A Surprise Benefit of Financial Independence

This week, I am excited to be guest posting over at Physician On Fire about Searching For Happiness When Financially Independent. According to an unprecedented Harvard study, our relationships are more important than anything else. I’m pretty happy with this guest post and understand that the relationship with my lady is something that I build or neglect every day. However, there are two other super important relationships I’d like to talk about today in my life as well: those with my kids. When I first left my job, I spent some time doing quite a few things for myself that had been piling up on a list. Having been working at a startup, I may have neglected myself a little :/

Now with school out this summer, I have had the chance to spend quite a bit more time with my 2 boys. I don’t want to sound biased or anything but I am pretty sure that they are the best kids in the world. I really like them which is totally strange since they are pretty much genetic copies of myself and the woman that I chose to marry (wink).

When I was a kid, I grew up kind of out in the sticks and was bored all the time. I spent lots of summers in the woods and had to get creative to entertain myself. Yes I know this explains a lot. I looked for Native American burial mounds, built tree forts, made bike trails, and went through a 100 pack of powerworms each summer bass fishing on the lake behind our house (yeah Minnesota has around 20,000 lakes = way more than Wisconsin, that’s right cheeseheads bow down). Ok so where was I, oh yeah so I wanted my kids to get that same sort of experience and started the summer off attempting to set them loose. However, the problem is that we live in suburbia with houses side to side. about a month into the summer after building many things out of legos, biking in front of the house, and playing in our tiny yard, I noticed that the boys’ complaints of being bored started to double.

Summer Projects 

My lady and I talked on it and decided to see if we could get each of them to come up with a sizable project to work on over the remainder of the summer.  I remembered when I was a kid there was this neighbor family who made a professional quality haunted house at halloween and one summer they built a real BMX track in their front yard.  Those kids grew up thinking anything was possible if they just made it happen. Maybe we could foster a sense of self reliance and accomplishment with our boys as well.

We pitched the plan to the kids and did not shoot down any of their initial ideas: “a slide from my room to the kitchen,” a tree house, “a real plane that I can fly.”  We did mention that the plane would require raising some money for the project and getting a pilots license for example.

Our 8 year old decided to try to make a 1000 foot rubber band rope on the magic loom and maybe even try for the Guinness book world record.  

He started out strong and had about 30 feet in a few days:

However, he got bored quickly after that. Despite our best efforts of sharing pics with extended family and collectively praising his progress, he just totally fell off the project. We tried to remind him of the rope when he seemed bored. We tried to hold him a bit responsible to his commitment. We tried to use some growth mindset ideas when he got frustrated. However, this is the reality of parenting. Sometimes we have to just give him space and keep trying. We have to keep learning about what works with each little guy’s developing personality. However, our efforts definitely seemed to pay off with our 10 year old. So 50/50 success rate still rounds up right math people?

A Parenting Win

Having no trees in our tiny yard and living under an HOA kind of thwarted our 10 year old’s tree fort idea, however, he hit on building a fort on the bottom layer of his bunk bed:

I decided to work in some design process stuff and had him start by brainstorming a bunch of ideas that he wanted in his fort. A slide from the top bunk into a chair in the fort (I’m seeing a theme here). A mini fridge where he could put a private stock of “La Croix” sparkling water (that’s right there’s no sugary soda pop in this house y’all). After he had his list, he ranked the features that he wanted most. Since he offered $100 from his own money that he had saved up (yes he saves everything), we offered to match it. Then he cleverly negotiated us up to $110. Well played son. He worked through which features were in and which were out. He even mowed the lawn to earn some extra cash when his budget looked tight. He also sketched some layouts to make sure that the window would be at a good height, the door was in the right spot, and that everything would fit:

One of the cool things was that little bro even started to become a part of this project and stood by learning how to use the power tools:

He kept a running budget and even got a family friend to donate a fiber board to help with costs (thanks Eric).  When it came to naming the fort, he made a list of names. His favorite for some unknown 10 year old boy reason was to name it “Ham.”  My lady helped with a stencil and this fort project really started to look delicious and juicy with a smoky umami satisfaction:

Am I a Better Dad Post FI?

Ham is almost totally complete and my 8 year old also has about $90 left in a project fund when he is ready (everything has to be fair or there will be pain).

Being able to spend some more time with my kids has been a surprise benefit in financial independence. It is not that I was a bad father before or that I am hugely better now. It is simply that I have had time to slow down and appreciate more of their quirks and hear about their concerns and stresses in life. This has been something of a surprise benefit for me. However, there is still some time left in the summer so…

A Summer Road Trip Adventure

As I write this I am actually sitting in a sleeping bag at Cave of The Winds National Park with my 2 boys sleeping next to me in the tent. We are 3 days into a 2 week road trip with dad. The plan is to camp most of the trip and use our national park pass as much as possible. This lets us practice some of the virtues of frugality, and get a good return on investment by sharing experiences together. With no strict agenda, I am hoping to maybe spark some love in the boys of flexible, less planned travel where we leave room to explore and undertake unforeseen opportunities along the way. I am not trying to portray that I am super dad here or anything. My life outside the maze simply affords me some flexibility. I wanted to try to fit a few things in this summer that focus on our little guys while I am still dad the hero before teen angst kicks in and I get a few years of them not wanting to be seen with me. Will I learn even more about these awesome boys and become closer, or will I end up strangling one out of frustration as solo parent for 2 weeks? Time will tell but one thing I am sure of is that I better tuck into this sleeping bag and get some rest because tomorrow is going to be something vivid.