I’ve been thinking a lot this week about expectations. How we all have them. How unhelpful they are. How Buddhist thought says they are a major cause of human suffering. How they relate to my financial independence journey. We are all littered with expectations every day. But how does that go for us? If expectations are met, we are left feeling happy and fulfilled. But if our expectations aren’t met, which so often is the case (because, let’s be honest, usually we have no control over this), we are left feeling at best empty and sad and at worst resentful or even depressed. So, what’s the point? Is it time to get rid of expectations for good?
My ruminating about expectations this week started on my drive home on Saturday afternoon.
During the spring, summer, and fall, approximately one Saturday afternoon a month, I volunteer. I volunteer at a visitor center for a Wildlife Management Area (WMA), which is a fancy name for a protected area of land to conserve wildlife. The visitor center is a beautiful spot to volunteer, with windows overlooking the Adirondack mountains. It is often quite quiet, and in those cases, I get to read or work on this blog. And when visitors do come in, usually from around the state of Vermont, New York, or sometimes farther away (especially in the fall), I get to talk to them, which I love to do. It’s the perfect volunteering activity for me.
When visitors do come in, I love answering their questions. I love hearing what’s important to them, what they’re looking for, and helping them achieve whatever it is they’re searching to find. A place to paddle. A trail to walk. A spot to see a bird. I even once talked to a neighbor, whom I’d never come across in our own neighborhood, but we met at the visitor center for the first time. For me, it’s a magical place.
Working at the visitor center is also a way that I’ve experimented with what makes me happy on my journey to financial independence. It started as a simple commitment that worked with my schedule, so I tried it out. I’ve since found out that I love it, and would even want to do more of it when I am fully retired (or at least working fewer hours).
Back to expectations…
You’re probably wondering what all of this has to do with expectations. Let me get back on topic.
One of the visitor center’s claims to fame is its proximity to a great snow goose migration. Every fall, on their way back to warmer climates, a bunch of snow geese stop for awhile in our WMA. The numbers the last few years have been in the 7,000 range when they are all there at once, which usually occurs in early November. Right now, it’s mid-October, and only a few have arrived. When I was there last weekend, there were reports of about 250 snow geese hanging out in our area. But in the next few weeks, those numbers will grow.
So inevitably, this time of year, most of the people who stop by the visitor center want to know where to see the snow geese. We keep a white board with the reported totals per day, and visitors can call the visitor center’s main number and listen to a recording of the current snow geese report.
Now, keep in mind, these snow geese are wild animals. They tend to feed in the wildlife refuge in the morning and evening, so the best chance of seeing them flying are to and from the refuge at feeding time. As you can imagine, the refuge is quite big, and so the snow geese can also be anywhere within the refuge when feeding. Meaning, they’re not necessarily easy to see from our viewing area, even when they’re feeding. Other than that, they could be hanging out anywhere within the 2,858-acre WMA that surrounds the area.
So, for the most part, seeing the snow geese is pure luck.
I’ve never seen them flying, and I’ve never seen them up close. In the middle of COVID times, during the Fall of 2020, I hosted an outdoor outing for my church at the viewing area to try to spot the snow geese. They were there, but they were soooo far away. If you had binoculars, you could spot them on the far end of the refuge, but the view of them wasn’t all that spectacular. It was a bit of a let down for most (due to expectations, maybe?!), and folks didn’t stay long.
Even though the chances of seeing them are low, without fail, every year, people come into the visitor center from all over and are just so disappointed that they haven’t seen the snow geese. They don’t understand why they can’t find them, because they expected to see them.
And when I was volunteering this weekend, I had two experiences with people who were on complete opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to expectations, that left me thinking about them all week.
In the first example, two women came into the visitor center. They were from a completely different part of the state, and they were looking for a place to walk their dog. Oh, and of course they were hoping to see some snow geese.
I gave them my usual spiel. I showed them my favorite spot to walk on the map. And I told them how the best viewing area for seeing the geese is right down the street, but if you don’t see them there, they could really be anywhere, and to keep an eye to the skies. They left in good spirits, ready to start their adventure.
