For any perspective FIRE flowers out there, drop everything and move this book from your TBR list to Currently Reading: Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin.

This was one of the first books I read that introduced me to the concept of Financial Independence.

It is my opinion that this is not a frugal FIRE book; one of the key takeaways I garnered from this phenomenal read was the concept of spending money on your priorities.

My partner and I had noticed over the course of our study of other peoples’ FIRE journeys that the frugality of most of the notorious FIRE headliners didn’t sit well with us. We don’t coupon. We don’t buy our clothes from second-hand stores (yet, although for sustainability purposes we are considering starting this). We follow the FIRE principles, but cutting expenses to the point where we feel like we cannot have the things we want doesn’t make sense to us. Because the point of FIRE isn’t to get to a point where you can eventually have those things – its to get to a point where you have enough money to continue living the same lifestyle you are already living in perpetuity. So we didn’t want to crunch down just to live a perpetually crunched life.

So in an effort to align our spending with the things that matter most to us – we had to take an introspective afternoon to determine our priorities to prioritize!

First, ADVENTURE.

For this entire year we have had one goal: Move across the country to Baltimore. It is an ode to adventure. Baltimore also puts is in the literal geographic position to have many more adventures than we can have here in Minnesota. We aren’t lavish vacationers. We love a road trip, or a train ride. Some of our favorite destinations are the small towns that dot across the map. We just need a bug-free place to sleep and we are a couple of happy traveling clams.

Adventure is a steady budget line in our books and one that gives us purpose.

Second, FOOD.

We enjoy meals together. Once we had a delivery mix-up with Doordash, and the customer service rep answered the phone by saying, “We know how much you love food” and she was spot-on. We appreciate the entire spectrum of food from home cooked to restaurant prepared. We love to explore and learn about new places through food. Many of our memories are tied into the food we eat or the experience of cooking together. We are down to try new foods, flavors, and diets. One thing I am looking forward to in whatever type of FIRE we find ourselves in, will be investing a heavy amount of time into food (I’m looking at you sourdough).

Third, EARTH.

I’m sure I’ve dropped pieces of this priority in other posts. It’s been a blossoming priority over the past couple of years. We try to keep up on climate news and do our part to limit our negative impact. This is an area where we are willing to pay a green-premium. We pay more for bamboo toilet paper and household goods with carbon-free shipping and compostable packaging. We pay more for clothing with non-plastic materials (although ideally, we need to buy less of this as a result). We donate to organizations that are helping earth. It’s not an area that we will skimp on. It may even climb up the priority list over the next couple of years.

The flip side of spending money on your priorities, is NOT spending money on things that are not priorities!

• Ownership – We dabbled in the world of ownership. We had a house. We had cars. We even had a boat! The house was a strange amount of nonsensical work. And not at all enjoyable: shoveling snow off the driveway before work, tending the yard for the neighbors approval (who are we kidding, our yard looked like a wilderness and our neighbors definitely did not approve lol). We are looking forward to selling our car when we leave for Baltimore and trying our hand at embracing a full-fledge city-kitty lifestyle. In my experience, Big Toys have always been more big responsibilities than Big Fun.
• Obligation – We are in agreement that we have this one life, and we plan to live an extraordinary life. Part of bridging the gap between ordinary and extraordinary is subverting obligation that doesn’t serve our happiness.
  • Conforming to societal obligation is not a priority to us. We understand that there are people that look at us as ‘weird’ because we aren’t doing what everyone else is, or living in a way that the people around us are. It can be uncomfortable to be different, but I am not interested in spending money on making other people more comfortable.
  • Another obligation that we do not prioritize is family obligation. This isn’t something I’ve seen written many places so not sure how it will hit: we are not family-oriented people. Both of our families are dripping in the sludge of expectation. Expectations that serve to benefit others. Our families are different. Mine places expectation to bolster their perceived reputation. My partners use expectation to feed dependency. Neither family considers our actual personal desires or what sacrifices we would have to make to make them feel big. We do love our families and show up where we are needed, but we are careful not to fall prey to the toxic culture that sometimes come along with them.

Quick Life Updates

We signed a lease in Baltimore!! Our start date is December 1.

We both have approval to work remotely in our roles, so we are going to take our jobs with us while we get settled. And we haven’t had any takers on the sale of our condo, so we will keep our jobs while we have that expense lingering around (further evidence that we are not a frugal FIRE couple lol). It’s a risk. But we’ve basically waited a whole year to get started on this adventure.

Enough wasting time, let’s goooooo!!

My next post will be from an IP address in Maryland!