FI Isn’t All Misery

I’ve come across pret­ty heavy the last few posts, talk­ing about the strug­gles of dat­ing and deal­ing with the guilt of hav­ing life be so easy, so I thought I’d light­en it up with this post!

Some peo­ple are prone to jump­ing to con­clu­sions; so when I say I watch what I spend and save a lot of my income, they auto­mat­i­cal­ly assume I live in a one room shack with a dirt floor and amuse myself by count­ing sticks. I might be exag­ger­at­ing slight­ly. Might.

Just because one is inter­est­ed in FI does­n’t mean we live a life of depri­va­tion and angst. Far from it. I actu­al­ly con­sid­er my life to be one of rel­a­tive com­fort, if not down right opu­lent at times. Being on the path to Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence is more about being cog­nizant of what you spend your mon­ey on and adjust­ing your pri­or­i­ties as such.

This post isn’t meant to brag. Far­rrrr from it. I just want to show you I am a rel­a­tive­ly nor­mal Mil­len­ni­al. I like to take nice trips. I like to play video games. I have a lot of hob­bies. In order to do these things, I occa­sion­al­ly save up and splurge on a big pur­chase. The dif­fer­ence is, I will be using this pur­chase for a very long time, so the over­all cost is min­i­mal, and I research exten­sive­ly before I final­ly pull the trig­ger to buy what­ev­er it is I’m getting.

Fancy Digs

I absolute­ly love my apart­ment. 1100 square feet of liv­ing space all to myself. I’ve got vault­ed ceil­ings, a fire­place, full-size ener­gy effi­cient wash­er and dry­er, a dish­wash­er and a walk-in pantry. It’s a new­er build­ing so the gas and elec­tric bills are pret­ty low, and the water bill is includ­ed in my rent.

The space is set up so the 2 bed­rooms flank the main liv­ing space. The mas­ter has slid­ing doors onto the deck and a mas­ter bath suite which includes a mas­sive walk in closet.

The oth­er bed­room is ded­i­cat­ed to all my books, my com­put­er stuff, and my numer­ous hob­bies (more on that in a sec­ond). It also has a big walk in clos­et that I cur­rent­ly use to store stuff I don’t want the cat to get into. You know, things like emp­ty mov­ing box­es, skis, and my Christ­mas wrap­ping supplies.

Not only am I pay­ing for a super nice, pri­vate, most­ly qui­et liv­ing space, but I’m also pay­ing for com­plex ameni­ties. We get free fruit at the front office, a decent­ly equipped gym, a nice pool, and a big par­ty space we can reserve.

Maybe the most attrac­tive fea­ture is my prox­im­i­ty to work. I live 1.5 miles from the office! On nice days I ride my bike to work to get some fresh air, exer­cise, lessen pol­lu­tion, and not use up my gas. I could also walk or run, but let’s be real, that’s prob­a­bly nev­er going to hap­pen. My com­mute time is next to noth­ing, which is very nice right now as con­struc­tion traf­fic is snarling every­thing up around me. It’s a bit of a neg­a­tive in the win­ter for a few rea­sons though- it takes longer to warm my car up than it does to dri­ve, and I don’t real­ly have a good excuse to stay home when the weath­er is bad. Unless my car gets plowed under a bunch of snow in my apart­ment com­plex before I can leave, which I’ve nev­er done. Ever. cough

 

My Sewing Machine

Meet Catha­ri­na, my Baby­lock Crescen­do sewing machine. I hes­i­tate to call her my sewing machine because that begets an image of an old, black, met­al trea­dle Singer machine. This beaut sews and so much more. A big touch screen, bright LED lights, tons of throat space, A LASER!!!!, and more stitch­es than I will ever need.

At just under $4000, this machine is the sec­ond most expen­sive thing I’ve ever bought (after my car), and is now the most valu­able. I’ve had her for almost 2 years now and I still get a bit of a thrill every time I sit down in front of her. So far, I’ve sewn 3 baby quilts on her and it is SO MUCH bet­ter to use than the machine my mom very gra­cious­ly let me bor­row. With a sim­ple tune up and blast of canned air, this baby will be used for the next 15+ years! (and hope­ful­ly many more!)

My sewing hob­by means I also buy fab­ric and tools to help me cut the fab­ric more accu­rate­ly. It’s not cheap, but I like get­ting to use my brain for some­thing to help me feel good. I also like the feel­ing I get when I give peo­ple some­thing I’ve made with my own hands!