Two hours later, they came back! It’s rare that anyone comes back to the visitor center during my shift, so I braced myself for what they might say. I feared they were going to complain that they hadn’t seen any snow geese. Instead, to my delight, they wanted to tell me what a good time they had, and to thank me for my suggestions. Most importantly, they had seen the snow geese! But not in any of the places I had told them to go… Just driving on some random road, they had happened to look up, and there they were, a whole flock of them.
The ladies’ eyes lit up as they described watching the snow geese fly through the air, doing their aerial dances, with the sun glittering off the tips of their black wings. I almost cried, I was so happy for them, so happy to see their joy, and so honored that they came back to share their story with me.
The whole experience left me with this warm and fuzzy feeling that lingered throughout the last hour of my shift.
Experience #2 occurred after I closed up shop for the day. I was heading to my car, and I noticed a car parked next to me. The license plate said British Columbia. I looked back and there was a man standing on the visitor center porch.
I apologized that I just had locked up, but asked if I could help him with anything. He told me how he was soooooo glad he ran into me. Then, like clockwork, he said “so, where are the snow geese??” After I told him the spiel, he told me (exasperatingly, might I add) how he had looked in all those places already, and he just didn’t understand why he hadn’t seen them. The person he was staying with told him that the geese come in the thousands in October.
His expectations were set.
I felt just slightly bad for the poor guy, because of his depressed and exasperated tone, but what are you going to do? I stayed until I couldn’t really help him anymore. He left frustrated and deflated.
I thought of this man the whole way home. At the same time he was exhausting himself looking for the snow geese that he expected to see, we were at peak fall foliage in our neck of the woods here in Vermont. The leaf color has been wayyy better than the last few years, and it is literally awe inspiring just to drive around and take in all the beauty.
This man could have been doing just that. Driving around, taking in all the beauty of the season. But instead, he was salty and pissed off because he had expected to see snow geese, and they were nowhere to be found.
As I said above, I’ve never seen the snow geese fly. I’ve never experienced the joy those women felt from seeing the flock twinkling in the sky. Am I disappointed by that? Sure, when I think about it. But do I let it get me down? Do I let it ruin my day? No. Every time I get disappointed (I also want to see a snowy owl in winter, but have never seen one), I remind myself that I’m being ridiculous. Not that my feelings are ridiculous. I acknowledge that it makes sense that I’m disappointed. But I remind myself of the reality that I, in fact, have absolutely zero control over where the snow geese fly, or where the snowy owl sets up its perch.
Just like how Mr. Dink, who loves fishing, has to remind himself that he isn’t going to catch a fish every time he goes out on the boat. If he constantly expected to catch a fish, he would be disappointed every time it didn’t happen. Instead, he focuses on how good it feels to be outside, to be in nature, to feel the cool breeze on his face. Because he has no control over the fish. But he can control his attitude.
Expectations and money
Since my time at the visitor center last weekend, and thinking about expectations, I’ve been thinking a lot about how they relate to money.
For one, there’s that pesky stock market. We know that the stock market always goes up, over time. But at the same time, if I expect the stock market to go up, I’ll get bummed out (and sometimes even panicky) when I look at the market when it’s down. The expectation that the stock market will go up leads to my suffering in the moment when my net worth is down.
Of course, we have no control over what the stock market will do on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. This is why I don’t check on my money every day (if you do, by all means, you do you. Mr. Dink checks the stock market every day, because he loves to, but it for sure interferes with his peace…and mine). I know myself, and if I checked on my money every day, I would go mad. For me, I have to sit back and trust the process, and not let it interfere with my every day happiness.
When I first started setting my goals, I set my financial goals based on the net worth number I wanted to achieve that year. I quickly learned that this method didn’t make much sense, because that goal then depended more on how the stock market performed than on what I was actually contributing to my savings.
So I changed that goal to be based on how much I saved per month, or per year, instead of trying to achieve a specific number that I had way less control over. This has worked out much better for my mental psyche, and has made it easier for me to refrain from checking on my money all the time. I know that I’m saving what I want to be saving. The rest will be up to the stock market Gods.
