Additional menu

Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Don’t Enslave Your Future Self

By 21 Comments

My boyfriend and I were hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about our future plans recent­ly that sparked an idea in my mind.

We were sug­gest­ing things we could do in the future like buy a plot of land and build a house out in the coun­try (on a lake, because Min­neso­ta). But, we real­ized there were some things hold­ing us back. The deci­sions we made in the past affect what we can do today and fur­ther out into the future. Some choic­es open doors for the future, while oth­er choic­es lim­it future options.

Think about it.

If you’ve been work­ing out, you’re prob­a­bly in bet­ter shape than you were before you start­ed. Your future self will be grate­ful as you’ll have less health issues in the future. I’m not the best at mak­ing myself work out, but once I get in the groove watch out! Since I quit my job and moved to Min­neapo­lis, I’ve lost over 5 lbs, lost a few inch­es around my waist, and gained some mus­cle def­i­n­i­tion from 13/9/5 mile bike rides around the near­by lakes. My future self will def­i­nite­ly thank me!

skyline lake

Finances are anoth­er huge area. If you signed for stu­dent loans when you were 18, you have to pay them back after grad­u­a­tion. If you buy things you can’t afford on cred­it, you’ll rack up lots of debt. If you get a car loan that’s expen­sive, you’ll have less mon­ey to spend each month. Your future self will like­ly be curs­ing you as they strug­gle to pay down the stuff racked up so eas­i­ly in the past.

I don’t have to curse my for­mer self. I thank my for­mer self instead, because I was for­tu­nate to be able to save $200k in 5 years. My retire­ment is now tak­en care of, which I’m sure my 60 year old self will appreciate.

Lifestyle choic­es are anoth­er area. If you get locked into a cer­tain qual­i­ty of liv­ing it can be incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to change. Buy­ing more house than you need and stuff­ing it full of fur­ni­ture and pret­ty knick­knacks will make it tough to adapt in the future if you got laid off or had to move for what­ev­er reason.

Make it your goal to set your future self up for more options, not less!

Now, lest you think I per­fect (because I am so not per­fect), I’m going to share some ways that I’ve ensnared my future self with my past deci­sions. They aren’t bad deci­sions, but they cer­tain­ly lim­it what I can do now.

I’m enslaved by my cat, and my stuff.

cuddle floof
The cat mas­ter demands cuddles

I mean, every cat own­er is tech­ni­cal­ly enslaved by their cat. After all, we live to serve them. What I’m talk­ing about goes deep­er than that, though.

Because I have a cat, I can’t trav­el as eas­i­ly as I could with­out a pet. When I brought that cute lil floof into my life, I took on the respon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing for him the rest of his life. Cats can live to be 20 years old! Now, I can only live in places I buy or places that allow pets, which cer­tain­ly is a bit limiting.

If I want­ed to go trav­el the world for an extend­ed peri­od of time, I would have to fig­ure out some one to watch him. This was easy enough with my par­ents, until I came home after a trip and found out he was no longer wel­come in their house. Curi­ous kit­ty + antiques is not a good com­bo. Jere­my from Go Cur­ry Crack­er would absolute­ly love it if I could trav­el the world with them and nan­ny for their son.…. but I can’t, because I have my cat. Anoth­er friend wants me to dog sit for her for 2 weeks in Novem­ber.…. in Guatemala.… but I can’t, because I have my cat. (Side­note: If you like the idea of cheap beau­ti­ful liv­ing while watch­ing a cou­ple of cute Great Danes and can spend 2 weeks in Guatemala, let me know and I’ll pass your info on to her!)

The cat isn’t the only thing hold­ing me back.bookshelf

I have stuff. A lot of stuff. I like hav­ing stuff.

I’m proud of my DVD col­lec­tion. Of my book col­lec­tion. Of my video game collection.

I have things I’m sav­ing for the future — like my Lego col­lec­tion for future kid­dos. I have hob­bies that take up space like stained glass and quilting.

My stuff lim­its what I can do.

I can’t live in a cheap stu­dio. I tried that when I bought The Din­gle House and was­n’t very hap­py with all of my stuff in box­es with no space. So I need at least a one bed­room place, and prob­a­bly a 2 bed­room place.

I start­ed out in a 3 bed­room house by myself and filled most of it with stuff. Now I am pay­ing the price as I try to downsize.

Although, I will say I cer­tain­ly have less stuff than I did when I lived in that 3 bed­room house. I’ve sold most of my big bulky fur­ni­ture and got­ten rid of quite a few box­es of junk and papers. I have more to go, but progress is being made!

For­tu­nate­ly, I made some choic­es in the past that have opened doors for my future self (just in case you were feel­ing down from all the chains I’ve wrapped around myself).

I made choic­es that left me con­sumer debt free. For instance, I kept my old car instead of buy­ing a brand new car on cred­it. If I had car pay­ments, I would be total­ly stressed out and wor­ried about keep­ing the car. But, since I paid for the car in cash out­right in col­lege, I have no car pay­ment and thus one less wor­ry on my plate.

