A while back, Jessica was at a work happy hour. It was a “get to know you” event because six new people had just started. Someone thought it would be fun to go around and answer the question, “if you could start your life over again, where you would live?” “I said I would live in Boston, (where I currently live),” answered Jessica. “I’ve made pretty deliberate choices in my life. I’ve thought about what I want my life to look like, and I actually really like living here.” People were kind of shocked. Jessica was surprised that they thought her response was so unusual.
Going around the circle, one of her co-workers shared that she’d be interested in “van life.” This co-worker explained that if she could start with a blank slate, she would deck out a van and travel the country. Jessica says, “I just looked at her and I asked, you know you could do that right?” “Really?”, the woman questioned. As they talked a little more over a drink, the woman seemed surprised that her dream option was perhaps a totally realistic one.
I’m talking to Jessica who runs a financial freedom blog together with her husband Corey called “The Fioneers.” as in financial independence + pioneers. The name is old school as in American pioneers old school circa the 1800s. Those hearty settlers took control of their lives to do something different and personal. As we enter a new year and a new decade we may all do the same.
Write Your Own Script
From Jessica’s involvement in the FIRE community, she is concerned that people might just be trading one script for another. She explains that trading the consumerist script of debt and working until 60 for a FIRE alternative is certainly an improved script. However, she wants to see people write their own personalized scripts.
“What do I actually want to do with my life? Do I need to push toward early retirement to do that?” she asks. As we talk, I think of how so many FI folk seem to travel, but what if you simply aren’t into that? That is just someone else’s script for a good life. Jessica adds that even if you are into travel, you don’t necessarily need to be FIRE to incorporate long-term travel into your life. You could do seasonal work, contract work with breaks, or start your own location independent business.
Jess and Corey’s broader message pairs financial savvy with life savvy rather than trading scripts wholesale. They are not in a race to hit a specific financial number. Rather, they are seeking to iteratively build their ideal life over time concurrently with their finances. The hope is that by the time they reach a financial independence number, they will already be living their ideal life. It will be seamless. While this is the Fioneers’ current philosophy, it was an iterative process to get here.
Upon Graduation
When Jess and Corey graduated from college, they knew that they wanted to have exciting and interesting lives doing cool things. Mission-driven work is also important to them both. Jessica had done some research in college on the rights of indigenous people in Nicaragua and had an invite to return and teach English. After graduating, they set out to do this for a year. It would be an adventure, and it fit their interest in international development work.
“If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
– an old Yiddish proverb.
We never know what curveballs and surprises are coming our way.
In Nicaragua, Jess and Corey made $60 per month teaching but it also included housing and provided meals from the cook’s kitchen. However, Jess and Corey’s immune systems were totally unprepared. The cook would use tap water to wash everything. Try as they may, they could not stay healthy. Jess explains they got creative and observant. They would only eat the first half of a watermelon, for example. The cook would store the 2nd half in the fridge face down on the same shelf where a piece of raw meat was sitting the day before.
Communicating the challenge to the cook was tough and while well-intentioned, the cook had a different view of what clean was. Just as they would beat one illness, the next parasite or amoeba would get them. “It was 90 degrees, but I asked for soup every single day.” After losing 30 lbs in 2-3 months, they hopped a plane home.
Life Is Weird
Jessica found herself back in the USA 9 months earlier than planned, malnourished (she remembers how stringy her hair was), living with family, and looking for work in 2009, during the great recession. She applied to lots of jobs and eventually found work canvassing. This meant taking the train every morning from New Jersey to New York City where she would hustle on the street to get strangers to donate to a non-profit. Incidentally, she raised over $500K for that organization one donation at a time and personally made about $30K that year. The work was brutal and she applied to over 100 jobs during that year. Eventually, she joined Americorps and shifted into an institutional fundraising role.
When Corey and Jessica eventually worked up to getting jobs they liked, they felt that they had to work hard and try to move up in them. As someone who also joined the workforce during a huge recession, I can identify with this feeling over my first 5 years of work or so. Jessica recalls thinking at the time that “this must be the best it gets.” She doubled her income in 4 years at another tough job but was exhausted and became burnt out.
“No matter what, I wasn’t doing enough.” She got to a breaking point. Working in a non-profit still feels like the rat race, she explains. In some ways, you end up doing even more work. Nonprofit leaders expect you to be motivated by the cause and to do more with less. This frequently leads to burnout for nonprofit employees.
Financial Means
Corey first introduced Jess to the idea of financial independence (FI) in late 2017. She didn’t buy in right away, but she did start reflecting on what her ideal life would look like.
In the summer of 2018, they took a trip to remote Maine and started a series of discussions about changing their lives. They discussed a 10-12 year plan to FI and prioritizing enjoying the journey along the way.
They now see financial freedom more holistically. Jessica describes that many financial independence seekers speak about FI in terms of a 2 stage journey where they work really hard now and live an awesome life later. Over time, Jessica and Corey realized that they wanted a many stage process. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we made so many shifts in our life that when we actually hit our FI number we didn’t want to change anything because we already had the life we wanted?”