Expectations and financial independence
But more importantly, I have been reflecting on how expectations influence my journey to financial independence (FI). More specifically, how they relate to my slow FI journey. Slow FI, coined by The Fioneers, is a term for slowing down the journey to FI so that you can enjoy more of life along the way.
In the case of many of the early adopters of FI, we have heard their woes. Many would grind away in their 9-5s, desperately trying to get to FI, only to find out that hitting their number didn’t make them happier. Instead, they found themselves lost and confused. They, like so many in general, expected that having the right dollar amount of money, the ability to retire and never work another day in their lives, would be the key to their happiness.
This can happen if you don’t know what truly makes you happy outside your job. What your interests, passions, and hobbies are outside work. What sparks joy and makes you light up when you think about it.
I would argue this is even the case for most traditional retirees. They spend their whole lives working, wrapped up in that life and that identity, that they don’t know what to do with themselves when they retire. They expect that retirement will make them happy, and it doesn’t.
My dad retired at 70, and after not even 6 months of “freedom”, he missed having a job. He realized that he loved the routine that his job brought him, he just didn’t want to be an engineer anymore due to the stress and mental energy he had to put forth at his job. So, since he was retired and didn’t need a job, he took the time to think about what he wanted in a job. What would make a perfect job. He now is a delivery truck driver, 2-3 days a week, and he absolutely loves it. It gives him purpose and routine, which is exactly what makes him happy.
My mom, on the other hand, knew without a doubt what she wanted to do in retirement. She is adventurous, she has a strong group of friends that she loves spending time with, and she loves to be active and exercise. When she was working, she didn’t have the time to devote to these things that she would have liked. Now that she’s retired, she literally spends all her time travelling, hanging out with friends, hiking, biking, leading group outings, etc. She’s living her best life, full of all the things that spark joy for her (and on a budget, I might add, which makes me so proud).
We can do this, figure out what makes us truly happy in our lives now, instead of expecting that something outside of ourselves (money, a job, a promotion) will be the answer.
For me, it happened sort of by accident. I didn’t intentionally set about to figure out what makes me happy. When I got off the hamster wheel, took a pay-cut, and my life slowed down and stopped being all about work, I realized I had all these passions and interests outside of my job that I wanted to devote more time to.
When I discovered slow FI, and realized I didn’t have to sacrifice these interests now to reach financial freedom, it made all the difference.
I let go of the expectation that saving more money, and getting closer to my FI number, would make me happier.
Shifting to a slow FI mindset is what made me happier, because I started focusing less on the money and more on what brought me joy.
Letting go, once and for all
So, instead of expecting that a certain amount of money will make us happier, instead of expecting that the next promotion at work, that next raise, that relationship we’ve been waiting to happen will finally fill the void, how about we let go of expectations and start figuring out what sparks joy in our lives now?
How about we take the time, even if it’s just 10 minutes a day if that’s all you can fit in, to start being intentional about what it is we truly want?
You could start by meditating, which turns your intention inward so you can start figuring out what your voice sounds like and what you truly want, rather than what society tells us we should want.
You can start experimenting, finding ways to test out passions that you might have that fit into your schedule now, instead of waiting for “someday”.
Or start building your own Financial Freedom List, which is a list I use to keep track of things I’m interested in pursuing further once I have more financial freedom, and thus more time.
That way, when you do hit FI, you’ll be ready. Instead of having the expectation that you’ll just magically be happy because you have a certain number saved in the bank, you’ll be ready to start doing the things you’ve realized you want to do. And maybe, by figuring out what sparks joy, you’ll realize you can’t possibly wait for FI to start living your best life. Maybe more slow FI options will be appealing to you, like Coast FI and Flamingo FI.
When we have financial freedom (even just F-You money), and we know what it is we want to do with our one wild and precious life (shout-out to Mary Oliver), the possibilities are endless.
When we know what it is we truly want, we can let go of expectations once and for all.
What do you think? It is time to get rid of expectations for good? Let me know in the comments!