The Pursuit of FI Reverses the Trend of Decreasing Opportunities
What do you want to be when you grow up?
My answer to the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up” has changed over time. At some point early on I wanted to be Shaquille O’neal. If I couldn’t be Shaq, I at least wanted to be an NBA player or my dad who was a pretty damn good basketball player if I may say so (I saw him dunk at age 40). Apparently, I used to ask him if he was as tall as Shaq to which he would respond, “almost”.
Later on, as interests shifted I wanted to play centerfield for the Red Sox. After breaking my hand playing basketball during my junior year of high school, I missed the baseball season and started saying that I wanted to be a bond trader. This did not come out of thin air. My dad was an accountant working in corporate finance. He always said the bond traders made huge money and “They aren’t any smarter than the next guy. Go work on Wall Street for 20 years and retire in your 40s.”
Why is it that the “what we want to be” question is always framed around a career path? If someone answered, “a person who feels a sense of purpose, autonomy, and mastery in their daily life” they would be no less strange than if they had answered with a blank stare or a raucous fart.
Closing Doors
There is a moment in life where everything feels possible. You could become an astronaut, a sports hero, a firefighter, a pilot or a Beanie Baby reseller. Slowly over time you realize you puke on roller coasters and living in a tin can in outer space sucks so the astronaut is out. You’re a pretty good athlete but you’re not as good as that one kid, Andrew, in your 6th grade class so a sports hero is out. You pass out when you see blood; so much for firefighting. The Beanie Babies end up in a bin in the attic, so you can always fall back on that until your parents finally throw them out because they warned you 5 times they were “gonna toss that shit out if you don’t come get it”.
The moment when you realize that Adidas is bullshitting you with their “Impossible is nothing” propaganda is a dramatic moment. Your limiting beliefs, whether based in reality or self imposed are front and center. It’s like the moment when kids turn from wonderful, joyful, inquisitive elementary schoolers who love snuggling with their parents into self-conscious, mob-mentality, peer-pressured middle schoolers who wish for a quick death when mom calls them “little baby boy boo-boo” in front of their friends. The genie is out of the bottle.
By the time you graduate from college with your degree, hundreds of possibilities are not really possible any more. If you go and get advanced degrees it’s even worse. We have friends with PhDs who have been turned down for jobs outside their field for being “overqualified”. If you are a microbiologist your options are corporate job or academia. Seriously, that’s how pigeon-holed you are. We have lawyer friends who end up in specific law niches who see no way to change course between now and the end of their careers. Not because they want to but because it’s what they have expertise in. And it’s what will pay them the most (ever heard of golden handcuffs?) We have heard of accountants who do tax accounting because it’s the first job they got. Now they’re settling in for a long career doing people’s taxes.
The Funnel of Doom (and GLORY!)
There is nothing wrong with these careers. The problem is the feeling of not having options. It is not good to feel like doing anything else would be a tremendous risk and/or might be impossible. Everyone experiences the slow closing of doors as time goes on. This realization can be crushing when you get 5, 10 or 30 years into your career and it feels like only yesterday you turned 21 and you blinked and here you are. It’s like you’re heading towards the bottom of a funnel and as you go further down the opportunities are fewer and fewer.
Pursuing FI makes you feel like you did when you were a kid. Anything is possible. It’s like finding out that it is possible to enter a new funnel from the bottom heading up. Growing the difference between what you earn and what you spend (AKA growing your savings rate) changes everything. The walls start moving away and you can breathe again. The longer you live without a savings rate the more choked you are and the more impossible everything feels.
I started trying to figure out how to make a digital info-graphic of a funnel and gave up.
FI makes the lawyer consider opening a private practice to reduce their hours and control their schedule. It leads the PhD to request more time off, take a sabbatical, or request to teach fewer classes. It encourages the accountant to open a business where they only work a few months during tax season.
When you have a high savings rate, you have power. Every year you have a high savings rate and you invest the difference, your power increases until you have THE ABSOLUTE POWER like the Jafar when he asks the Genie to make him an all-powerful Genie. Except you don’t get imprisoned in an itty-bitty living space. You have more power because you are no longer as beholden to your employer to keep your lights on. You can ask to change your schedule or for more time off without fear of being told no. If they tell you no you have the ability to leave the job.
FI creates the space and mental framework for you to think about ways to make money other than trading your time for money by investing or starting a business. It allows you to leave your job to run your business. It encourages you to think about what you really value in life and how to create a life that allows you to focus on those things.
The end destination of FI is the ultimate power; the means to build a life where you have complete autonomy over what you do. Continue to work your 9-5, volunteer for habitat for humanity, sip pina coladas at the beach, or travel the world. Whatever you want. Being on the path to FI makes you feel like you did when you were young and the world was at your feet; (almost) anything is possible!
Disclaimer: FI is easier to achieve for some than it is for others. There are a million challenges that people are up against. Poverty, substance abuse, disability, trauma, caring for sick or disabled family members, racism, sexism, consumer debt, etc. Many people are severely disadvantaged which can slow or even prohibit people from achieving FI. However, the tenets of FI can help everyone get to a better place in their lives.