I saved lots of mon­ey in tax advan­taged accounts while work­ing that let me quit my high pay­ing IT job, move to a new state to be with my boyfriend, and take on low­er pay­ing but way fun jobs (like being a stu­dio mon­key for a local stained glass artist that I am hav­ing a ton of fun with!). I would­n’t be able to func­tion if I did­n’t have that mon­ey in my back pock­et that will per­co­late and become my phat retire­ment nest egg.

I’m also mak­ing good choic­es right now that will open more doors. The big one is.…

drum­roll please

I’m sell­ing my rental prop­er­ty! If you lis­ten to the pod­cast, you got to hear the process hap­pen in real-time which is awe­some that we got to cap­ture that moment while record­ing an episode. I’m tired of deal­ing with the house, the ten­ants, and the prop­er­ty man­age­ment com­pa­ny. The tri­fec­ta, basi­cal­ly. I also have fig­ured out the house needs almost $50k worth of work in the next 18 months or so. That list includes 2 new bath­rooms, new exte­ri­or paint job, new gut­ters, and prob­a­bly a ton of oth­er small­er things that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

I promise I will write a longer, more in-depth post on the house sell­ing process, but right now I don’t want to jinx it. I close August 16th, so wish me some luck!!! I need it!

Sell­ing The Din­gle House will let me be com­plete­ly debt free again. I will no longer be oblig­at­ed to pay $700 a month to the bank for the mort­gage and up to $500 a month in util­i­ty bills. Not to men­tion the loom­ing moun­tain of repairs need­ed will no longer be my prob­lem thank the Lord for some small favors. I won’t have to expend men­tal ener­gy on wor­ry­ing on whether or not the neigh­bor is going to call the cops on my ten­ant for sus­pect­ed drug deal­ing. I won’t have to coör­di­nate the repair of shat­tered door frames from the raid, either, so that will be love­ly too.

All in all, I see good things on the hori­zon and I shall strive to make choic­es that open doors for my future self (prefer­ably with­out being kicked down by the metaphor­i­cal equiv­a­lent of the local police force haha). So the next time you’re mak­ing a big deci­sion, think to your­self — will this be help­ful or harm­ful to my future self?

Thanks for read­ing! What choic­es have you made that helped you? What choic­es have you made that harmed you?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion! We def­i­nite­ly have tried to look­out for our future. We have prob­a­bly done bet­ter than most but time will tell. Prob­a­bly the biggest enslave­ment will be our upcom­ing house purchase. 

    Over­all, it helps to make plans. In the past year, I have cre­at­ed an invest­ment plan, and this year, I exe­cut­ed the invest­ment plan. It’s mid­way through 2018, and I already have a plan for 2019. 

    We start­ed the jour­ney at 22, right after school. Six years lat­er, Ten more to go…hopefully!

    I think it’s super cool you are mak­ing this piv­ot in your life. I’m not quite there yet.

    Reply

  2. I think we’re trained from an ear­ly age to look at the “cost” of some­thing to lit­er­al­ly mean the price you pay to acquire it. As we get old­er, we real­ize that mon­ey is just one fac­tor. All the deci­sions we make have costs, some finan­cial, some health, some time, etc. Too bad we don’t real­ize this until we’re old­er (but there’s still time!). Great reminder. 🙂

    Reply

  4. Woot! Con­grats on ditch­ing Dingle!
    Let’s talk more about your and Erik’s ideas around coun­try liv­ing. I tend to think it most­ly would suck.

    Reply

  5. We are lucky enough to have a room­mate to watch our pets while we’re out of town, but if it wasn’t for him, we would be a LOT more lim­it­ed. It def­i­nite­ly makes us hes­i­tate when we think about how many ani­mals we’ll have in the future, but damn if I can let myself live with­out a dog or two.

    Reply

  6. Great per­son­al account on how the stuff you own ends up own­ing you. The cat is too cute to part with. Did you real­ize you were sign­ing up for a 20 year com­mit­ment? Worth it.

    I think about these things too — like how I’d love to be a 1 car fam­i­ly again. I love my ’04 Civic hybrid baby , but we’ve agreed to sell it to make that goal hap­pen. I’ll keep the mem­o­ries and say good­bye to the steel & plas­tic. We offered it to my niece. If she does­n’t take it, we’ll find anoth­er buyer.

    Con­grats on sell­ing the Din­gle house! It was cool to hear that in real-time on the pod­cast yesterday. 

    If you ever want to chat about coun­try vs city liv­ing, I’d be hap­py to. I grew up on a farm in west­ern MN and I lived in so-cal and Min­neapo­lis for years. There are pros and cons. I would­n’t trade the coun­try life expe­ri­ence, but the big city has its perks.

    Reply

  7. Woohoo for sell­ing the rental house! Sor­ry that shaped up to be such a pain. Live and learn, right? 

    And SO true about kit­ties enslav­ing us. 😉 If I leave for longer than 24 hours, I have to make arrange­ments for cat-sit­ting, because Zap is such a needy lit­tle dude.

    Reply

  8. Con­grats on sell­ing the house! That was such a fun moment lis­ten­ing to it live in the pod­cast! Fin­gers crossed it all turns out well.

