Living with depression/anxiety and making financial / FIRE decisions

[Jacinle]

Hi MMM readers

Anyone living with depression/anxiety FIRE or planning to fire ?

Any advice how to deal with the uncertainty / knowing if it is right?
[on professional/medical help but wanna know other stories]

Contrast to what most people think, depression is more than sad, or just be happy It affects tremendously your ability to think and make decision.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/sad-depression-affects-ability-think-201605069551

Yours Bravely
J

[mozar]

Know if what is right? Your post is kind of vague do you have more information about your self or what you are looking for?

[oneday]

Hi @Jacinle I have never been formally diagnosed, but definitely spent long periods of my younger years depressed and currently experience anxiety and occasional bouts of depression. Nothing super-crippling, but I do notice my cognition is not the same as it was before any of this happened. However, that could also be due to burnout or possibly peri-menopause.

I've never doubted that I want to retire early. That was an idea for me long before any mental health challenges, so maybe that plays into it. However, making calculations and decisions about what is enough or learning new concepts is so much harder and I feel a lot less certain about those things. My solution is to work on it in little bites, come back to it over and over, and seeking different sources for the same material in case there's a presentation of the idea that can penetrate the brain fog. Then at certain points I've either "gotten it" or still need more help. I've posted an Ask A Mustachian at least once to help with integrating a bunch of concepts I was just struggling with for too long.

HTH

Edit: I'm not yet FIRE. It's upcoming in 5-9 years, so I feel there's plenty of time to grapple with whatever ideas need to be grappled with.

[Boll weevil]

I think it has to be broken up into an FI portion and a RE portion.

Even before learning about FIRE, I was stashing away lots of money, and it was driven in large part by anxiety… that the lucrative times can’t last forever, that I may be fired or simply laid off, and if I was in that position, I may not be able to find a job that pays as well. So I kept my spending very low and basically set a goal to get to a point where, if I end up in a position where I’m living paycheck to paycheck, as long as I don’t touch the nest egg, it’ll grow to a point where retirement will theoretically be possible. Within that worldview, FI is very much the right thing to do.

I’m guessing what you’re getting hung up on is the RE portion, and unfortunately I can’t help you there… I’m not sure myself that I’ll get to the point where I would be comfortable walking away voluntarily.

[Jacinle]

Thank you @Boll weevil and @oneday for sharing

I could relate to @oneday's story that my cognitive function is affected to a point when  even cooking a simple meal is so difficult

[Jacinle]

@mozar, I know I am not looking for a case study.  But a strategy to manage finances under brain fog.  I am also looking at story from others for aspiration.

Might be if I ask this way, imagine if you have a relative who has dementia (apology if I have used it not correctly), but have to be mainly on her own for finances.  Are there ways to suggest to auto-pilot things?

[Morning Glory]

@mozar, I know I am not looking for a case study.  But a strategy to manage finances under brain fog.  I am also looking at story from others for aspiration.

Might be if I ask this way, imagine if you have a relative who has dementia (apology if I have used it not correctly), but have to be mainly on her own for finances.  Are there ways to suggest to auto-pilot things?

Payroll deduction and automatic bill pays/transfers for everything you can. For everything else use one credit card and pay in full each month. 

For your house,  simplify by getting rid of stuff.  Just drop off one bag per week, to start with. Only bother selling the larger and more valuable items. It's so much easier to keep a tidy house with less stuff.

Focus on easy but healthy meals. Steamamble frozen veggies are your friend, as are bag salad and rotisserie chicken. A can of tuna fish with some lettuce and tomato is an easy lunch.  Keep protein bars in your desk and laptop bag, for when you just don't have much will to think about food.

Try to spend some time outdoors every day. A walk in the morning or at lunch break helps a lot.

Take your vacation time. If you are not up for travel, just drive to your closest beach/state park and hang out there for a day. Bring a book and some snacks. No need to get fancy.

[Zikoris]

I don't have any of those things, but I feel like automated finances would probably help a lot because once set up there is no management or decision-making needed, so whatever's going on in your personal day-to-day life doesn't matter as far as your finances are concerned. Set up a robo-advisor investment account with automatic deposits in the amount needed to retire on the timeline you want, and you will literally never have to think about it again.

[oneday]

Thank you Boll weevil and oneday for sharing

I could relate to oneday's story that my cognitive function is affected to a point when  even cooking a simple meal is so difficult

I eat a lot of really simple things. And repetitive things. Almost every day I have carrots dipped in peanut butter for a snack, for example.

I tried to use dried beans, but after a couple mis-haps, I've decided that canned is going to work out for me even if it costs more. Simpler!

So I second Morning Glory's ideas about simple eating and protein bars.

[LightStache]

[Raises hand]

In terms of getting to FIRE, the hardest part for me is just keeping my job and the income to save. Thankfully my anxiety generally wins out over my depression, which makes me perform at work even though I'm suffering through it.

When it comes to saving, I think anxiety and depression are perversely advantageous. My anxiety causes me to worry about financial stability more than I reasonably should, which keeps me from committing to fancy purchases. My depression makes me not want to do anything and since doing things costs money, that's also an unfortunate win.

And I don't judge myself too harshly for caving in on small purchases. If your mental health problems cause you to go out and buy a McMansion and a Ferrari, then yea that's a problem. But if you succumb to depression laziness and $60 Postmates occasionally, it's not going to throw you completely off the rails for FIRE.

I sometimes worry that my pursuit of FIRE is motivated by the wrong reason, work-related anxiety. Part of me wonders if taking a year sabbatical now could really improve my mental health. But I'm not willing to walk away from my current deal to test that hypothesis, so I'm still on the path to FI. If I RE and figure out it's not for me, then I'll go back to work. The point is you don't need to be absolutely certain that FIRE is the right path as long as pursuing it doesn't cause any irreversible harm. Worst case scenario, you keep working until traditional retirement age and become filthy rich.

[mozar]

I think it’s worth investigating whether you have food sensitivities if you haven’t already. I discovered that gluten was a major source of my brain fog. A second major source of my brain fog was insomnia. But I realized that certain foods made it harder for me to fall asleep. Like oily foods seem hard to digest for me and then I’m up too late and I get thrown off. Another food item that disrupts my sleep is phytoestrogens. I have large fibroids (surgery soon) and if I eat phytos it mimics estrogen which causes my body to think it’s time for my period and I get severe cramps that keep me up at night.
Sometimes I get depressed because I have to have such a strict diet but I would rather be depressed without brain fog than depressed with brain fog.

I had to stop working at my previous career four years ago because of mental health reasons. I’m poorer now but I’ve been able to take the time to figure out what’s wrong with me. If I hadn’t saved as much as I did I wouldn’t have been able to do that. I think saving money is the best way to gird against life’s uncertainties.

For finances, when my grandmother was no longer able to pay her bills my uncle set up automatic payments for her, then gave her a debit card and confiscated her credit cards because she was falling prey to scams and extreme overspending. Cash might be easier to deal with in this case and you don’t have the extra step of having to pay off a credit card every month.