Most days I live a chaste life. If they created a reality TV show of my life, it would be cancelled before the air date. Hell, the film crew would probably fall asleep in production. It’s a simple, hamster wheel existence that consists of getting up, making breakfast, reading for hours, working, and repeating that all the next day. The bummer is I want more than this.
Over the last few weeks of summer, as I’ve been on my constant rinse and repeat cycle, a growing desire to travel has crept up. More than travel, it’s a desire for more adventure. But then there’s my life and reality.
Being a 25-year-old doctoral student is a lesson in delayed gratification — working hard now to find enjoyable work and a reasonable paycheck later in life. Like many times before, on this frugal journey, I look at my budget. The numbers don’t add up. I can’t spend the money to travel to England, France, or visit Montreal. I just don’t have it, as I would need to take out student loans again to support the travel. That’s unacceptable to me. The psychological burden of student loans was too great and the interest rate of 6.8% is punitive.
I’m struggling to see the path and reason for my frugality. It’s here that I introspect, “What’s motivating me to save money and avoid more student loans?” There are both great opportunities and real challenges that create this defensive personal finance stance.
One of the biggest motivators is fear. Constant rises in income inequality, climate change, and a political environment that is skewed to the wealthiest are frightening me. If you’re not part of the bourgeois, you’ll likely be fighting, clawing, and begging your way out of lower income categories over the next few decades. Knowing that the foreseeable future will likely include environmental refugees (e.g., economists and researchers have increasingly theorized that the Syrian civil war was motivated by drought and the Pentagon has suggested that climate change may be a global threat) and massive changes in employment possibilities (I have no idea where or when I’ll be hired when I finally graduate), I’m eager to sock away some cash. Accurate or not, these are the challenges that drive me to save.
On the flip side, I’m motivated to save for a number of fun, experiential opportunities. I want to travel the world, develop a fluency in a foreign language (if I still have the brain power at that point in my life), give to the scholarship I started at Colorado State University, and develop a thriving practice as a counseling psychologist. These will all require a steady and safe savings. More importantly, they’re all worth the delayed gratification and relative banality of my life right now for more later on.
It’s with this yin-yang relationship — balanced — that I’m forgoing the travel now to live a better life later on. Until then, I’m diving into a good book and pretending to travel to faraway places and positions — loving every minute of the dream and working my butt off to make that happen.
This is reminds me of a story a good friend of mine told me sometime ago. As a child his dad wanted to teach him how to jump off the high dive but he was scared. So his dad offered him an ice cream cone if he jumped. Apparently ice cream was a big deal in his family–like a once a year type of treat. So my buddy plucked up his courage and jumped off the diving board only to land in a full belly flop. He got his ice cream cone, but when his dad offered him another one if he would be willing to try it again, he remarked curtly, “The ice cream just ain’t worth it.”
If we don’t have a motivation that’s worth more to us than the pain we’ve got to go through now, we’ll give up. Sounds like you’ve found yourself a mighty fine “ice cream cone” that’s keeping you chugging along in your frugaling ways. Way to go, Sam!
Fear is definitely a good motivator to save as the consequences of not saving and facing a hardship are too scary to think about. If you have this attitude at 25 years old I predict a bright future for you my friend!
My life sounds like yours, except I’m at the other end of the working career. I think you are wise doing it the way you are doing. You don’t want to be slogging away like me at 54. Sure I did lots of travel, a lot of it on the company dime too, but it’s little comfort to me now when I want to be done but must continue until we are debt free and have a bit more saved for retirement.
Right now, I really want to save more because we have a goal after a year or two. One of my motivation is my family, especially my daughter.
I think it’s important to know WHY you are saving and why you are motivated. I am motivated by freedom. I have already experienced what it feels like to be free from debt, now I working to be completely free from bondage to money, which means I will need more in my retirement accounts. Great article!
I had a friend in junior high that always lived for the moment. She wanted to experience everything she could because she may just get hit by a bus tomorrow. Which is worse? Fear keeping you from doing things because you may live a very long time? Or fear making you do foolhardy things on a regular basis because there may be a bus out there with your name on it?
You are wise to save. You’re in a challenging position now with so much of your motivation based on delayed gratification and I’m impressed that you’re staying the course! You already know that your future self will thank you! And, it’s good you have the insight that this is a temporary stage in your life. During grad school I felt as though I would never finish, but now that I have, I’m grateful for all the hard work my former self did (and the debt that I avoided by working full-time while in school). Good luck to you!
Delayed gratification is the difference between those who reach FI and those who are just wannabe’s. Sacrifice (which isn’t really that hard) is sometimes necessary.
And my cousin is on a reality show. I’m sure the producers could write some crazy stuff in to make your life look more entertaining. Perhaps your laptop would blow up while you’re typing or a school bus would wreck just outside your apartment and you’d have to save all the children…
Will,
Haha. Love your comment, sir. Thank you so much for saying it. You’re absolutely right! Or, you have to launch and sell a massive business. Haha. I think the former is in store for me. I’m going to keep at it and love all your encouragement.
Your future self will thank you for having this perspective, Sam. You’ll get there. It’s hard when everyone around you appears to be having a lot more fun, but you’ll be glad that you’ve made the decisions you have eventually.
Thanks, Addison! That’s definitely the thinking. 🙂 Hoping I can keep my head down and work hard at it.