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My wife and I have been pursuing Financial Independence for about three years. We still have a long way to go, but our large savings rate has us ahead of most of America.
While at FINCON 2019, I attended many sessions that constantly made me think and gave me many ideas for the blog, but two sessions in particular asked two profound questions. One of these questions is the title of the article.
The second question that I am going to write about is so important that the speaker, Ramit Sethi, specifically asked us to ask everyone the question when talking to people at the conference.
I was never asked the question at the conference, but I believe that the question is important enough to ask you.
“What is your purpose?”
Where did my mind take me on this question? Well, I initially thought, “Are we talking business perspective (blog), personal or career (teaching)?” I gathered that the speaker’s focus was toward business perspective of my blog, but I am going to look at a different perspective.
It’s the perspective of our personal lives.
To do this I am going to focus on answering two questions:
1. What is our purpose on this planet?
2. What is our purpose each and every day?
Honestly, the questions are very similar, but you should take a hard look at these questions. I will start by looking at these questions from my perspective.
Currently, I have 4 purposes. First, I am a husband to a beautiful wife and a father to two beautiful daughters. Secondly, I am a son, grandson and sibling to many family members and I want to continue to grow those relationships. Thirdly, I am a personal finance blogger, where my goal is to find people that need the message of getting out of debt and reaching financial independence. Lastly, I am a teacher, where I mentor and guide young children through the middle school years.
I put those things in the order of importance. Notice that my full-time job is 4th on the list, however, it gets most of my time. It gets most of my time, because it requires more of my time. From 40 hours required of work to the commute that takes me around 75 minutes round trip, I spend most of my waking hours on work.
That right there is why my wife and I choose Financial Independence. We want to get away from the long commutes. We want to start taking back more control of our time. We want to spend hours with our daughters, instead of hours at work.
When I was younger, I felt teaching was my calling. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate my job and I really do enjoy my students. But as I get older, I see the importance of family time over work.
Therefore, I feel like my purpose has shifted. I no longer put too much stress on my job and I try to avoid the 10 and 11 hour workdays. I have cut those down to 8 or 9 hours and I believe that it is more important to be there for my family.
A transition to more family time. A transition away from the hustle and bustle from the craziness of life. A transition from 10 hours away from my wife and daughters to more time at home for games, puzzles and play dough. A transition to two weeks in the summer with my family from Nebraska to one or two month visits as we reach true freedom from work.
That’s why we choose financial independence. We want more purpose for our lives than the dreaded commute and nine hours at work. We want our main purpose to be our family and the time we give our kids.
What’s your purpose for life?
Deeply dive into your purpose. Deeply think about everything you want from this life, because there is more to life than the 10-hour days and the constant feeling of living for Friday.
Now, financial independence might not be for everybody and some of you may get a lot of purpose from work. Heck, I still get a lot of purpose from my teaching job and I still like what I do, but the purpose I receive from my job is just not enough to keep me working 9+ hours every day.
You have to figure out what is right for you. You have to figure out your purpose and then determine if financial independence is for you.
Financial Independence is not about becoming rich to just be rich. It’s not about the financial number. Those things will never make you happy in life. It’s more about the freedom that having FI gives you.
It allows you the time to follow your passions. Build businesses that you care about instead of sitting in a job that doesn’t light you up. It allows you time to be creative instead of sitting behind that desk trying to hit deadline after deadline.
It gives you the freedom to choose passion project time and family time. It gives you the freedom to go to the store on a Tuesday, instead of on the weekend. It gives you the freedom to play a card or board game at lunch. It gives you the freedom to each lunch with your spouse every day.
That’s why we choose Financial Independence. That’s why we cut back today for freedom tomorrow. That’s why we put up with our commutes today, because we know it’s only temporary. We know it’s hard work that we put in today that will give us the freedom about 5 years.
So, I’ll ask you again: What is your purpose on this planet? What do you want your purpose to be? Are you fulfilling your dreams? Why do you choose financial independence?
