll be telling the kids to start putting their grammar books away because the bell is about to go. When it goes, all 28 kids and myself will leave the room and go on to our next class.
The weather will still be the same. The dogs and their leashes will still be here. But I’ll be 27kms away, writing a Dad joke* on the board and telling a new batch of 28 kids that it’s ‘Grammar Monday – open your books to the next unit.”
*sigh*
How strange to think that one day soon(ish), if I keep doing the things I’ve set in place, I’ll be able to do whatever I want on a Monday. How strange to think that I’ll be able to stride around in the daylight hours with confidence and surety, instead of scuttling to the doctors pretending to be sick, just to get a medical certificate for work. Stranger still to think that one day, it will all seem perfectly normal, and that my memories of the classroom will slowly fade.
The world outside work, in the daylight hours, is one that we workers tend not to think about a lot. But it’s there. It’s teeming with life, with sunlight and opportunities.
Every now and then, maybe it’s good to chuck a sickie just to be reminded.
*The Dad joke for tomorrow is: I’ve been reading a horror novel in braille. Something bad is going to happen – I can feel it!
When I was 7 my Gran taught me how to knit. I still remember the wool she used. It was bright red. Gran’s hands moved effortlessly as she showed me what to do, while mine wrestled incompetently with the wool and the needles. We were in the dining nook, she was to the left of me, while Mum was in the kitchen, where she could keep an eye on what was going on without being in the way.
My brother and sister weren’t interested in learning, but for some reason it stuck with me and I’ve been knitting ever since.
Years later, long after Gran died, Mum and I were talking about her, and Mum said something that I’ve never forgotten.
“Mum said to me, when I left work to have you, that I needed to learn a skill,” she said. “Something that I could point to at the end of the day and say, ‘That’s how I spent some time today’. Something that will LAST. When you’re a young Mum at home with kids, so much of your time is spent on work that will need to be done again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. It’s disheartening. You need something you can hold in your hand and know that it’s not going to go away any time soon. You need something for YOU.”
Gran’s ‘tangible thing’ was knitting. Mum’s was sewing. Many’s the time I’d hear her swearing at the sewing machine when I was a kid. She made our clothes, but she also made aprons and other things for sale. She sewed the curtains for our family room and dabbled with embroidery as well.
These women from the past were motivated in part by frugality – back then it was cheaper to handmade clothes, not like today! – but they were also satisfying that innate human urge to create.
Maybe this is why so many people in the FIRE movement are drawn to blogging? Many jobs are essentially the same as being at home with children. Every day the kids need feeding. You can’t cook the perfect meal and say, “Nailed it! I never have to do this again! Behold my perfect meal!”
Or you vacuum and dust the lounge room and it looks terrific. “Hooray! I never have to clean this room again!” said no-one ever. It always has to be done again.
It’s the same with our jobs. We pitch the perfect proposal/write the most wonderful report/teach an amazing lesson and we feel great… but it all has to be done again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. There are few jobs, particularly in office environments, where the work you do today is still around years from now.
No wonder people get burned out.
So much of the advice about retiring early revolves around the money, but there’s also that recurring advice of “You already know what you’re retiring FROM. Work out what you’re retiring TO.”
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many early retirees find that they’re drawn to work that they do with their hands. Creativity is deep within the human psyche and making something appear that would never have been there without you is deeply satisfying. Once people free up the hours each day that were once spent commuting and working, it’s not surprising that many are drawn to scratching that creative itch that was left neglected for so long.
So here’s the crazy idea – what if you built in some time before you leave work to develop these skills you’re drawn to?
Surely it’s got to make the time we spend between finding out about FIRE and finally being able to pull the pin on the job a little more pleasant. Learning how to work with your hands, or practising a skill like songwriting or sketching doesn’t have a time limit on it. It won’t matter if you take a year of weekend/after work time to master a basic skill, or 2 years or 10. Who cares? You’re doing it for YOU. There’s no ‘Skillz Boss’ looking over your shoulder.
I’m guessing most people would already know what they’d spend creative time doing, but some people may not. Sometimes it takes thinking outside the box a little.
For example – what if you really love cooking? Each meal or dessert you make gets eaten and enjoyed, but you might feel there’s nothing tangible left for YOU. What about putting a book of ‘Family Favourite’ recipes together? Or maybe a collection of ‘Incredible Dessert’ recipes or ‘Excellent M
What if you enjoy playing an instrument, but you have zero interest in songwriting? I live with musicians and I know for a fact that it’s never been easier to record yourself and create a video or (if you want to delight your Mum) make a CD of you playing your favourite songs. You don’t have to write your own songs to be able to create beautiful music that makes people feel good.
