The WHY behind my push for Financial Independence

There are many different reasons different people will want to push for FIRE. Some hate the drab of the 9 – 5. Others don’t like answering to bosses. Yet some others just want to take it easy.

I looked at my parents, and many parents of their generation, where working till 65 and then retiring was a perfectly normal thing to do. But then, when you’re at that age in retirement, what else is there to do but tend to the garden and make sure you don’t accidentally fall on your back? 

My mother passed a number of years back after suffering for close to 6 years due to an illness called Multiple Systems Atrophy (MSA). It’s a rare degenerative disease that currently has no cure. 

To see her work so hard her entire life, and save a sum of money, only to not be able to enjoy life and reap the rewards of her hard work, and in fact, to see her suffer so much in her later years, is simply heartbreaking.

To be honest, I’m afraid. And I’m selfish.

I want to be able to enjoy life, to travel, to see the world, and to lead a meaningful life. I’m also afraid. Afraid that whatever happened to her, may happen to me. What then of my family, my wife and children?

This is what drives me toward FI. That should anything happen to me, my family is accounted for. And that should anything happen to me, I would have lived a good life before then. 

A human life in weeks

Whenever we look into a time horizon, we’ll say, I give myself 5 years to do X. And we procrastinate, because 5 years feels and sounds like a really long time. 

When we look at days, however, we can see exactly how many days we have left to reach our milestone, and we can see those days ticking by, which I believe will add to my momentum and motivation to do things. 

I felt this way when I saw this post on waitbutwhy, and I thought it was very powerful, and humbling to see your entire life laid out in blocks, and you suddenly realise, you don’t have much time at all. 

This is a 90 year human life, laid out in weeks, where each block is 1 week.

This may not look like much to you, but look at the same chart, but with some context added to it. This is now colour coded, the life of a typical american (but it’s easily relatable no matter your nationality)

Look at the amount of time we spend on our career, when we are ostensibly in the peak of health, versus the amount of time we spend in retirement, not to forget that is if we live to be 90 (look at the average life expectancy of men), and discounting the later years where health, mobility and other factors come into play.

This is definitely not the life I want to lead.

Countdown to FI

So, I want to try and achieve financial independence, or at least the ability to partake in Barista FI, by the time I hit 45 years of age. This is why you’ll see now, I’ve added a countdown widget to remind and push myself. 

 Let the wealth accumulation begin.