Minneapolis peeps (Minneapolans?)! Are you around this Thursday? I’ll be at some meetups in your lovely city:
- The Minnesota State Fair: I’ll be hanging out here most of the day. At happy hour, I’m meeting up with my buddy, the Physician on FIRE at the Ball Park Cafe, a block east of the giant yellow slide.
- Minnehaha Falls: I’ll be here around 6:30, hanging out with my friend Tanja from Our Next Life and Becky/Noah from Money Metagame.
- Brit’s Pub: If I still have any energy, I’ll be here at 8:30 with the rest of the bloggers already mentioned.
To find me, look for the awkward dude with the flying corn trucker cap. Hopefully, I’m not being chased by zombies like in this picture:
I met up with Erin from Broke Millennial earlier this summer. She was in town for a speaking engagement and a group of FI-minded folks got together at a local watering hole for drinks and conversation. It was neat to chat with Erin because she was one of the first bloggers I connected with way back in 2013, the year I started my blog. Five years is eons in internet time.
Erin and I talked about the RE (retire early) part of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early). We agreed that no one talks enough about what happens after you reach financial independence. Our conversation got me thinking about the ways retirement has changed my life, not necessarily for the better. More on that in a moment. First, we must get to the question from last week when I asked you about your perfect work.
Your Perfect Work
A job is different from work. Work is performing a specific task like coding or wiring a house. A job is work and all of the stuff that goes with it including a boss, schedule and mandatory hours. I no longer have a job, but I work harder than ever. I write, build, and consider new businesses every single day. At this time, I have two new blogs I hope to launch before end of year.
Here is what you had to say about your perfect work:
Reader IncomeSurfer:
I’m multifaceted, and really prefer a mix of mental and physical work. My ideal work is periodically consulting on interesting projects, like I have the past year, but I am trying to figure out a new real estate remodeling project.
Ryan at RoseRelish (I would really enjoy this too) :
My ideal work would be managing money. I was an analyst in charge of helping pick stocks for a mutual fund during my career. The “job” part of it was aiding in fundraising, consultant ratings (think Morningstar ratings), white papers, and all of the corporate mumbo-jumbo like semi-annual reviews training. I’d have no desire to raise money or get ratings. I’d want a team of 3-5 and our only goal would be to provide a good risk/reward to investors.
Mr. PoP from Planting our Pennies:
I’ve always wanted to build a small business of some kind, and being a writer always seemed like a great time….but may have read too much Hemingway as a kid.
MarciaB from BaggyPop, what are you doing next weekend? 🙂
Work that I totally love is helping people set up their books for their small businesses (QuickBooks is my happy place). And then working with them to understand their numbers and financial statements. I do this at no charge for folks who ask and wish I had more takers!
Finally, Road2Euedemonia took a while to find his ideal work, but it sounds like he’s making the world a better place now. How great is that?
I just recently found enjoyable work after 28 years! I was somewhat thrust into a situation but because we are FI I was able to make a choice that suited me! I still do my core accounting and operations work. It just happens to be for a non-profit agency dedicated to helping at-risk youth. Yeah, even here there is some BS, however, all I have to do is walk down the hall and talk and mentor kids and it all works out. Having purpose and choice is my key!
Is FIRE Good For Your Marriage?
I love the book 1984. It’s about an oppressive government that controls its people through a variety of unsettling methods. In the story, the enemy of the state is Emmanuel Goldstein and the government reminds the people of the threat posed by him daily. The interesting plot point is that Goldstein is nothing more than a fabrication of the evil government. He was created to be a diversion. His purpose was to unite the people behind a common cause and divert attention. Without Emmanuel Goldstein to worry about, perhaps the people would question the evil government a bit more.
I think of 1984 and Emmanuel Goldstein when I consider my own life. Our trajectory went like this:
- Mr. and Mrs. 1500 meet, fall in love and get married.
- We both work really hard at our jobs.
- Five years after marriage, kid #1 shows up. Mrs. 1500 leaves her job to be a stay home mom while I continue to work.
- In 2016 both kids are in school full-time. Mrs. 1500 gets her dream job, mostly working from home.
- In 2017, I finally summon the courage to leave my job. I am now the stay at home parent.
You’re probably thinking this now:
What the hell does 1984, Emmanuel Goldstein and your life have to do with each other?
Emmanuel Goldstein diverted the people’s attention away from the oppressive government. In the same vein, work was a diversion for Mrs. 1500 and I. When we both worked full-time jobs and had kids, I felt like we went days without deep conversation (it doesn’t help that our Younger Daughter’s natural state is nonstop talking). Then, all of a sudden, I don’t have to work 40 hours per week and Mrs. 1500 is working from home. BOOM! We’re around each other much more than we’ve ever been. And for the first time in a long time, I have free time.