    I total­ly know what you mean by enslav­ing your future self. I’ve been hang­ing onto my car loan since it’s such a low inter­est rate, but I’m def­i­nite­ly lim­it­ing my future self on way I can do as I’ll need to pay that mon­ey no mat­ter what. Debat­ing just pay­ing it off now to free up my future self even if the num­bers don’t make sense!

    Reply

  9. Thank you for shar­ing! It’s real­ly cool to hear about dif­fer­ent people’s choic­es and the intend­ed (or unin­tend­ed) con­se­quences of them. And con­grat­u­la­tions on sell­ing your rental prop­er­ty! “Div­i­dends Don’t Sell Drugs” . Good luck with the clos­ing! Also I’d love to dogsit in Guatemala, but the idea of (TMI?) pick­ing up Grant Dane sized poops is hold­ing me back…

    On anoth­er note, it struck me how dif­fer­ent you and I are . My part­ner and I have a say­ing “No Respon­si­bil­i­ties” and have fol­lowed that through so far. We have noth­ing stop­ping us from doing things at the drop of a hat: no kids, no house, no pets, no car and not a lot of stuff (I’m actu­al­ly plan­ning to sell what lit­tle we have when I retire and live out of a back­pack à la Mil­len­ni­al Rev­o­lu­tion). All those things make me stressed just to think about them – which isn’t too sur­pris­ing giv­en how anx­ious (and also lazy) I am . Look­ing for­ward to hear­ing more about the end of the rental saga!

    Reply

  10. Awwwww, but you have such a cute fluffy mas­ter that you’re behold­en to 😉 I feel you so much on the stuff. My fam­i­ly does­n’t do “own­ing a rea­son­able amount of stuff instead of a bunch of crap” very well, so I’m already work­ing to both down­size the amount of stuff I own and to keep an eye on it so the amount stays lev­el instead of growing.

    And yay that’s excit­ing to hear about the August date for the clos­ing! Fin­gers crossed every­thing goes well!

    Reply

  11. I have this fear of finan­cial com­mit­ments for basi­cal­ly this exact rea­son I guess, whether it’s for an inter­net pack­age or cell phone plan… freaks me out com­mit­ting to a contract. 

    The choic­es I made in the past to live mean, even on a low income enabled me to pack up and trav­el for 6 months, and then a few years lat­er ful­fil my desire to set­tle down, buy a house and get dogs and chick­ens. I’m still fru­gal but these are things I val­ue and spend mon­ey on (hous­ing here is not cheap… though tbh if I was rent­ing right now I would also be pay­ing a fair bit because I’m too old to live in cold damp shit­holes any­more). I do hear you on pets restrict­ing your abil­i­ty to get up and go — we haven’t done any sig­nif­i­cant trav­el since adopt­ing our dogs and going away will involve extra expense to account for their care! 

    Con­grats on he sale and GL for your clos­ing next month!

    Reply

  12. Con­grats on get­ting the offer and set­ting the date! Wish­ing you lots of lick there 🙂 

    I’m glad to have set myself up from an ear­ly age (start­ed that Roth IRA as an 18 year old Fresh­man in Col­lege! ) and tried to tell my friends to do the same. Some peo­ple laughed when I said I’d buy a house in 10 years, but the ones that sup­port­ed me designed their own finan­cial futures. Now I have a few close friends who are all on the path to finan­cial fab­u­lous­ness because we made good choic­es ear­ly on! 

    I hope more younger peo­ple find blogs like ours and are inspired to look at the over­all cost (like Jim said) much ear­li­er than peo­ple usu­al­ly do.

    Reply

  13. #nomored­in­gle­house Yay! I think that we have done well at set­ting future our­selves up. Grow­ing up with dogs and cats, I’ve always want­ed one, but hav­ing a hus­band who is aller­gic, means no ani­mals for me. How­ev­er, my insane lev­el of wan­der­lust thanks me for not hav­ing a pet at home that I have to be respon­si­ble for so I can trav­el when­ev­er and for as long as I want. Also, not buy­ing a house has been a huge fac­tor for us. Despite liv­ing in a HCOL area where hous­es sell for ungod­ly amounts, it also allows us flex­i­bil­i­ty to pick up and go when the time is right. My today self def­i­nite­ly thanks my old self, and hope­ful­ly my future self will feel the same way.

    Reply

    • All is not well. We’ve extend­ed the deal as they did­n’t get their financ­ing in order in time. Grrr.

      Reply

  16. Con­grats on sell­ing the house! That was such a fun moment lis­ten­ing to it live in the pod­cast! Fin­gers crossed it all turns out

    I total­ly know what you mean by enslav­ing your future self. I’ve been hang­ing onto my car loan since it’s such a low inter­est rate, but I’m def­i­nite­ly lim­it­ing my future self on way I can do as I’ll need to pay that mon­ey no mat­ter what. Debat­ing just pay­ing it off now to free up my future self even if the num­bers don’t make sense!

    Reply

  18. Some­times we make crazy deci­sions think­ing noth­ing is going to hap­pen but after a cou­ple of years they come back and haunt us.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge