his leads to a couple of questions I have about emotions surrounding leading an MMM lifestyle. I think most of my problems boil down to inconsistencies with how I am confronting desire and fear.
So there's things that I desire and also can justify to some extent: I look much more professional to clients in a suit and feel more confident, which lends to more commissions and I got it at a good price on Amazon. Snowboarding is coming up and I feel refreshed and amazing after a couple days on the slopes. A season pass is only $$549 and I can sleep in my hatchback car with my mattress and not pay for a hotel and then get two days on one gas trip, that's being frugal right...? I really do enjoy it and feel happier and more productive when I get back to work, but also realize it will prolong the debt nightmare! As a Mustachian how have you decided when to spend money (carefully) on these things vs saving it for the future?
To make the question more interesting, is the FOMO, that if I don't do all the things I want to do ASAP(finally travel outside the country, learn alpine climbing, and so many others...) then I will never get them done and just be one of those people who plans shit forever while they sit at home and watch tv. At 26 I'm still at near peak health but there's a lot I want to do and some of it takes years to be really good at.
OK, a lot to unpack here. Couple of things that aren't necessarily related:
1. Growing up poor can mess with your mind. I always wanted cool stuff but couldn't have it; my mom was also very anti-consumerist, but that didn't stop me from wanting the expensive stuff -- it just made me feel guilty for wanting it. So I had a pushme-pullyou for a long time, going between feeling compelled to save to not be poor ever again, and yet still craving the expensive toys that I never had. I was probably close to 50 before I even realized how crazy my head was around all of this stuff, and that having those expensive toys wouldn't/didn't actually make me happy. I am not sure if at your age I would have actually believed, deep down, that expensive toys
wouldn't make my life better (if I could only afford them).
It sounds to me from some of what you wrote that you have similar emotions around this. You need to deal with those head-on and figure out what level of saving/spending/etc. is reasonable for you right now, or else you're just going to subvert your best-laid plans by giving in to overwhelming impulses (like the crash dieter who makes it a couple of weeks and then eats a full cake). Full-on Mustachianism may not be the right thing for right now -- or it may be. Just do a lot of thinking about that.
2. The big mental change is the "I want it now" mentality (paging Willy Wonka). You've heard of the marshmallow study, right? Where they told the kids they could have one marshmallow right now or two when they came back, and then they left the kid alone with one marshmallow, and the kids who were wealthier had better self-control and ended up doing better in school, life, etc. For many years this was circulated around as evidence that rich people did well because they have good moral fiber -- they can defer gratifiction, their brain can overrule their baser desires, etc.; and then conversely, that poor people are poor because they don't -- they make stupid impulsive decisions and can't plan for the future, etc. But more recently, there has been research that suggests that the poor kids are actually acting entirely logically and pragmatically
given the world they grew up in. IOW, when you live in a world in which every scrap of food is fought over, why would you leave any on the table to save for later? You grab what you can get, when you can get it, because you don't trust that there will actually be two marshmallows there tomorrow -- because that's what life has taught you. Same thing with money -- you get a windfall, you spend it on yourself and your family and friends, and then when you have nothing they do the same for you.
Your history demonstrates a strong need to grab life now, to have it all right away. It could be immaturity; it could be a character flaw; or it could be something you learned from the way you grew up. It's not always just the lack of good role models; it's also what you learn about what is "normal" from the bad ones. Again, this is something for you to do some serious thinking about. The single biggest thing you need to do to succeed long-term is to learn to wait for that damn second marshmallow -- to train Current You to put in hard effort and make sacrifices now, even when it doesn't seem to be paying off, trusting that Future You will appreciate it.
3. The much more concrete thing is: you may no longer spend more than you make. Period. EVER. And certainly not for fun. No credit cards -- not even 0% ones; no buy-now-pay-later; no camping trips or Wal-Mart runs before you have confirmed that you have extra room in the budget. None of us deserve jack shit -- you get what you earn. Fuck FOMO. The only thing you're going to miss out on is security. You have spent too long justifying purchases based on them being better than other options (gee, it's just camping, that's cheap -- SO much smarter than fancy vacations). It's not which is better -- it's can you afford ANY? And given the car you got stuck with, the clear answer is no. This is your first baseline: get back to 0.
4. Your second baseline, once you have the big debts paid off, is to live on LESS than you make. Your time to FI depends entirely on how much of your income you spend. Right now, start with 10% even -- again, this is retraining your brain for the better habits. Once that seems easy, go for 15%.
5. FWIW, sounds like college is a better long-term play -- it's not just what you make right away, it's what you have the potential to make 10 years down the road, and what makes you the most employable in the most number of places. You are doing the right thing by working your way through; just stick to the plan and work on getting back to 0 for now.