Are We Too Scared For Slow FI?

I think it’s gotten pretty clear that I love to talk about slow FI (financial independence) on the blog. Slow FI resonates with me more than any other aspect of FI I’ve seen. Coined by The Fioneers, slow FI is a mindset related to taking a slower path to FI, using the financial freedom we gain along the way to FI to live our best lives now. But for many of us, how we may want to live our best lives now feels strange. It’s likely different than what “everyone else is doing”. It goes against the grain. It’s vulnerable. So, the question I’m going to be mulling over today on the blog is, are we too scared for a slow FI lifestyle?

I love love love the Money Flamingo blog, written by Mrs. Flamingo in Australia. It’s where I first learned about Flamingo FI (having half your FI number saved in investments), which is my current financial independence goal. It’s like coast FI, where you basically only need to cover your expenses and your investments will continue to grow in the background. But the point at which you start coasting with Flamingo FI is later than with Coast FI, when you have half your FI number. So for me, someone who is a bit risk averse and worries about leaving the workforce too soon, Flamingo FI provides a bit more of a buffer.

In one of Mrs. Flamingo’s recent posts, What Does FIRE Really Stand For?, she writes about how she believes that many of us are too scared to start working toward our ideal post-FIRE lives.

This line hit me like a ton of bricks.

It reminded me of so many of the posts I’ve written, trying to encourage my readers to discover what they might want to do if/when they downshift (not necessarily retire). How to create a Financial Freedom List (a list of things you’re excited about/want to pursue as you gain more time freedom). How to think about what you liked to do as a kid to spark some ideas of what might bring you more joy now.

But what if after all that work, we’re still too scared to actually make any changes? What if we know exactly what we would do with our lives if we had more time, but we’re hesitant to actually live out that life?

The line from Mrs. Flamingo’s blog post hit me so hard because I, myself, am often scared about making changes to my life. Even if they feel good. Even if I know what I want, I still have doubts. I still worry about what others will think. And those damn golden handcuffs really are real.

I’ve written in the past about how I plan to downshift to part-time work once I hit Flamingo FI. But the fact of the matter is, I could technically go part-time now, if I wanted. And I do want that, a lot of the time. I’ve already hit Coast FI, which means the money that I have already saved and invested will likely grow to meet my retirement needs at traditional age. Technically, I don’t need to save another dollar into my investments if I don’t want to. I could just cover my expenses and coast to FI.

Some days, I want to decrease my working hours SO BADLY. But then I get scared. And other days, things are fine. Other days, earning money and continuing to save feels so great, like the right thing to do, which can actually fuel even more fear when I think about going to part-time.

The back and forth can drive me crazy. But where does it all come from?

Those pesky thoughts holding us back

Jess from The Fioneers calls them limiting beliefs. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, authors of Designing Your Life, call them dysfunctional beliefs. Whatever you want to call them, they are those pesky thoughts that hold us back from making changes that will improve our lives now.

Those things we tell ourselves that keep us stuck, keep us from living our best, truest lives.

Here are the three main thoughts that I grapple with when it comes to the changes I want to make in alignment with my desired slow FI lifestyle:

1. I won’t be seen as successful (by my family/friends/colleagues) if I quit my job or go part-time
2. I’ll be losing out on tons of money/I won’t get to FI as quickly if I quit my job or decrease my hours
3. I won’t be able to get good healthcare if I don’t have an employer to cover it.

So what do we do about these pesky thoughts?

Disempowering our thoughts

These thoughts are exactly that, just thoughts. They only become beliefs if you actually believe they are true. And you don’t have to do that, because often times these thoughts are not true. Sometimes they are, but many times they’re not (or they may be true, but they don’t need to hold you back).

Challenge these thoughts.

Some find it useful to reframe their thoughts, but this only goes so far for me. Sure, reframing the first limiting thought on my list above is easy. I can absolutely be seen as successful even if I quit my job or decrease my hours. I know this to be true, and yet I still have the thought. So for me, reframing really only puts a Band-Aid on the matter. What I’ve really done is just added another thought that I feel equally wishy washy about.

To really disempower that thought, I need to do work from within. I need to get to the point where I don’t care how I am seen to others. Then the thought becomes completely moot. But this is hard to do. Of course I care what others think. I just have to care what I think more than I care what others think.

This doesn’t come easy, but I’ve found it’s more like a muscle you can build up over time. The more you practice choosing yourself over choosing what others want for you, the easier it becomes. No one gets to live your life but you, so why should they have a say? (Ok, maybe your spouse should have somewhat of a say, but even then, that can only go so far.)

