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- Manlobbi
Personal Finance Topics / Living Below Your Means
No. of Recommendations: 14
Long term old school LBYM poster, new in this incarnation.
Young people at work would (yes, past tense, I'm a month into retirement now) joke about my Franco American. I ate that every day, about 95% of the time, for many many years. When I would lay out that their trips to the lunch room cost them probably $10+, and multiply that by 5 days a week, etc, that they gave up a new car or a down payment on a house, they would take pause. My food (including snacks and sodas) was usually about $3-4 a day, that I brought to work.
The more significant matter is that I would tell the ones whose curiosity I piqued that when one transcends spending ~100% of what comes in, one gets to a point where one has many more options. 100% (and then some, sadly, in too many cases) out of what comes in equates to never having any options but to work.
A coworker really illustrated this when she hit FIRE status in her early '40s, about 3 years ago. Yes, no dependents and that matters and I get it (I'm not in that camp, but am a quasi-empty nester). But, she deployed as a civilian 5x during the OEF/OIF era and saved her big deployment loot in spades. Bought a house for cash with this. Maxed out her TSP (the government's 401(k) equivalent). Lived a simple lifestyle. And unplugged without a care in the world in her early '40s.
I think of this as essentially buying a coupler extra decades of life. She does whatever she wants now. She took her mom home to Japan for a long trip - that wouldn't have happened if she was still in the rat race. She RVed all over the country for 6 months last year.
Great playbook. I'll do some variant of that. I think I bought an extra decade, having taken about another ten years to hit this status.
What is the ultimate life hack? It is not in box zero, it isn't from Tony Robbins, it's not Marie Kondo. It's FIRE. And the accelerant to pour on FIRE is LBYM.
No. of Recommendations: 6
I agree - that was one of the things I tried to impress upon co-workers who ate out nearly every day. I did deviate from that once every week or so, so I was not as committed as you. I did do the math, though, and gave folks a little fiscal education several times a year.
One other thing that I diverged from: I ate that every day, about 95% of the time, for many many years. I could never do that. My palate would not allow it. I tended more to leftovers, which a lot of people hate, but I quite enjoy: pastas of all kinds, soups, stews, and sandwiches made with various meat courses I made for dinners on previous nights were some favorites.
Saved a shitload of money over the years.
Pete
No. of Recommendations: 2
What can I say, I like my routines (but dinner is anything goes).
I've had Life cereal for breakfast for many years, probably about 20+ now, most of the time.
Slightly compulsive. Just slightly. Neurodiverse, as the kids say these days.
No. of Recommendations: 6
When I would lay out that their trips to the lunch room cost them probably $10+, and multiply that by 5 days a week, etc, that they gave up a new car or a down payment on a house, they would take pause.
I did the same, with leftovers to nuke for lunch, taking one day off to go out to eat with co-workers. Even then I would get water instead of a soda, and my co-workers soon came to see how much less I spent doing so. Before you knew it, we all would skip the beverage and get the tap water.
I finally got DH to brownbag lunch as well. Easily saved $50/week post tax, which at out tax rate was more like extra earnings of $85. Primary reason was to healthier, but the weekly savings really added up. As the kids hit middle school, I would give them lunch money in their account to buy twice a week, and of course plenty of food to whip up a lunch the night before, just as Dad did. I thought it was working well until I got a phone call from the mom of Youngest's friend asking me if everything was OK. Youngest was turning into a mooch, being too cheap to dig into his own pocket, and too lazy to make lunch. We both had a laugh after I told her what I was trying to do, and promised to get her son to stop enabling the mooch.
Youngest always was the one to push the envelope, wanting to know why we didn't have fancy cars like his friends parents, why he didn't get a car at 16, and so on. I would explain that consumerism wasn't my religion and that we had financial goals we were saving towards, like paying for their college and getting Dad retired. Senior year of high school he stunned me by thanking me. "I get it now..." His friends with the fancy cars were stressed beyond belief trying to figure out how to pay for college, and that was a worry he didn't have.
Teaching your kids is never easy, but boy has it been worth it.
IP
