I enjoy reading leadership/business books and about a year ago I read Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why. The main point of the book is that while a lot of companies are very good at telling you what they do, and some even how they do it, the best companies tell you why they do what they do. Not only do these companies tell you why they do what they do, but they tell you why before they tell you how and what. Here is a great article that talks more in-depth about the main points of the book. In that vain, before I delve too deeply into posts on what frugal living looks like and how to live frugally, I want to address why you should consider frugal living and why I personally live frugally and am pursing FIRE.
The why for frugal living and the FIRE movement can be summed up in one word, freedom. One of the biggest freedoms of achieving FIRE is being able to free yourself from needing a job, but the freedoms of living frugally and savings large amounts manifest themselves constantly on the FIRE journey. These freedoms include freedom from debt, freedom from the stress of money problems, freedom from worry, freedom of choice, freedom from a regimented schedule, freedom to spend money on things that make you happy, and many others.
While I am not yet financially independent, I do have a large amount in savings from living frugally and this has already benefited me in numerous ways. The nature of the entertainment business can be described as feast or famine. There are times when it seems as if the stream of gigs will never end and then periods where it seems the gigs will never begin again. As touring goes, the summer can be a pretty dead time with not a lot, if any, work. Instead of stressing about not having work for the summer, I am able to take it as a blessing and use the time to catch up with my family, travel, and just generally enjoy my freedom. Living frugally and building savings has also given me the freedom of choice. There have been gigs I have been offered that had job requirements I knew would end up making me miserable. Instead of having to suck it up and work these gigs I would not enjoy because I am saddled with debt, or because I am just scraping by, I am able to turn down the gig and wait for something better without worry or stress knowing I have the money to support myself. I have all of these freedoms, and many more, just from making small tweaks in my life to up my savings rate, the how.
I feel at times we in the FIRE community focus too often on a potential what, retiring early, and not the why, freedom. This allows for people to say things like, “I like my job, why would I want to give it up” or “I don’t want to sit on a beach for the rest of my life” as excuses to why they don’t want to save/live frugally. While these are valid reasons to not retire, they are not valid reasons for not having savings and an emergency fund. While you may like your job now, what happens when you get a new boss that you do not get along with and can’t stand or, as we have just seen in the US, what happens when a government shutdown places you out of work for a month? Being FI, or at least on the path, allows you the freedom to leave that job and protect your mental health, or to survive a shutdown with freedom from worrying about how you are going to pay your bills, etc. Frugality is not deprivation, but freedom!
