What fits my lifestyle?

I had a thought on my way home from work today. I almost feel as though there are too many podcasts and books out there, not saying they are bad or not helpful, just saying it becomes overwhelming. Which direction do I go? Do I focus on retail? Do I give up all of my worldly possessions and live off the bare minimum? Do I raise my retirement contribution to 75% of my income? Which do I choose and what fits my lifestyle?

Well, that is a great question and here I am still wondering which direction I should go. I mean, who wants to waste any more time? If I choose real estate and go in headfirst but suck at it or hate it, then how much time did I just waste trying to get closer to reaching my goals. I think this is what is so great about building this type of community. We have an opportunity to, in real time, lean on each other and find out what our first steps were and how we made that decision and why. If one of us can share a mistake they believe they made, then it may help someone else before they walk that same path.

I’m going to share one of the path’s that I realized I just do not want to do, at the moment. This will probably resonate with most folks, but I just do not think I have the capacity to give up so much of my income to contribute to retirement investing at the moment. I have two kids and just purchased a home. I can hear Mr. Kiyosaki(author “Rich Dad Poor Dad”) in my head calling me an idiot for buying a house. But again, this fit my lifestyle and I am not willing to give that up right now. It doesn’t mean that I want to stay in the rat race and never reach financial independence. It just means that I had set out on a goal for myself a long time ago to try and purchase a home for my family, for security and community. I am also still at the beginning phase of this journey towards FI (Financial Independence) and with it, I have loads of debt that I need to crawl out from under. I’m working towards using Dave Ramsey’s advice and “snowball-ing” my debt. So far it doesn’t feel like it is working all that well, but just having more attention around it and knowing how much I have and how long it is going to take, helps me stay engaged and focused on continued larger payments.

Let’s get back to the “lifestyle” conversation of this blog. I do not want to give up eating out with my family a few times a month and I do not want to sacrifice meeting up with friends for a fun weekend every now and then. If you are, then that is awesome and I applaud you, I truly do wish I could control this part of my life a little more, to a quicker way towards financial freedom, but at this point I feel I have made a decision to still try and live within a balance between fun and a commitment to a more free life.

I hope you can share some things that you have given up or just strictly will not for now and how that is impacting you emotionally and financially, whether it be good or bad.

Until next time, thank you for reading and thank you for helping grow our community!