Am I waiting too long to take back control of my time?
By waiting I could miss out on the most important years of my daughter’s life. I could miss out on spending time with older family and relatives before they pass away. As a marathon runner, I could miss out on my peak performance years and never achieve my goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon.
Recently, I have been struggling with how I can build a more intentional career and how I can better balance the present with the future. Amidst trying to find those answers, I revisited my post On Buying Time — where I talk about FIRE, or Financial Independence Retire Early, and taking back control of my future time. Now, I want to revisit the idea of FIRE, but with a twist. I want to talk about how Coast FIRE may actually be a better fit to address my recent concerns and help me live a more intentional life.
Throughout the many years of FIRE’s existence, a lot of variations of the early retirement concept have been created. Coast FIRE is one of those variations. Coast FIRE differs from traditional FIRE because it does not revolve around the idea of stopping work before the traditional retirement age of 65. It is the idea that you aggressively save and invest money upfront so that you can “coast” and stop contributing to investments at a certain point. This is because the money you invest can compound and grow over a long duration until you decide to completely retire.
This post isn’t meant to discuss the mathematical calculations of Coast FIRE in detail, but there are many calculators available on the internet that will help you calculate your Coast FIRE target. If you’re interested in the detailed calculations and calculating your own target, I suggest looking at those resources.
For the purpose of this post, I want to just talk about how Coast FIRE could fit into intentional living. Coast FIRE’s fundamental concept presents an interesting opportunity for people to shift from a high paying job to a lower paying job once they achieve their Coast FIRE target — or the opportunity to simply work less than before.
At the end of the day, the beauty of Coast FIRE resides in its ability to give you a choice — you can choose to continue working at your current workplace or you can choose to do something else. This power of choice may be the perfect balance between taking advantage of the present while also taking care of your future self — spend less time working now, while also having enough money to retire in the future.
I came across the concept of Coast FIRE a few years ago, but I didn’t consider it seriously. That was because I didn’t think I should just stop at Coast FIRE when I could achieve traditional FIRE. Why would I stop saving a few years earlier, but continue to work a lower paying job when I can stay in my corporate job, save aggressively for a few more years, and then fully retire? My thoughts on this changed drastically once I became a dad.
The difference between achieving Coast FIRE and traditional FIRE is a few years — not a few days or months. The difference of a few years is significant in my daughter’s life. I could miss out on significant milestones like her first day at school, or extracurricular achievements, or simply creating the foundation for a close, long-lasting relationship. By the time I achieve full FIRE, she may be establishing herself as an independent person, wanting to spend more time alone or with friends.
Is waiting to take back control of my time worth it then?
When I think about the issues I have struggled with recently, I can’t help but think that Coast FIRE is part of the answer. Instead of working a corporate job that I am not passionate about, I could work in an industry that is more meaningful. Instead of pushing plans to the future, I can pull some of those plans forward. It seems to strike a better balance of prioritizing the present without sacrificing the future while allowing me to make more intentional choices.
I’m not convinced that Coast FIRE alone can solve all the concerns I have right now. But if anything, it helps to put some things into perspective. My wife and I had put in the work of saving aggressively over the last few years. We have sacrificed a lavish lifestyle to help buy back time in the future. Well, relative to back then, we are now in that future. Coast FIRE helps to validate that it’s ok to start spending some of the time we bought back.
I need to put more thought into whether I want to put Coast FIRE into practice. There are clearly downsides that I need to consider.
For example, Coast FIRE is highly reliant on our investments growing over the next couple of decades, so it is highly susceptible to market downturns. Am I going to be ok experiencing that with a lower income?
Also, there’s no denying that my 30s and 40s are likely the years I could make the most income. Am I willing to sacrifice this opportunity when money can also make a significant difference in my daughter’s life? How am I going to financially support my daughter through her education? What if we have more kids? Do we have enough money to support them too?
If I quit my corporate job, I could lose access to subsidized health insurance. With a daughter who depends on me, does this make sense? What if I get stuck with a significant medical bill that derails our Coast FIRE trajectory?
I’m currently at a place where I haven’t come to peace with these risks. But even though these risks exist, Coast FIRE may still be worth it.
The only guarantee in life is the time we have in the present. Nothing in the future is guaranteed. And yet, we still need to financially plan our lives as if our futures are guaranteed. Once achieved, Coast FIRE allows us to live in the present while planning for our lives in the future. Yes, we still need to spend some time working, but Coast FIRE can give us back a meaningful share of our time in the present — and that may be enough.
Where I may have been wrong is that planning our lives financially is not all black and white. Just because a mathematical equation gives me one answer doesn’t mean that that is the only answer.
Traditional FIRE provides us with the opportunity to reclaim all of our time back in the future. But maybe I need to be ok with reclaiming some of my time back instead. Balancing the present and the future isn’t about putting all my eggs in one of those baskets. It’s about putting some in each one. So why can’t we do the same financially?
In the end, the greatest privilege we can have in life is choice. I don’t take lightly how lucky I am to have this opportunity to choose where to place my eggs. I know a lot of things in my life had to work in my favor to be where I am at today, which is why I want to seriously reflect and consider what the best path forward is.
So what should I choose? Should I place my eggs in the present or the future? Or maybe it’s some combination of both?
What would you do?
Welcome to The Intentional Café.
Note: The information presented above is not financial advice and is simply my own perspective.