This Is A Test
In many ways, a FIREd life is a good test of just how healthy your life’s routine and relationships are. Once you don’t have a job that consumes much of your life, you’re free to live truer to the real you, for better or worse. Queue the ominous music!
Remove the concern of money from your life and you just may reveal something else. And it may not be good.
If your marriage has issues, maybe FIRE makes them better because you have more time to work on them. But it could easily go the other way too; maybe the issues are exacerbated because you have more time to annoy each other.
A Period Of Adjustment
Spilling my guts to the keyboard is therapeutic. Why pay a psychiatrist $125/hour when I have my computer and y’all to listen? So, I’ll reveal thoughts now that at least on the surface, conflict:
Mrs. 1500 and I have a better life because I don’t have a job. Two jobs and two kids was chaos. Now that I don’t work, our life is much more stable. We aren’t running around like mad people shuttling kids around and getting dinner ready. Now that I don’t have a job, I have taken over most of the domestic duties.
But, we’ve had more rough spots. Not having a job has also allowed me to focus on parts of life that I just didn’t have time to consider before. I won’t get too personal, but sometimes, the Mrs. and I aren’t on the same page. And I wouldn’t have been reading that page in the first place if I had the time constraints of a job.
So yeah, I’m saying the FIRE has made our relationship worse in some ways.
Our (my?) issues have been forced into the open and now and we must confront them. And this is a good thing. Suppressing problems don’t make them go away; it just makes them worse. We’re now forced to work through it and in the long run, we’ll be better for it.
And while there are a few things we aren’t on the same page about, we are on the same “let’s fix these issues” page. Relationship issues pop up in every relationship; it’s how you handle them that separates those that fail from those that succeed. This seems a bit dark (don’t worry, I showed Mrs. 1500 before I posted it) but if I’m going to share my story with you, I’ve got to share the whole story. Life isn’t fantastic all of the time.
You
I spent time with other FIREy couples including Becky and Noah from Money Metagame, Steve and Courtney from ThinkSaveRetire and the Penny Planters couple. In each case, I asked them how their relationship post-FIRE was coming along. More on them on Wednesday.
In the meantime, let me know what you think:
Could FIRE cause issues for your marriage or do you see it as purely positive?
Could FIRE cause issues in other parts of your life?
I can still hear you when you drown,
You’ve traveled very far,
Just to see if I’ll come around,
When I’m down,
Coming down. –Drown, Smashing Pumpkins
Things are better if I stay,
So long and goodnight,
So long not goodnight. –Helena, My Chemical Romance
Join the 10s who have signed up already!
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*Only if your life is pretty bad to begin with.
It’s a big life change!
FIRE also allows people to spend time on some pretty big questions…are they happy, are they fulfilled, do they still like who they are as a person.
It’s been good for us, mostly because I bring less stress home from my job, and hopefully even take a little work off of Mrs. PoP’s plate so she is more relaxed as well.
Mr. Pop recently posted…Happy Friday – Dispatches From Colorado, Part 4
My wife is supportive of my new FIRE lifestyle, but since she is still working, I can’t help but feel a bit guilty as she goes into work each day and struggles with all the nonsense that entails, while I don’t. Of course, I’m busy with my own projects, and I’m trying to help a lot around the house, but it just doesn’t feel the same.
Freedom 40 Plan recently posted…Planning My ReFIREment Cash Flow
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to meet up with anyone at the fair (I’ll be wondering around but the kids usually make us leave around 3). Should be at Brits and hopefully be able to get over to Minnehaha!
Cool!
Hi. I think those meet-ups are happening on Thursday, not Wednesday? The state fair doesn’t start until Thursday.
https://www.physicianonfire.com/the-sunday-best-8-19-2018/#mn
Crap, you’re right! Thanks for setting me straight. Post is updated.
Good luck working through the issues. That’s one reason why I hesitate to push Mrs. RB40 to retire early. Life is pretty much perfect now. Will it still be perfect if she’s home all day? I don’t know…. I guess we’ll see in a few years. We’ll need more space for sure.
Thanks Joe!
See you at the Fair! I would say FIRE has a fun way of exposing all the flaws in a relationship, married or not. I moved in with my boyfriend a few months ago and that has challenged our relationship in so many ways (many good, a few bad). I’m still happy with the choices made in the past though!
As I and Mrs Free are still working I cannot speak to how not working will affect our relationship. What I can speak to is how the FIRE goal is helping us with communication and our lives in general. Let me explain.
