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Optimal Finance Daily - Financial Independence and Money Advice
3277: How to Get Your Spouse on Board with Early Retirement by Jill with Mad Fientist on Financial Independence
00:11:50
Jill reflects on the emotional and relational shifts that occur when one partner retires early while the other continues working
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Transcript13 lines
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A
Thanks for selling your car to Carvana. Here's your check.
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B
Whoa, when did I get here?
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A
What do you mean?
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B
I swear it was just moments ago that I accepted a great offer from Carvana online. I must have time traveled to the future.
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A
It was just moments ago. We do same day pickup. Here's your check for that great offer.
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It is the future.
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It's.
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A
It's the present and just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind.
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B
It's all good. Happens all the time.
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C
This is optimal Finance Daily. How to get your spouse excited about early retirement by Jill with madfientist.com well, this was a big surprise. About a month ago, I was working on a Mad Scientist article one evening when my wife, who is not a fientist, or so I thought, said she was going to bed. As she said good night, she mentioned that she had something for me to read on her computer. She didn't say what it was about, though. I tried to continue what I was doing, but curiosity quickly got the better of me. What I found surprised me, to say the least. After a month of attempting to persuade her to let me publish what she wrote, she finally agreed. I've added links and made other minor changes to convert what she wrote into a blog post, but all the words are her own British spellings. And all this is what I found on her computer after she went to bed that night. I've always been someone who enjoyed spending money. Sometimes it didn't even matter what I bought. It was the act of spending it that brought me joy. Or at least I thought it did. As my mother would put it, money always seemed to be burning a hole in my pocket. In the past few months, my feelings towards spending versus saving money have dramatically changed. So what brought about this sudden change after all these years? Is it because I married the mad fientist 9 months ago and he has forced me to change my spending habits? No. One thing about My husband is that although we have always had very different views on money management, he has never tried to control how much I spend or what I do with my own money, and this has not changed now that we're married. So although we may have had some minor disagreements over the years, we have never argued about money or found that it negatively affected our relationship. I've always known that my husband gains no pleasure from spending money and instead enjoys saving it and watching it grow. I've also learned in the past couple of years of his goal to save enough to be able to quit his job and pursue his own interests. Although I understand the benefit of this for him, I had no desire to follow in his footsteps. If I left my job, what would I do? I enjoy my work and I enjoy having money to spend on the things I want. If I left my job so young, surely I would be bored for the rest of my life and would not have the money to go out and do fun things. I would feel like a completely useless, unproductive member of society. What would be the point in my existence? The first thing that began to change my way of thinking was the Mad Fiant's blog. I was one of those people, along with his own family, who would often ask him, why do you deprive yourself of the things you really want? And why can't you just learn to relax and spend money without worrying? When I read his article Triple Value of Income, it made me realize that he really doesn't feel like he's depriving himself of anything. He just doesn't feel the need to have a lot of things. I started thinking about the things I like to spend money on and wondered if I would be any less happy without them. Maybe I could even be happier if I stopped wanting material things and could be satisfied with what I already have, or even much less. But this still didn't make me want to save enough to quit my job. I still thought that I'd be happier working full time and enjoying the benefits of having that regular cash flow. However, my outlook was significantly changed when we were on our honeymoon and one day my husband asked me, what would be your perfect life now? For me, this was actually a difficult question to answer. I have sometimes fantasized about what it would be like if I won the lottery and had endless amounts of money that I could do whatever I wanted with. But to actually visualize a realistic version of that dream was much more difficult for me. I suppose I still believed, as a lot of people do, that we don't have that many choices in life. So we discussed what the most important things in our lives are, and we eventually came up with our perfect life. Now that I could picture the benefits of not having to work full time, I was starting to come on board with the idea of financial independence. However, I still did not want to stop working completely, so maybe I could just work for half the year. I