2777: How My Partner Convinced Me To Retire Early by A Purple Life on FIRE Lifestyle & Financial Independence

[00:00:00] Zeit, deine Stadt in vollen Zügen zu genießen. Heute geht's mit deinen Freunden in deine Lieblingsbar. Lass dein Auto zu Hause stehen. Ganz einfach Fahrt buchen und unterwegs die anderen einsammeln. Über die Funktion Zwischenstops. So spart ihr Zeit und Geld. Klick aufs Banner und buche

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[00:00:58] and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Finance Daily Episode 2777, How my partner convinced me to retire early by A Purple Life of A Purple Life.com.

[00:01:13] And I'm your host and personal finance enthusiast Diana Mariam. Now let's get right to today's post and start optimizing your life. How my partner convinced me to retire early by A Purple Life of

[00:01:29] A Purple Life.com. I have a confession to make. I didn't come to all these wonderful conclusions about how to retire at 30 all by myself. In fact, there were years where I completely resisted the

[00:01:42] idea. My partner actually convinced me to try fire and I'm here to share all the gory details. My partner is an avid Redditor and in 2012 he stumbled upon the subreddit personal finance, where they mentioned the concept of fire. This subreddit eventually led him to the subreddit

[00:02:01] financial independence and Mr. Money Mustache, where he learned more about the concept of early retirement. At the time, he had just started receiving a paycheck from his first full-time job. He was making money and already living frugally, so he quickly got on board with the idea of early

[00:02:17] retirement and tried to convert me as well. As I'll show you, I was resistant to the idea, to say the least. Here's a fun snippet from a Google Hangouts chat in 2012.

[00:02:30] Partner, when are you set to retire now? Me, not for a while, I think. Planning to put 12,000 into my 401k, but that's not enough to retire anytime soon. Learning I might not want to though.

[00:02:44] Current me, what are you talking about? So what got me over the hump? What steps led me to overturning my entire life, moving to the other coast and striving to retire by 30 instead of

[00:02:56] some unknown faraway date in the future? It started with a conversation on a Greyhound bus. My partner and I were bussing from Manhattan to see his family and on the bus my partner knew it

[00:03:08] was the perfect time to strike because he had a captive audience, also known as me. On this fateful ride, he showed me how the math behind early retirement worked with the 4% rule of thumb.

[00:03:20] I wasn't very open to the idea. I didn't know if I even wanted to retire. I didn't want to give up the luxuries I thought I needed and I wasn't fully convinced retiring that early would even work.

[00:03:32] My mom retired at 55 after not even investing in stocks until 40. That was my general goal and it seemed so far away I didn't feel the need to think about it. I was already saving a little

[00:03:43] in my 401k and had an emergency fund. Wasn't that enough? My acceptance of the idea went through stages over the next several years, which has been documented by our Google Hangout chats. Why does Google still save this stuff? First, I ignored the idea. Partner, after sending a

[00:04:02] Mr. Money Mustache article on how to retire early. I want to do this. I want to work until the returns on investments are greater than my cost of living. Me, what do you want from the grocery store?

[00:04:15] Then I got annoyed by it. Partner, we've got to find some way to cut our housing costs. Me, damn it, I'm too stressed to think about that right now. Current me, hey, be nice to your partner, no cursing at him. And finally I accepted it and

[00:04:30] began arguing retirement semantics because why not? Partner, things aren't looking so good for our early retirement plans. Me, what? How so? Partner, because of vacations to the Maldives and all my food spending and getting new computer parts and all our clothes shopping. Me,

[00:04:51] uh no, I'm still on track thank you. And I'm not going to enjoy myself less so I can retire ridiculously soon. That doesn't work for my lifestyle. Partner, what's your current retirement

[00:05:02] plan? Have you retiring at? Me, no idea. Whenever I feel like it, I'm still on track for early retirement. Early equals before social security kicks in at 67. Partner, that's barely early. Early retirement means something like Mr. Money Mustache, that is pre-40. Me, one shopping trip

[00:05:22] of $54 isn't getting me off track. Partner, it's not about one, it's about lifestyle. It took years for me to come around. It wasn't until late 2014 that everything clicked and I dove in with both feet and quickly surpassed my partner's obsession with fire. Based on my

[00:05:40] experience being the convincee in this scenario, here are my tips for convincing a partner to early retire. Number one, be patient. This is the hardest step I imagine and for me it was the most

[00:05:53] important. Those two plus years where my partner tried to convince me gave me time to experience more of life. Time for me to find a position that was less stressful and allowed me time to think

[00:06:05] and reflect on what I wanted out of life. I know that the fact that we don't combine finances is what allowed us to take this time. It's obviously harder to wait when two people are sharing finances

[00:06:17] and working at cross purposes, but I found that having that time was what made me finally come around to his way of thinking. Depending on someone's current situation, they might not be ready to hear about fire or early retirement. Number two, provide non-judgmental insights.

[00:06:34] I recommend providing more information like my partner did on the Greyhound bus and less like my partner did with our argument over semantics. Providing logic and numbers to back up your findings is great, but arguing over minute details or things that don't matter is not very helpful.

[00:06:53] Keep your insights non-judgmental. I'll go to the Maldives and retire early if I want to and provide resources based on your partner's interests and concerns. And number three, talk about your perfect day. One of my recent posts described me realizing that

[00:07:09] my perfect day is also how I plan to spend my days in retirement. Chatting with my partner about what we want out of life and how we can get it was the final step to me realizing that

[00:07:20] I needed to try and retire early. The activities in my perfect day are not compatible with a 9-5 job, so I dove in. Conclusion. And that's it. I hope my experience can help someone else if

[00:07:33] their partner is waffling on trying fire. Since we've aligned our goals, having both partners on the fire train makes it feel supercharged. We're both striving towards the same goal and can provide motivation and encouragement when the going gets tough. You just listen

[00:07:52] to the post titled, How my partner convinced me to retire early by a purple life of a purple life.com and I'll be right back with my commentary. Have you been frustrated with personal finance

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[00:09:20] Typically one person discovers this path to financial freedom and is challenged to get the other person on board. There's a great documentary about this very topic called Playing with Fire that might interest you. The film follows Scott Rickins and his wife Taylor

[00:09:35] as they learn all they can about the FIRE movement and apply some of the basic principles to their own life over the course of a year. Now at the beginning of the film, Taylor was not totally

[00:09:45] on board with the idea of FIRE. She was comfortable in their luxurious lifestyle and initially saw the changes Scott wanted to make as a bit too extreme. But they ended up having a conversation, similar to what's recommended in this post, about what really

[00:09:59] mattered to them and how they wanted to spend their time. Taylor realized that the things most important to her actually didn't cost a lot of money. Their lifestyle up to that point was just

[00:10:09] something they had become used to. I got the impression that they were kind of running on autopilot without really thinking about it too much. I think this documentary became so popular because many people can relate to Taylor's experience and initial hesitation. I know a

[00:10:24] lot of couples that watched this film together and it opened up some really fruitful conversations. But that should do it for today. Thank you for listening, have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.