Living life at 100 pct

Living now is important. Making sure our future self can FIRE and live a great life is also important. Balancing both is a challenge.

A few weekends ago, We had a great time. It can serve as a template for out future life.

During the week, my wife and I restarted with an old habit: the no-gadget evening. This means we can not watch TV and can not use the internet. This creates a great opportunity to set up some us-time. Having 2 kids and jobs, this is not always easy. Our first evening like this was a great success. We were able to discuss in greater detail what we did the last week, were we want to go in our life. Not that we do not do this normally, the talks often stay too close to the surface.

The work week brought some satisfaction as well. A handful of tasks were finally completed.

On Friday, I got to get some party time. With a good friend, we went to a techno concert of a German DJ. Wow, wow wow. We had a great time. I can’t remember that I danced 2,5 hours straight in a row. And we were not the only ones… Most people had a great time on the beats. The DJ returned  no less than 4 times, as we kept asking for more.

Before the concert, we did some catching up. It is at times like this that you realise that living now is key.

 

 

Later that weekend, our daughters had a performance with their gym club. They were really proud when I took them to the final repetition. They were even more proud during the show: the grand parents were there to see the show. Their part in the show lasted about 8 minutes and was themed Superman!

We also try to bring them some culture. On Sunday morning we took them to a kids theatre play about a cook. This was a great play with a lot of interactivity for the kids. Our oldest even got to go on stage to help out the cook with his story. Great experience for them.

Why do I share all of that?

The more I think about FIRE, the more I realise we need to live the life we want now

Striving for FIRE is not as such a goal. It is the journey towards a free life that is really interesting. Being able to do things you like and value is top. It makes the effort we take look so easy. They even do not look like an effort. The budgeting we do becomes a habit and is almost effort less, we have fun money to pay for our entertainment, we manage to save and invest in a highly automated way. All these contribute to enjoying life now while taking care of our future self.

How do you balance between living now and saving for later?