The savings habits you set now are pretty crucial.
That being said, wasting your twenties just thinking about money is a shame.
Figure out how to do things frugally. That trip can be done for WAY less than that. Probably < $1,000 if you travel hack the flights.
Live your life, and enjoy it, but do it in an optimized way, so you can have the same amount of fun and still save a ton.
For example, the wife and I love travel, and did a bunch. From
this post:
We also enjoy travel, so we've done plenty of that along the way, including such lavish trips as (all of the below are separate trips):
- Over 2 months backpacking through Europe
- A week in Barbados
- A week in Loreto Bay, Mexico
- Many trips to Southern California to see my in-laws (at least 4x per year, approximately 20-25 trips) and Seattle to see my family (at least once or twice per year, approximately 8-10 trips)
- A week cruise out of Miami to St. Lucia, St. Kitts, and St. Maarten
- A week in Athens, Greece (separate from Europe backpacking trip)
- A week in NYC/CT
- 3-4 days in Boston
- Trip to WA peninsula to go to the beach/rain forest
- I also individually (without the wife) did quite a bit of traveling for a hobby (Texas several times, New Jersey, Philly, Chicago a few times, Indianapolis, etc. - probably another 11 individual weekend trips to cities in the U.S. for just myself)
Most (all?) of those were done quite frugally, with deals, special promotions, whatever.
We also have taken advantage of being locals in Vegas, seeing various "entertainment" things such as:
- Cirque du Soleil's Beatles' Love
- Penn and Teller
- 2-3 other magic shows
- Wayne Brady
- 2-3 other comedian shows
- Phantom of the Opera
- Shark Reef
- Madam Tussauds' Wax Museum
Again, most (all?) of those were done quite frugally, with deals, special promotions, whatever. In fact, almost every single one of those were free (and the ones we paid for were usually at least half off or more).
That's not an exhaustive list of entertainment stuff, those are just the items people would generally think of as expensive. We've done other cheap/free entertainment stuff like camping at Mt. Charleston multiple times, camping trips to the Grand Canyon and Death Valley, hiking at Red Rock, etc. etc.
(These experiences were added because I figured I might as well type them up now, to counter the "but you're living like misers at that spending level!" arguments - not that I'll see it from you guys, but when I use these crib notes to write a more thorough history of our stache it'll be helpful at that point.)
We FIRE'd approximately two years after that post, and did a bunch of trips in those two years as well that aren't listed (quite a few, as that's when we really got into travel hacking).
Yet we still FIRE'd at a very young age, because we figured out how to make our main lifestyle very low cost, and how to do that travel cheaply, so our savings rate was 70%+.
The point of Mustachianism isn't to deprive yourself. It's not not blow money on things you don't value, and to spend it optimally on the things you do value.
If travel is one, great! Travel! I'm a big advocate of travel (the wife and I have been traveling the world nonstop since FIRE 1.5 years ago). But do it in a smart, economic way.
And cut expenses elsewhere, on the stuff you don't care about.
It's about living a fulfilling life. I fully think anyone can push towards FIRE while having a fulfilling life. Worked for us, at least, and I think you can do the same! :)