The Uber Goal of FIRE – Build Your T.E.A.M.
What if you could start experiencing many of the benefits of achieving the financial freedom of FIRE this year, even if your portfolio of assets cannot replace your paycheck yet?
I think you can. In fact, I think you’d be smart to do so before your assets grow to the crossover point (where they can fund your living expenses, making work for pay optional).
Let’s use the cheesy acronym T.E.A.M. That’s right, I am moving your cheese by putting a U and I in team. Ah, corporate folk wisdom. Does it get any better?
T = Time Freedom
E = Excitement (and/or Energy)
A = Attention (and/or Awareness)
M = Money, honey.
These all contribute to creating the conditions for psychological freedom, so you can live your truth and get onto your version of the Highway to Yeah.
When I was striving for financial freedom, I spent a lot of time focused on whether I had grown my assets—or my Money—to the point where I could “escape” working for a paycheck. That was good. But there are other ways to begin experiencing the benefits FIRE offers long before you reach that point.
And, looking back, I was doing some of these things without even realizing it.
Yesterday I watched a helpful video from a woman whose YouTube channel is called The GenX Life. She argued that people should retire today.
By that she meant:
Retire your debt.
Retire your wasteful spending.
Retire your bad habits.
Retire your stuff.
Retire your work identity.
I think that’s a great list because each one helps build your T.E.A.M. before reaching financial independence.
Let’s start with debt.
Debt
Here is what I did before making the leap from working for a paycheck to living off the cash flow from my assets.
Before my company crashed during the Great Recession, I had luckily read The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and started applying his Baby Steps. I sold a portion of my Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), right before they became worthless, and paid off most, if not all, of my credit card debts. Unfortunately, I still had massive debts after that, but it cleared the decks of some of the smaller irritants.
I had a variable-rate mortgage that I couldn’t get out of from 2008 to 2010. It was horrible. I was underwater and even considered a short sale. As soon as my home’s value recovered enough, I qualified for a refinancing program. I took out a 30-year mortgage because cash flow was still extremely tight, but I made payments as if it were a 15 year loan. My goal was to pay it off within no More than 15 years. I ended up paying it off in seven years. That felt great, and it still feels great today.
I also started paying my credit card balance every single week—not once a month, every week, usually on Mondays. Personally, I like the purchase protection that comes with using a credit card, but I treat it like a debit card. If I don’t have the cash to pay it off that week, I don’t charge it. Period.
How did debt affect me?
It made me feel like an indentured servant.
As long as I had debt, I knew I wasn’t fully free. My time wasn’t really my own—it belonged to my creditors and my employer because I had to make the payments. I had to “Pay the Man,” as David Lindley and El Rayo-X sing.
Eventually, it started making me physically uncomfortable, almost ill, knowing that a portion of my life energy (if money equals life energy, as Your Money or Your Life puts it) was simply evaporating to cover interest payments.
Who was that benefiting?
Certainly not me.
Debt also stole my attention. Instead of focusing on growing my net worth and increasing the cash flow from my assets, I was constantly attending to balances, payment schedules, and making sure enough cash was available to keep everything afloat.
It was a pain in the arsenal.
Ironically, I actually reached Lean FIRE sometime during 2015 while I still had a mortgage balance. In other words, the M in T.E.A.M. had grown large enough that it could have eliminated the debt if I had chosen to activate my Back-Up, Early Escape, early-retirement plan and move to a lower-cost-of-living area.
It’s funny.
Debt is something I hardly think about anymore.
But removing both the financial burden and the psychological burden from my life was one of the most liberating things I have ever done.
I’ve occasionally considered taking on another mortgage for a second home, but every time I run the numbers—and think about the lifestyle I actually want—I come to the same conclusion.
It’s not for me.
A Question for You
I’ll come back this week with more examples of how I “retired” the other four items The GenX Life recommends.
For today, I’ll leave you with this question:
Where are your time, energy, attention, and money being robbed?
And what is one thing you can do today to start building your own T.E.A.M.?