was slightly hesitant about taking all that time off, though. In the past, long periods away from work tend to leave me feeling restless. Even if we planned to travel to new and exciting parts of the world, how would I keep my mind stimulated? Then I started thinking about all the exciting opportunities out there that I could take advantage of if I wasn't working. I could volunteer my time to help others, and better yet, I could possibly even pick up some new skills along the way. All it took for me to be 100% on board with my husband's plan was to be able to visualize all the exciting opportunities out there in the world that we can take advantage of if we're not tied down to living and working in one place. I've already lost a lot of the desire to spend money just by having a definite goal for the future. I think that once I get used to this new mentality of not feeling like I need to spend money on material things, I'll ultimately be a happier person. I've also come to understand that financial independence is not the same as early retirement as I used to think. For one person, fi may mean being able to quit their job and never having to work again. In my husband's case, it will mean being able to stop working for someone else, but continue to work on things that he finds interesting and challenging. For someone else, it may mean having enough money to give them the courage to leave one job in order to pursue a better one. For me, I think it would mean being able to continue doing what I do because I really do like my job. But it would allow me to work less, spend more time with loved ones, travel more, and hopefully pick up new knowledge and skills along the way. Once I've cleared my current student debt, I'll be more likely to save as much as I can and enjoy this newfound freedom with fewer possessions and hopefully even more happiness. My husband realized that his own motivation for being financially independent is not necessarily what would motivate me to change my spending habits. So instead, he encouraged me to reassess my life and my goals. And in the process, we came up with some pretty exciting alternatives to our current situation. Trying to persuade me to change my spending without this goal would probably not have worked. It hasn't worked up until now. And so, after more than 10 years together, I'm finally coming around to my husband's way of thinking, something I don't think either of us ever expected. You just listened to the post titled how to get your spouse excited about early retirement by Jill with madfientist.com this message is brought to you by Apple Card. If you're like me, you might be considering getting a new iPhone, but have you considered upgrading your credit card? When you use your Apple card with Apple Pay or the laser etched titanium Apple Card, you can earn unlimited 3% Daily Cash back on everything you buy from Apple, whether it's a new iPhone, an iPhone case, or even a service like Apple Music or Apple TV. Earning 3% back on the Apple products and services you love. It's an easy decision. You'll only wonder why you weren't doing it sooner. Subject to credit approval Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com.
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Spousal buy in is incredibly important, and frankly, I think the path to financial independence would be pretty grueling without it. This is a topic that is discussed quite often in various Fire forums and Facebook groups, because most people discover fire after they're already married. If you're single, the answer is simple. Find a partner with a similar interest in financial freedom. But what do you do if you develop this interest after you're already committed to your life partner? The tactic that I've seen work many times over is exposing your partner to various FI events or introducing the concept through the documentary Playing with Fire. The film follows Scott Rickens and his wife Taylor as they learn all they can about the Fire movement and apply some of the basic principles to their own life over the course of a year now. At the beginning of the film, Taylor was not totally on board with the idea of fire. She was comfortable in their luxurious lifestyle and initially saw the changes Scott wanted to make as a bit too extreme. But they ended up having a conversation similar to what's recommended in this post about what really mattered to them and how they wanted to spend their time. Taylor realized that the things most important to her actually didn't cost a lot of money. Their lifestyle up to that point was just something that they had become used to. I got the impression they were kind of running on autopilot without really thinking about it too much. I think this documentary became so popular because many people can relate to Taylor's experience and initial hesitation. I know a lot of couples that watched this film together and it opened up some really fruitful conversations. This post also reminded me of a conversation I had with a lovely woman at the Last Economy Conference, which is an event I produced. She told me that she had no interest in fire, that her husband basically dragged her to this event kicking and screaming. But watching the mainstage speeches and having conversations with other people who shared this interest in fire helped her understand what all the fuss was about. She shared with me that attending this event helped her feel much closer to her husband and more aligned with the overall goal of fire. It was pretty incredible to witness this transformation. That should do it for another edition of Optimal Finance Daily. I'll be back tomorrow as usual, so I'll see you there on the Wednesday show where your optimal life awaits.