FIRE vs FINE

How we spend our money says so much about us.  Are we generous to ourselves,  stingy to others?  Stingy to ourselves and others?  Buying others attention?  Spending more than we have? There are so many ways to live both within and outside of our means.

I've come across the FIRE system - Financial Independence,  Retire Early - quite a few times in my life.  Some of my clients have been fiercely dedicated to it.  Some have strained their marriages over it.  It's basically living way below your means and squirreling every spare penny away,  till you reach a magic number (different for every person) and then you can stop work and live very frugally on that.  

Conceptually it never worked for me.  I don't want to be that frugal and I didn't want to stop working at 40.  

But now a new acronym has emerged - FINE,  Financial Independence,  New Endeavor.  Which doesn't make you retire once you hit your personal magic number,  but allows/encourages you to shift to a new idea/endeavor.  This seems more appealing,  though you still have to be very frugal to get to your magic number, but once there, you embrace new ideas or doing part time work,  or lower paid but more emotionally satisfying work. 

I do think that for many of us,  living that much below our income implies that there is some fat in our income and that is far from always the case.   And getting your nails done once a month shouldn't be seen as a shameful luxury. 

So as with everything,  I advocate moderation.  Spend moderately,  but also save moderately.  Try to live within your means,  don't get the maximum mortgage,  see if you can find something cheaper a little further out,  give yourself some breathing room.  And take a holiday.  Holidays are joy. And if camping gives you joy,  go camping.  But if going to Paris gives you joy,  don't force yourself to camp and resent your choices. 

4 of pentacles vs 9 of Cups

I'm finding I'm explaining these 2 cards,  the 4 of pentacles and the 9 of cups,  again and again to people lately. I really feel we are living in a world exploiting our feelings of not enoughness,  feeding our dissatisfactions, wanting our envy.

I came across this anecdote:  At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … the knowledge that I have enough."

And it seems to me that the super rich right now have no idea what enough looks like.  And the world of instagram and trad wives and holidays abroad are all about needing more, exploiting the feeling of the 4 of pentacles,  where our financial needs and wants hang over us. We feel tight for money,  tight for time,  tight. 

And what we want,  what we should all be striving for is the 9 of cups,  the card I call the fat and happy card,  where you don't have everything,  but you have that most special of all things,  enough.  You are content with what you have.  There may be a cup or two missing,  but you don't let that spoil the cups that you have.  You let yourself have joy with what comes your way,  and let yourself be rich in the ways of Joseph Heller,  and know that you have enough.

That's my blessing to all of us,  may we know the value of what we have,  and let us feel contentment. 

Money Secrets

People will happily talk to friends about dating disasters,  sexual disasters,  embarrassing moments and that weird thing that happened when they were in the changing room at Nordstrom.  But what they rarely talk about is money. 

I never knew that there was a special tax exemption on financial gifts to adult children,  so you can give them $18,000 a year,  every year,  without incurring tax implications.   But I certainly learnt about it in New York.  I did know that a lot of my TriBeCa friends and clients were definitely getting help from family,  especially when it came to their or their children's school fees. 

So if you are struggling with money and wondering how your friends are making it better than you,  don't beat yourself up,  just know that they are getting family help.

And I'm not judging or being mean about family money.  A safety net is a glorious thing.  You can make better decisions,  have better choices, and have some breathing space with a good safety net.  It's just sometimes, if you don't have that safety net,  you can wonder what it is you are doing wrong.  I'm here to tell you that you are doing nothing wrong.  Everyone has their path,  some people have it easier in one respect,  others have it easier in another.  But no one has a completely easy path.  So don't let yourself get overwhelmed by what other people do or do not have (so easy to do in a city like New York.)  And try to see where you have it easy,  so you can have some gratitude around it (a healthy body,  a curious mind,  some grounded friends,  a loving companion - animal or human.)  Everything is easier with genuine gratitude. 

four of pentacles

When I look at this card I always think of two things: ‘holding on’ and ‘not enough’. This is not about how much money you actually have, but rather how you feel about it. You may have millions but you feel that you need more. You want to keep what you have, you want to be in charge, you fear change, you want control. But of course by giving it so much energy, it is starting to control you.

It’s not always about money, often it’s about maintaining the status quo – you want to keep the situation as is, to keep things static, hold on to the past. And that won’t happen either. So this is a card is warning of future unhappiness. You can’t keep hold of everything, not even the good, and if you try, you are doomed to fail.

I love the sulky cat image, because it’s a clear view of what will happen if we persist with this energy – we turn into this cat, and who wants that!