Then, there are also other pesky thoughts that you may not be able to really reframe. Take the second one in my list above as an example (leaving money on the table). It’s not really a limiting thought so much as a fact (or at least, a likely fact). It is likely true that if I quit working or decrease my hours, my timeline to FI will be longer. Instead of reframing, I need to accept this statement as fact, just something I have to get comfortable with to live my life the way I want.

And to do this, to get more comfortable with the limiting thoughts and not have them rule my life, I have to layer on top even more of them that I also know are true.

For me, some of these thoughts include:

I have options

This is maybe my favorite thing of all about money: it gives you options.

The more you have of it, the bigger a nest egg you’ve built up, the more options you have. The more paths you can take and explore to build a slow FI lifestyle.

Hate your job? If you have enough money saved, you could take some time off to reset, refresh, and decide what’s next without worrying about how you’ll pay your bills.

Want to change careers? Having a healthy savings account can help you do that.

Feel like experimenting with something new? Again, money can help with that.

This one can even help with the third limiting thought on my list about healthcare. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Americans can get health care without it being tied to an employer. It’s often seen as scary and less-than-ideal, but more and more folks in this community are going that route to live their ideal lives now. And most that I’ve seen have good things to say.

And not only does money buy you options, nothing is forever either. Some may find this concept a tad morbid, but I find it empowering. Sometimes when I worry that I’m making the wrong decision, the wrong career move, the wrong lifestyle change, I just remind myself that nothing is forever.

If part-time doesn’t work out for whatever reason, I can always go back to work full-time.

Early retirement not the sunshine and rainbows you thought it would be? You can always go back to work or pick up a side job. My dad was one of those people who after 1 year of retirement was just too bored. He got a side job (nothing to do with his engineering degree, he drives a delivery truck), and he’s never been happier!

So, when I’m stuck in a loop of pesky thoughts, trying desperately to stay true to myself and my chosen slow FI lifestyle, I remind myself: money gives you options, and nothing is forever.

I’ve hit Coast FI

Sometimes when those golden handcuffs feel especially tight, I remind myself that I’ve already hit Coast FI. Technically, I could not save another cent for retirement. As I mentioned above, Coast FI is the milestone where you’ve saved enough in your investments that it will likely grow to enough money to sustain you at traditional retirement age.

Curious how to know what your Coast FI number is? I highly recommend this post, where you can also download a free Coast FI calculator.

Just knowing that I’ve already put that much work into my financial independence journey is really comforting. It helps me know I have options.

It takes some of the pressure off.

However, I can sometimes get stuck on this one too because I don’t want to wait until 65 to retire. When I get stuck here, I remember:

I know I’ll continue to save

I remind myself that I’ll likely continue to be able to save even if I downshift/go down to part-time work as part of my slow FI plan. What’s the evidence? Well, I have been a natural saver all my life. In college, when I received stipends in the summer to do research at my school, I was always able to save a portion. Then in graduate school, when I made $21k per year, I was still able to live on my own and have something left at the end of each month to put into savings, thanks to my frugal tendencies. The same happened when I took the pay-cut editor job and made $50k per year.

I have increased my income over time, only so that I could save even more toward FI.

But being Coast FI and having options allows me the possibility of saving less in the future. I’ve already done a lot of the work toward reaching my FI number, and if I want, I can let compound interest do it’s thing in the background and help it out by continuing to save, even if it’s a lot less than what I save now.

Looking around the financial independence community, it is clear that many folks who hit financial independence do not stop working. They just get to do the work that lights them up. And many of those folks continue to save as well.

And finally…

What if it’s better than I ever could have imagined?

Sometimes, when all the reminders above just aren’t cutting it, and I’m feeling more stuck than ever, I ask myself this question.

I’ve heard so many stories from people in our community about how they never looked back after they quit their job, after they went to part-time work, after they started freelancing. How they’re so glad they made the leap. (For inspiration, check out The Fioneers Slow FI Interviews, they even interviewed me for one!)

All that fear, all those pesky limiting beliefs, what if none of it matters?

What if what’s waiting on the other side is better than we ever could have imagined?

We’ll never know if we never try.

And well, if we get to the other side of the slow FI rainbow and it’s not what we expected, we always have options, and nothing is forever.

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What are some of your pesky limiting thoughts? How do you get past them? I’d love to hear from you!