Perfect vision is hard to achieve.  Only about 35% of adults have it.  It seems, clarity is even more elusive.  When we move through our day-to-day lives, sometimes we forget about our vision for ourselves.  As we welcome our new addition to the family, this need for reflection on our vision becomes even more important.  Entering this year of acuity, it seems important to take stock of how we see our goals moving forward.

An Important past focus

For the past few years, I have journeyed down the rabbit hole of the FIRE movement.  FIRE stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early.”

In essence, the goal is to maximize your income and reduce your expenses, in order to to achieve a net worth that allows you to retire earlier than the normal age of 65.

What inspired me was an blog article from Mr. Money Mustache called The Shockingly Simple Math to Early Retirement.

This was what caused us to up-sticks from Florida and move to Saudi Arabia.  We realized that had we stayed as two public school teachers in Florida, we would always be worried about our finances.  And for the most part, it has worked very well for us.  We are very stable in our finances; no longer worry too much about money; and our net worth has grown immensely since making the move.

While this focus is still important to us, I understand that perhaps I have become too focused on this.  I seem to constantly check Personal Capital to find out what my net worth is! That being said, I still do find great interest in the realm of personal finance, and I still enjoy reading and writing about it and will still try to spread the message so that everyone may benefit.

Vision 2020

(To those living in Saudi Arabia, this is a deliberate reference to the Saudi Vision 2030)

The idea of Financial Independence will remain important in our lives.  I will always try to maximize our income, and I quite like all of the side hustles that I do.

I also feel that it is important to be fully reflective on what we spend our money on.  Some may call it frugal, some may call it cheap, but I don’t find value in the new shiny car or McMansion.  I don’t like Starbucks.  I don’t want to ‘Keep up with the Joneses” I want to spend money on the things that truly matter.

The big change for 2020 is that I no longer want the goal of ‘retiring early’ to effect my day-to-day life.  I was, essentially, ‘Keeping up with the FI-Joneses”

The addition of our new son, Alfie, has taught me that I need to be more present, instead of day-dreaming about the days of early retirement.

I suppose the cliché is true in this case, “The journey is more important than the destination.”