1) We communicate about stuff better.
a) My wife does not understand or want to understand money. Knowing this I have laid out a easy to follow and understand plan that will help us to reach our plan.
b) What we want to do once FIRE happens. I want to work in a bike shop, building and selling bikes, She loves to do craft and design work. I will probably work at Costco for the benefits as well.
c) We will be able to do a lot more adventures. We are also talking more about where we would want to live. Door County Wisconsin in the spring summer and fall and someplace warm for the January – April months.
So the FIRE movement has really been a help to us in opening up lines of communication and I am very grateful for that.
It sounds like you have awesome post-FIRE plans. Door County is a pretty spectacular place to visit, I mean live. Ummm, will you have a guest room? 🙂
Of Course we will have a guest room and this awesome view.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10216735997577393&set=a.1075661736857&type=3
Wow. Just wow. Sign me up.
We’re actually going to be in Wisconsin next summer. I need to find a way to squeeze in some time up there.
So if you want to combine your Wisconsin trip and exercise you could do the Door County Triathlon. It will be a true test of your fitness. If not then you could do some camping at Peninsula state park but you would need to book your camp site now.
http://www.doorcountytriathlon.com
Interesting post for me as this is a near parallel of issues we’re dealing with in our relationship. Wrote a post about the financial and personal pros & cons of this lifestyle recently. https://www.caniretireyet.com/retiring-before-spouse/
Funny that I clicked over to find this deep thought provoking post, considering I haven’t been reading many blogs recently, and was enticed to click over by your picture of a couple of chickens sitting on a grill with beer cans stuck up their asses. 😉 As this post demonstrates, you don’t always get what you anticipate in life!
Whoah, interesting to see someone else also struggling just a little. While our issues are of a different nature, a struggle is a struggle.
“When we were both working, days would go by when we couldn’t seem to find five minutes to talk.”
I can really relate to that one, even now. I didn’t expect that children could talk non-stop. 8 years and counting…
Mrs. Done by Forty and I spend 24/7 together now, as we both work from home. Throw in Baby AF and, yes, we too are seeing some issues with our relationship come to light.
We (okay, “I”) need to work on communicating (i.e. – fighting) better. For me, that means going to my therapist again and heading to meetings, too. :/ All good in the end but, yes, having a lot of time together seems to mean you can’t ‘fake it’ anymore.
Done by Forty recently posted…Food Deserts, Restrictive Covenants, & Market Failures
Sorry to hear you and Mrs. 1500 are having some issues. I’m sure you’ll get things worked out.
No relationship is perfect, they all take work.
Overall, I’d say FIRE was a net positive for our family. I’m able to contribute to the household more (now that I don’t have a job), and I have the time to talk through any issues we might have.
Like any life transition, I expect that early retirement would require the same amount of effort to establish the new normal in our relationship while we adjust to our new circumstances and how we choose to spend our time. We play out this compromise in a micro sort of way with our nights and weekends but we’d have to extrapolate to that the larger scale of weeks and months. I am almost positive we’ll have the same areas of friction (saying no enough, protecting our time when it SEEMS like we have endless gobs of it) and we’ll have to work through them as we usually do.
Revanche @ A Gai Shan Life recently posted…Real Estate Investing: Cleaning up the mess
You’re way ahead of me in that it was only recently that I figured out that I need to learn to say “No” (protect my time). After 16 months, I feel like I’m finally starting to get a handle on it all. Better late than never?
Thank you for the thoughtful comment.
Great post, about an aspect of FIRE that most people don’t consider. Personally, I know my marriage would be significantly better if I’d reached FIRE, because money would no longer be a source of stress in my marriage. And I’d keep working anyway, I’d just be working on different things!
Anyway thanks again for a fresh perspective on the intersection of money, retirement, and marriage.
Thanks Brian!
Yep definitely! I am lazy(no surprise there if you chosen internet name is sloth!) but at the moment I have the job to hide behind. I have an excuse for not following up on the 10 or 20 ideas floating around in my head, or scribbled down somewhere in the past. I can hide behind my job and say, that after working 40 hours, I just do not have the time, or energy, to do X.
My fear is that once reaching my goal I will find out how really lazy I truly am and become a couch potato …
Me too!
Me, too! Very afraid to learn who I really am after being laser focused on money-related goals all of my life!
