How To Enjoy Your Money Today Without Sacrificing Your Financial Future
October 27, 2017I have a confession: I am having a legitimate mid-life crisis. See, I recently turned 50 and as I approached this milestone age, I did the math and figured out that I basically only have 10 more summers to do the things I want to do while I still can. It’s not that I don’t think I’ll still be around at 60, but the reality is that I might not be able to physically do what I can today — my dad retired at 65 and died from pancreatic cancer less than a year later, so I’m seriously feeling the squeeze of my mortality.
I have had the opportunity to enjoy some great adventures, but my bucket list isn’t complete. Time is ticking and I’m getting busy on that bucket list.
Making trade-offs
Much of financial planning focuses on the distant future. And while it is necessary to plan for those long-term goals, I talk to people every day who are just as much, if not more, concerned about the near-term, just like I’m thinking more seriously about the next 10 summers.
Adventures and travel take time and money, neither of which I have a lot of by any means. Plus, I have other goals that I would like to accomplish, like retiring comfortably in my mid-60’s for instance. To do it all, there are trade-offs I must make – most of us do. If we spend all our pennies today, we won’t have any for the future.
Balancing the long term against the short term
In order to check as many things off my list over the next 10 summers without compromising my longer-term goal of retiring comfortably, I have basically two choices:
- I can increase my income (maybe take a bar-tending job a couple nights a week) or
- Decrease my expenses.
Because I value my evenings and weekends, I’ve decided to cut back on discretionary spending. My wife and I figured out the limit we wanted to set on things like groceries, dining out, gas and shopping so that we could direct the rest toward travel throughout our 50’s.
How we are limiting our spending
To stick to our limit, we set up a separate checking account with a debit card (our only one) and fund it with a defined amount each paycheck. I don’t have the patience or desire to constantly edit an online app to track each category. In fact, I don’t care which category it goes to, but when it’s gone – it’s gone, and we have to live the rest of the pay period without.
It happens almost every time, sometimes our balance gets down to less than $5, but that’s by design. It wasn’t easy at first but now that we are used to it, we feel less stress about our finances. At the end of the day, we are able to check the bucket list while addressing our other financial goals such as staying on track to retire when we’re ready.