My Bike

Let me intro­duce you to my love­ly bicy­cle, Jaque­line. She is a 2 year old Can­non­dale Quick. I call her Jack because Jack be nim­ble, Jack be quick. I real­ly like to name my inan­i­mate pos­ses­sions, if you can’t tell. I’m guilty not using her quite as much as I intend­ed, but I still con­sid­er the ~$800 I spent to be well worth it. The rack on the back and the splash guards were espe­cial­ly great buys! They’ve come in handy for things like rid­ing to work and back, and for things like the 25 mile char­i­ty bike ride I did. It’s nice to come into work after it’s rained and NOT have a huge wet stripe on your back from the puddles.

Entertainment

I’m a real­ly big fan of com­ing home, mak­ing some food and then veg­ging out on the couch in front of the TV if I don’t have any­thing else going on that night. My com­put­er is a vital part of my enter­tain­ment library. I stream Car­di­nals games to my TV from my com­put­er, and use it to get almost all my oth­er media. (Movies, music, etc).

I was per­fect­ly con­tent with my 2009 Mac­Book Pro, but the hard dri­ve died, so I expand­ed my skill sets and built my own desk­top from scratch. One frus­trat­ing search for capac­i­tor caps lat­er, I had a run­ning com­put­er! I loaded it with Lin­ux (Ubun­tu) since I did­n’t feel like deal­ing with a Hack­in­tosh nor did I want to run Win­dows. As you can see, I have yet to spring for a prop­er com­put­er chair to com­plete my com­put­er set­up. I’ll get there one day!

Not pic­tured is my TV set­up, but rest assured it’s awe­some. I got a 42″ flat screen short­ly after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, and gave my old one to my sis­ter (where they’re still using it!). I love to play all sorts of video games, so I have a col­lec­tion of con­soles to include, but not lim­it­ed to, a Playsta­tion 3, Wii, Wii U, and an Xbox 360. So far, I haven’t found a rea­son to upgrade to a PS4 or XBONE, espe­cial­ly as I rarely play video games now. I just don’t have the oomph or brain pow­er after I get off work, so I lim­it my video gam­ing to the week­ends for now.

Alcohol

One of the biggest splurges in my bud­get comes from spend­ing mon­ey on alco­hol. It does­n’t real­ly mat­ter if it’s from a restau­rant, a bar, or the gro­cery store. I am unfor­tu­nate­ly gluten intol­er­ant, so I am forced to pass on the free beer peo­ple offer me. This means I usu­al­ly have to spring for my own bev­er­ages, and since I can’t drink beer that means I’m lim­it­ed to wine, cider, mixed drinks or moon­shine. Just kid­ding on the last one. Moon­shine is gross and I don’t want to go blind. I’m not a big fan of wine, so I usu­al­ly drink some form of cider or a mixed drink. All of which are more expen­sive than beer (unless I’m at one of the numer­ous brew­eries my town is home to).

I’ve recent­ly dis­cov­ered the deli­cious­ness that is mead. Let me tell you, it can get pricey FAST. I balk at spend­ing $20 for a bot­tle of reg­u­lar wine, but was seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing buy­ing a bot­tle of mead that cost close to $60. I went with the bot­tle that was “only” $38 (pic­tured to the left) and I’m glad I did. It’s delicious!

[PS if any­one lives close to Prescott, Ari­zona and wants to send me some more mead from Super­sti­tion Mead­ery, I’ll love you forever!)

I’m well aware of the finan­cial and health reper­cus­sions of alco­hol, so I tend to lim­it how much I buy and con­sume. I thought this post by Cait Flan­ders was sober­ing (pun not intend­ed) on just how quick­ly the costs from going out can add up. I’m cur­rent­ly strug­gling with my work sit­u­a­tion, and it’s a dai­ly strug­gle for me to avoid wash­ing away my feel­ings by down­ing some alco­hol. I also find it rather depress­ing to drink alone, so I tend to only drink in social sit­u­a­tions nowadays.

So, as you can see, just because I’m focused on max­ing out my 401(k) and Roth IRA, does­n’t mean I live a bor­ing or super cheap lifestyle. I’m com­fort­able with this lev­el of spend­ing, and quite hon­est­ly enjoy the dis­trac­tions my more expen­sive addi­tions bring me. If in the end it takes me anoth­er 6 months or a year to achieve FI, so be it. I’d rather be hap­py when I retire than have more mon­ey and no hob­bies or friends.

What do you splurge on? Do you have any “guilty pleasures”?