Milestones That Motivate
At this point in 2019, Jessica explains that she and Corey are Coast FI (meaning that they have to work to cover their annual expenses, however, the investments in their retirement account will cover their retirement as long as they don’t touch it until retirement age). While they do envision continuing to save, this position does afford some rethinking of life and finances. They track how much active income they need beyond their investment portfolio income in a spreadsheet. This number shrinks every year as they continue to build up their investments. It makes their progress toward FI more tangible along the way. For Jessica, this is more useful than saying something like “I am 25% to FI.” In a recent post, she discusses financial milestones that can motivate by helping understand the freedom that finances provide today.
Strike a Balance
In line with the transition to making shifts to an ideal life, Jessica has started working part-time (around 24 hours per week). At first, she thought this would be a short term thing to recharge. Then she discovered that it really suited her. Not feeling busy is a wonderful feeling for Jess. She has turned down opportunities to work more hours and is committed to defending her balance. The goal is not to get promoted; it is to have the work fit into the life she wants. “I don’t know that I’ll ever work full time again because I enjoy working part-time so much.”
Roads To Happiness
I recently shared some thoughts on a foundation for happiness and/or success based on committing to what you want, moving forward with iterations, and changing your life trajectory with tweaks. To me, Jess and Corey’s path is a powerful example of these concepts.
Identify What You Want
When they came out of college Jess and Corey certainly did not know exactly what they wanted down to the job titles they would have at age 35 and the square footage of their master bedroom. However, they did know that they wanted to live an exciting and adventurous life. They wanted their lives to count for something bigger than themselves, but also something different than the norm. They committed to this despite ambiguity in the details.
Conviction With Agile Change
Life may be a boat tossed on some stormy seas but we are better off taking the wheel and course-correcting with each new wind that presents itself. Teaching in Nicaragua did not go as planned. Jess could not have predicted that she would be looking for work during the worst recession since 1929. Jess and Corey found themselves working hard just to stay afloat. However, they took the wheel by asking “is this is the best it gets?” They have changed their path through tweaks as they have learned along the way. They are closer to their ideal life as a result.
In Jessica’s own words, “Earlier on this path, we were thinking that we were going to retire early, and we were focused on what we would retire to.” After learning and reflection about their ideal lives, Jessica and Corey tweaked their approach, “Why do we need to pursue full early retirement if we can generate income doing things that we love?” They realized that they could transition much earlier and pursue semi-retirement instead.
Change Your Trajectory
Jess and Corey have always held fast to having their lives count for something beyond themselves. They have made tweaks to how this is realized in their lives over time and have both now had careers in nonprofits.
Jess and Corey also want their lives to be different. The changes they’ve made to balance life and finances over the past 1-2 years have put them on their own self designed path. Small changes in trajectory can have a huge effect, especially if you put in time and effort. Each tweak can have a huge impact on happiness or success over time.
Jessica herself describes thinking of life as making small shifts. There was a shift toward early retirement but enjoying the journey along the way. This was then tweaked after some trial. Now, they want to build their ideal life while concurrently building financial freedom such that the transition is a seamless one. Early retirement, in this scenario, becomes a moot point.
Jessica’s shift toward part-time work has also changed her trajectory noticeably.
Big Learnings Looking Back
Health and Wellbeing: There was a time when Jessica assumed that feeling miserable was normal. Now she looks back and is so happy that she’s no longer in that mental space. Her health and wellbeing is a priority. This involves taking walks, meditation, therapy, and taking time to relax.
The Benefits of Subtraction: Jessica has recently been focusing on minimalism. She is considering what can she subtract to make life better rather than add.
When she thinks back to working long hours at a past job, she remarks, “the thing that would make me feel better was not a massage on top of a 50-hour workweek. Actually, the thing that would make me feel better was working less.”
Subtracting the things that create stress rather than trying to add something that makes the stress bearable has proven a better approach.
A Myth About Working Less: Jessica explains that there is a myth that if you work less, you will spend more. Over the past year, they actually spent $17K less than their budget the year prior. Most of these savings came from less spent on restaurants, groceries, travel, healthcare, and “general merchandise.” When working more hours she recalls paying so much for convenience. Travel costs were high since time was scarce and usually during peak demand. The stress also raised healthcare costs. Now working less, Jessica doesn’t feel like eating out or ordering in as often. Instead, she has the space to be more thoughtful with meal planning, grocery shopping, and travel hacking.
Design Your Life Now
The Fioneers and I first connected over an article I wrote about Designing Your Life With Design Thinking. Jessica has taken this further and started a group with others for accountability, brainstorming, and support through the lifestyle design and prototyping process. She would love to do even more of this type of work in 2020.
As we start this new year and a new decade, I think back to Jessica’s co-worker who dreamed of trying out “van life” one day driving around the country. What was stopping her?
The more important question is what is stopping you from building the life you want? My hope is that Jess and Corey’s story of iterative change and a new life trajectory inspires you to take action as well.
If you want to learn more about Jess and Corey feel free to check out The Fioneers. Share what you are looking to tweak in 2020 in the comments below or feel free to offer your own thoughts.