We are just a little over a year into FIRE now, but with two kids under the age of 5 we have been plenty busy. When you have kids and one or both parents work it is easy to drift apart as your life is either work or kids. I believe this is why it is often that later in life when kids are either in school or out of the house that the relationship changes. When kids or work no longer control your universe then people start wondering what purpose they have in life and in the relationship. I would prefer to not be divorced again, so we have been working on “family planning”. Basically we set down and looked at what we enjoyed doing when we were at various stages of life, shared that with each other, and then built a simple plan that includes those things we still want to do into our schedule. For us that means dedicated couple time, time apart/alone to work on hobbies, time with friends/family, and fishing. It also gave us a way to share what is important to us now and what we would like to include more of in our relationship. I was going to write a post on this topic, but J.D. Roth covered it very well here: https://www.getrichslowly.org/how-to-be-happy/
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. It sounds like you’re doing everything right.
One thing that I was ignorant about was how much things change with kids. Before kids, we had all the time we wanted to talk to each other. Now that we have them, it seems like we go weeks without having a deep conversation sometime.
Our children really love to talk. When I was a kid, I only spoke up when I had something to say. I assumed that our children would be like me. Nope!
I found this book to have some helpful insights as you transition to different stages of life:
https://www.amazon.com/Husbands-Every-Wife-Should-Have-ebook/dp/B0052A93I8
My library had the audiobook available digitally and was a pretty quick from start to finish.
Thank you for the recommendation. I see that my local library has it, but it’s checked out. I put it on hold.
we’re kid-free so it’s different. we went from 2 full time jobs 18 months ago with one of them a swing-shift where we didn’t see one another a helluva lot to 1.3 full time jobs where i work a regular job i don’t mind and she does 15 hours a week up the street. it’s always been easy in our house for some reason. i did get a little cheesed off on vacation when she connected the wireless speaker to her device and couldn’t get it unconnected so i could listen to baseball on my laptop. those are problems most people would gladly trade for theirs.
we have tons of time now and some of it we choose to spend together.
freddy smidlap recently posted…If You Own Individual Stocks, Diversity is Your Friend
A marriage can definitely suffer from too much together-time!
Yep. I need my alone time…
I’ve found if you are a FIREd male in your mid 40s, it is really hard to be single. Or rather its easy to STAY single. Finding a woman who groks that you aren’t a loser because you don’t have a job is a real challenge.
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I’m sorry man. I’ve heard similar stories from others in your boat.
We need a FIRE dating site. And I’ve heard that someone is actually working on it.
Very open post to say the least. If you think about it most retirees take on these issues in the 60’s or later. So just the fact that you are young enough to still have fun together hopefully means you can work through any issues you might be having. I am still working, my Mrs and I are both laid back but once in a while when we do have some kind of disagreement it follows a similar pattern. I am expecting her to do something, without explicitly asking if she would help me out. When she fails to assist,something I feel like I shouldn’t have had to ask, I then become stressed out having to do it myself. Lack of communication on my side is normally at fault. Not sure if any of this helps but best of luck working it out.
Thanks Chris. And your argument is very similar to one we just had. Like 40 minutes ago actually. Good communication is so damn important. I appreciate your thoughts.
I am brand new to your blog and am pleasantly surprised to see that you and some other bloggers also live here. The best place on earth. my Wife and I are brand new on the Fi track but have several years of living below our means. Now we have a purpose for it and have started a blog to track our progress. I will definitely be following your blog and some of the others you have mentioned as inspiration to where we want to be. Maybe we’ll run into you at the Fair!
All the best,
Isaac and Sheridan
Hey there! Thanks for the kind comment! While I don’t live in Minnesota, your state is pretty awesome!
I understand where you are coming from. It is easy to get too far into our own heads, especially the more cerebral lot of us. Melancholy is ok. However, I’ve been reading your blog long enough to make a bold recommendation. I’m giving you a little ‘tough love’ here… get your butt to the nearest small airport and take a couple flights. You are fascinated with flight and when you start thinking about how to land a 3-dimensional craft, life changes. Actually, your brain changes. Try it. Just get out and do it, man! 🙂
Primal Prosperity recently posted…“You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.”
A marriage can definitely suffer from too much together-time!
As a wise older woman friend of mine says, “I married him for better or worse, but not for lunch!” ?
I love this article, so interesting and positive. So many good ideas i could apply on my life at home and at work. Balancing all the things in our life. Thank you for sharing.
Money has never come between me and the wife, especially because we took it off between our relationship long time ago hen we started out together. One thing it has paved off is that we take financial decisions together. And when I wanted to go the FIRE route in my mid-30s, she was helpful. And complying.
Our kids now don’t seem to concur – because of all their friends splurging high – but I think they will come around. So, yes the question is not only about marriage, but about family. Will it set fire to your family? If we don’t tread artfully, it just might.