Dreaming of FI

I’d be the first to tell you I have a prob­lem. I have a con­fes­sion to make.

I’m addict­ed to the Internet.

“Oh, Gwen” you scoff, “You’re a Mil­len­ni­al. That comes par for the course with your age group.”

But real­ly though, it’s a problem.

I have many hob­bies, and every one of them is assist­ed with the inter­net. Need inspi­ra­tion for a new quilt? Inter­net. Need a pat­tern? Inter­net. Need to fig­ure out how to do a super stretchy cast on and cast off for a new knit­ted hat? Internet.

By far and away though, I spend the most time on my hob­by of per­son­al finance/financial independence/retiring ear­ly. This prob­a­bly isn’t a sur­prise, con­sid­er­ing I run a whole blog devot­ed to talk­ing about noth­ing but FIRE and my plans. I’m active and engaged on the Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence sub­red­dit. My phone helps me be con­nect­ed to Twit­ter every sec­ond of the day (I can nei­ther con­firm nor deny this helps me pass time while stuck in the bath­room) so I can inter­act with all of my favorite FIRE blog­gers and see what they’re talk­ing about. One of the first things I do in the morn­ing, after hit­ting the snooze but­ton and pet­ting the cat, is roll over and check to see what hap­pened while I was asleep on all of my favorite social media platforms.

I think things reached a break­ing point last night. I’m a very active dream­er while I sleep, and I’ve also man­aged to train my brain to do lucid dream­ing. At some point in a dream, I’ll “wake up” to the fact that I’m in a dream. Very much like Tris in the Diver­gent series (oop. Hope I did­n’t spoil any­thing), minus the incred­i­bly sexy  Theo James to tell me what’s going on.

Unlike most peo­ple who can be lucid while dream­ing, I can run through a whole sto­ry line instead of just a few sec­onds. If you want to learn more about lucid dream­ing, there are tons of resources out there that both edu­cate on the con­cept and help you learn how to do it yourself.

Last night, my dream was about get­ting a very large and very unex­pect­ed inher­i­tance that imme­di­ate­ly cat­a­pult­ed me into the 1%.

A lady approached our fam­i­ly in the park­ing lot and made us sit in this tricked out fan­cy van. At first all of us were con­vinced this was a prank, but she took us to our bank and the checks cleared! The inher­i­tance I got was a one time lump sum of $3.54 mil­lion, with a recur­ring annu­al pay­ment of an addi­tion­al $1 mil­lion until I died. I have no idea how this per­son was relat­ed to me, but it was some­how through my step­dad’s side of the fam­i­ly. Was I glad my mom mar­ried him or what?

The very first thing I did was go and buy an incred­i­bly expen­sive bot­tle of wine I’d had my eye on at the local vine­yard. My next step was to quit my job the very next day. My cowork­ers were thrilled for me. Then I spent some time trav­el­ing around the US to vis­it friends, and then I trav­eled overseas.

After I came back to the US I got start­ed on build­ing the best house devot­ed to craft­ing I pos­si­bly could in the moun­tains of Col­orado. I would love to live in Col­orado due to the close prox­im­i­ty of all the var­i­ous ski resorts, which since I was ridicu­lous­ly rich I could afford sea­son tick­ets at all of them.

My dream end­ed there, but I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to wake up to the new ‘mem­o­ry’. I find it inter­est­ing my dream self-made so many choic­es that mir­ror what I want to do, except on a grander scale. In real life, I’d spend some time adjust­ing to my new lev­el of wealth and invest a good chunk of it to make sure I had income no mat­ter what hap­pened to the trust. I prob­a­bly also would­n’t build a house devot­ed to craft­ing- instead I’d find a nice house and ren­o­vate it to suit my needs. It’s much cheap­er that way. I prob­a­bly would­n’t buy sea­son tick­ets to all the ski resorts either. Maybe just one. I real­ly do like to ski.

When I retire ear­ly, I’m not going to be a super crazy spender, so it’s nice to get the “pre­tend” expe­ri­ence of spend­ing. It’s like it hap­pened, but then I wake up and check my bank account and noth­ing has changed. Well, noth­ing unex­pect­ed like a deposit to build a super fan­cy ski lodge anyways!

Do you dream of FI? How do your dreams dif­fer from every day life?