Me? Obviously, I have my blogs, but I also knit small, deliciously soft cowls and hats for people, made from skeins of Peruvian alpaca wool hand-dyed by virgins in large kettles over open fires. (If you believe the advertising.) I have a queen-sized quilt on the go for Tom27. The squares are 2.5 inches each, so he’ll probably be known as Tom58 by the time he gets it. I write the (very) occasional poem. I garden.
It’s too easy to get lost in spreadsheets and projections with hideous Maths and numerals when we’re racing towards FI/RE. Every one of us needs to nurture that little creative spark within us, so that when we reach FIRE and we can choose to spend our time in whichever ways we want – we actually have a few clear desires to follow.
No one wants to be that
Let’s find out what we enjoy and get going on actually enjoying it. Could be fun…
Kids.
A lot of us have them and in general, we tend to be reasonably fond of them. We take pains over what we name them, we feed and clothe them at regular intervals and we ensure that they come out of school being literate and (at least a little) numerate. We tell them Dad jokes, we pay for music lessons and we cuddle them when life gets hard.
In short – we look up after a few years and realise that we’ve actually made our most favourite humans. At least, that’s what’s happened in my case and I’m guessing I’m not alone.
A huge proportion of FIRE bloggers are young parents. They have babies or primary-aged kids, with a lot of bloggers’ children still being ‘a twinkle in their father’s eye’ as the old saying goes. I’ve gone through that stage and I’m now out at the other side with my boys aged in their twenties. We all made it through alive, but when the boys reached secondary school I had to make up my mind about how much I’d help the boys financially once they were older.
When children are small, as in pre-puberty, they cost as much or as little as their parents decide. The parents have full control. It’s a beautiful thing.
In my case, I said to the boys when they were in primary, (and secondary school, come to think of it), that they could have ONE
David was easy. When he was David3, he asked if he could learn how to play the piano. I couldn’t afford lessons at the time, but when he asked me 2 years later I took notice. For David, two requests two years apart
Tom tried football, cricket and then decided on guitar. He writes songs now and plays for a football team on the weekends. Ryan started with piano, then after a year switched to guitar and continued with it right up to year 12. Evan follows the beat of his own drum and didn’t end up taking any formal classes. He decided to teach himself musical instruments, write scripts and make videos and is currently doing an Acting degree.
Limiting their after-school activities hasn’t seemed to hurt them at all.
Keeping the costs to a reasonable level when they were at school meant that when opportunities for things like travel came up, I was able to take them to places like Bali, Thailand and Singapore – or send them to places on school excursions like Central Australia, Tasmania and the USA. I’ll never forget the elation in Tom16’s voice when I picked up my phone to hear him say, “Mum… I’m on the top of Ayres Rock!!”
(Nowadays everyone calls it Uluru and we don’t climb it anymore as it’s a sacred site, but things were different a decade ago.)
But what was the tough decision I was talking about?
It was about whether or not to help the boys pay for University.
As my boys were heading into secondary school and going through the ranks, I started to think. Tertiary fees aren’t as expensive as in America, but they’re still pretty exxy, especially for the more creative-type courses I could see most of my boys ending up in.
My dilemma was a simple one. I only have one wage coming in and I have no-one to provide for my old age except for me. Do I help them pay for Uni or not? There’s a finite amount of money that will be coming in. Where would it be best deployed?
When I was wrestling with this decision the older kids were in high school, with the younger two hot on their heels. I’d paid off the house a year or so before, back in 2013, and I was staring down the barrel of what looked like it might be an indigent old age. I’d neglected my retirement savings to pour all of my money into paying off the house, which was a deliberate move. Mathematically, it wasn’t the best thing to do, but I valued our security over my retirement. Once the house was paid for and our security was assured, Old Lady Frogdancer suddenly became a lot more real to me…
So I had to think: Which would be the best long-term prospect for the boys?
When you lay it out like this, there’s really only one way I could go. My situation, with no one else able to prepare for my retirement other than me, meant that the money could only go so far.
So, the financial help I decided to give my kids is as follows:
I’m hoping that these rules allow enough of a cushion to fall back on, without weakening them and keeping them as ‘kidults’ indefinitely. Currently, I have the middle two sons living at home with me as students. Tom 27 has been out of home and fully independent for around 3 years now and works full-time as an accountant, while Evan22 is studying at a country campus.
I’d love it if the boys could come out of Uni with no debt dragging behind them. That was the way university worked when I was young, when courses were fully paid for by the government. But sadly, life in the real world isn’t like this any more. In order to do the best for us all, I have to take the long-term view.
My worst fear is to be a financial burden on my boys when I’m old. By putting a priority on my retirement, rather than their university courses, I hope that I’ll be giving them the gift of never having to worry about their mother’s financial stability.
I think that’s probably one of the greatest gifts I can give them. I already gave them LIFE. This will be the next best thing…
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