Money, Man!: Part I

During the first half of 2021, I belatedly discovered the Living a FI (LAF) blog. It took me a minute to understand its wild popularity in the FIRE community. But after binge reading the entire blog—including several epic, multipart posts—it all clicked. I found his “The Job Experience” series of posts to be his best work. That was a high bar, too. 

In my own blog post fawning over the LAF blog, I mused aloud whether I could write a series like “The Job Experience.” I concluded that I couldn’t do what LAF did, but that I might try to do something approximating it.

Well, Dear Reader, today I begin making good on that threat promise. As with “The Job Experience” series (and a similar (and excellent) series by A Purple Life about her own journey), my own series will be published in several installments. In part because you may find it so, so, . . . so incredibly awful or boring, so I’m gonna drag it out it’s lllong. In part because I think that the chunks into which I’m breaking it up will make it easier to digest and also process in the aggregate. Maybe I’m wrong on that. But it’s my blog, so nuts to you if you think that. 

One other introductory remark. LAF’s series went into granular detail as to events and how they affected him in the moment and in his journey to FIREing. For me, it’s that granular level of detail and introspection that made the series (and so many of LAF’s other posts) so rewarding. If for no other reason than because I didn’t keep notes/a journal over the years (and I have to imagine that LAF did; otherwise, his memory is freak-of-nature good), my series won’t get into that level of detail. Instead, I had to rack my memory, rather than just reference a detailed journal, to recall details. And let’s just say that ya humble blogger’s memory is good, but not freak-of-nature good. 

The other main difference between LAF’s series and mine is the focus of each. LAF’s goal appears to have been to detail his working career and his journey to FIREing, with the reader learning what it was about LAF’s work (experience) that fueled his fire . . . and FIRE. My series will get into all those subjects, for sure. But another reason that I wrote this series was to detail my own experience with, and mindset surrounding, money generally (my scarcity mindset), how that affected/influenced me before I discovered FIRE, and how it fueled my ultimate fire . . . and FIRE. I surely had a natural inclination to be enamored with FIRE, and my work experience prompted me to take action. But my experience with, feelings about, and mindset surrounding money and financial peril were at least equally as critical.

Many Dear Readers won’t be able to empathize with me. That’s OK. But I’m hoping that some will and might relate—at least in part—to my story 

With that, let’s get started, shall we?

In the beginning

Once I discovered FIRE in 2016, and the concept and details of it clicked, I quickly decided that I was all in. The reasons were many, and included, for example: being able to control my time and not have to work. 

But I’d also by that point grown tired of, and dissatisfied with the work that I was doing. I’d also come to dislike the whole employer-employee relationship arrangement and with the full-time job arrangement, as I’d experienced each. Not being employed or working, per se. Rather things that came with those things. Like taking orders from and doing the bidding of people when I’d rather do neither. Also, having to deal—day in and day out—with people whom I’d just as soon not associate with at all, or whom I found nauseatingly generally tiresome.

In short, I discovered FIRE at a point at which I was especially susceptible to its magical spell. Sure, I had a strong natural affinity for the idea. But this experience-based mindset (and sort of funk that I found myself in) about the employer-employee relationship arrangement, and working a full-time job in general, was at least as powerful a motivating factor. 

But there’s much more. And that “more” has to do with messages I received from an early age about money and financial security, with my own experience with money, and with alternating periods of (a lack of) financial security, 

So, Dear Reader, let’s take a long, long, . . . long stroll down memory lane to detail what brought me to that place in early 2016, and what kept up (if not inflamed) my desire to FIRE.

The Beforetimes Part 1

First, some detail about my life before I secured my first full-time job out of college. 

My parents divorced when I was young, and my mom got custody of me. For all intents and purposes, mom had never had a full-time job. She hustled to get one after the divorce, and ultimately found one. 

Although mom was consistently employed as long as I lived with her, the jobs that she held were low-end and low-pay. I’m pretty sure that dad regularly contributed child support. Possibly some alimony/maintenance, too, although I’m not sure. Regardless, we could in no way be described as anything near well off. 

In fact, I recall mom just scraping by. That said, I can never remember wanting for anything. And no one knows better than me that that’s a blessing far too many others can’t say that they enjoyed. 

But even as young as I was, I fully understood that we were in a highly precarious financial position. Mom regularly made that clear. I was scared. That turned out to be of critical importance not just because it was the first message I ever received about money, which was significant enough. But also, because I deeply internalized that message. 

Of perhaps even greater long-term importance from that internalization was that everything money-related that followed (even to this day) was overlaid on that message. The result has been that I’ve always felt that the financial floor on which I’m standing is precarious. It’s mattered not one whit whether one or both of those things hasn’t been objectively true at any later point. While I might have intellectually known that one or both things is untrue and that there is an “enough” for me, my lizard brain can’t be persuaded of that. I don’t like that. But it is what it is. Maybe therapy can help resolve it. Maybe. I admit to not having given that a shot. Perhaps I will at some point down the road. 

The Beforetimes Part 2

After several years of living with mom, I went to live with dad, who’d by then remarried and was far more financially stable than mom. While I had legions of issues with dad and stepmom, the financial and nurturing ground on which I stood with them was far stronger than that from which I’d previously been on.

With dad, I not only knew that all of my financial needs were met but also that the financial sword of Damocles hanging over me while living with mom was absent at dad’s. Looking back, that surely must’ve tamped down the latent stress about my financial situation that I’d long before picked up. Or at least prevented that stress from increasing and becoming potentially far more harmful to me. 

All good, right? Yes, undeniably. But there was a massive wrinkle. You see, while I knew that financial peril was nowhere on the radar with dad, he and stepmom regularly discussed the financial implications of this or that expense. And not necessarily in a healthy way. 

Sure, there were positive lessons learned from this. But the result also was an unhealthy metastasization of my obsession with money and financial security. Not only did I have a hardwired feeling that my financial house was on fire (but most certainly not on FIRE) or at least precarious, I also lost something of any innate ability to make decisions on the spur of the moment and based on a whim, and without first thinking of the (worst possible) financial implications. 

To some extent, that’s no bad thing. I mean, it helps with being a knee-jerk saver and not living above my means. But not in the whole. It robbed me at an early age of much of my ability to experience pure joy and made permanent a pervasive sense of worry about my financial situation. 

That’s not been fun.

And in the end . . . 

And so, we end Part I of this series. Tune in next week for Part II, when I’ll get into my experiences and how they built on those from the beginning.