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Navigating relationships with money provides stress, fear, anxiety, and nervousness about the future and quality of life. Fretting about your financial status at all hours of the day takes you out of the present moment and drains your quality of life. Those who’ve discovered financial acceptance and independence share how changing their mindset changed their lives.
1. Evaluate How Much You Want to Work
My dad adores working. He works every second he can, even if he forfeits his free time for an off-the-clock call. He never wants to retire, and while he borders on the spectrum of a workaholic, he’s perfectly fine retiring from his management position and spending his retirement setting up chairs for beachgoers at a minimum-wage gig.
When my dad started his profession, he calculated how much he needed to work to achieve a steady income with a hefty safety net for retirement. He decided he never wanted to stop working, but determined the age he could stop working at a high-stress job.
2. Calculate Your Coast Fire Number Mindset
“I take a considerable risk now that I’ve hit my Coast FIRE number. Work doesn’t feel like something I must do, but I choose to do it. You don’t need a million dollars to find that feeling. Just enough to know if you ride what you have for 20-30 years, you’ll be set for retirement,” an educated saver states.
3. Create a Giving Fund
This person notes that they started attributing X amount of money each month into their giving fund. When they come across someone who needs help, they reach into the fund to assist them with rent, food, savings, etc. They say they overspend what they put in the giving fund but adore helping others, so they deal with the expenses.
4. Shifting Anxiety Into Confidence
“Not as anxious about work. I work in a competitive industry with frequent layoffs. I am not worried about competing with someone or training someone for my job. A layoff package? Don’t threaten me with a good time. Ironically, my confidence has impressed management and my coworkers, and I got a promotion into management,” an individual replies.
5. Save for Mini-Retirements
If you have the means and the saving skills, why would you wait 70 years to take a vacation? One person mentioned that they allotted themselves three mini-retirements before the blowout. First, they backpacked Europe for seven months in their 20s, then they raised their kids at home, and next, they took time to watch over their newborn child. Between these mini-retirements, they built up enough money to easily retire.
6. Work Hard, Play Hard
A thread member stresses the importance of saving enough money to spend on unique experiences.
“Selectively saying yes to big events like conventions and concerts. Spending more on experiences and upgrades so I don’t have to waste time waiting. Saying no and cutting out groups from my social life who honestly weren’t going to be there with me in a retired life.”
7. Ask About Remote Options
Travel enthusiasts know the struggle of returning from a trip and sitting back down at a droll desk in a dreary office while the duplicate emails roll in on a dusty computer. Instead of repeating that process every year, assess your options. One person says they quit their career to travel—after saving enough to fund the trip—and informed his boss about their desire to take on a remote role. Now, the jet setter flies worldwide and continues to work and save.
8. Live Beneath Your Means
In other words, spend less than you make to spend more in the long run. Say you take home $5,000 a month. You’ll have no money to save if you use every penny on rent, expenses, and fun. So, fool yourself into thinking you only take home $4,000 monthly and set the extra grand into a retirement account.
9. Seek Careers to Save on Necessities
Making money isn’t everything. Saving is just as good. For example, teachers receive discounted childcare and schooling for their children. Teachers bring home less income than lawyers or doctors but pocket the money saved on daycare or school.
10. Thinking of Kids
Many people on this thread instilled the love of traveling in their kids from a young age. Before considering retirement plans, they considered funding their kids (or future kids) travel itineraries. They set aside X amount of money in savings accounts for their offspring and continue to add to it, knowing their kids will retain the thrill of travel.
Source: Reddit.
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