I was recently reminded that I am truly living the life I used to envy. A lifestyle I longed for way back when I was a struggling rat racer. There was also a reminder that what is considered a desired lifestyle, retired or otherwise, is unique to each of us. It’s important to understand how we want to live. It impacts what it will take to reach and support it. It’s another non financial aspect of personal finance that’s necessary to lock down our financial independence and ultimate lifestyle goals. 

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Why and how I used my flavor of envy as another tool to escape the rat race to a better life

Envy isn’t normally considered a positive emotion. Especially when it turns against other people for our perceived view of their good fortune. I never held ill will towards anyone living the life I used to envy. I directed any negative emotions towards myself for not doing better to fix all the crap I was living with. Because of that self-blame, I’ve always had trouble entirely flipping my whole perspective by ditching envy to only embracing desire. Even though in my case they were one in the same. 

My flavor of envy motivated me to create goals and identify ways to recognize and then circumvent obstacles. Obstacles both of my own poor habits and those systematically placed that we’re all conditioned to accept. Acceptance due to dangled rewards for our sacrifice or as in most cases, punishment for being disloyal to the system’s demands.

From Early Retirement To Now Full Retirement, Living The Life I Used To Envy

The life I used to envy was only the highlight film version of other people’s lives that I saw as attractive and preferable to what I was living. It’s what I call the Hallmark Channel version of what that lifestyle fully entails. I wasn’t blind to the fact that it wasn’t a fully accurate or complete representation. It was the high bar vision that I strived for.

What I did was use that scrubbed clean version to base my planned future lifestyle on. Understanding it would be the best part of living. There will always be challenges to deal with in life. Every minute of our existence can’t be exciting or perfect Hallmark movie moments. The goal was to create a lifestyle that would provide as many of those moments that I could have and lessen any opportunity for life’s dirty stressors to take hold and be long lasting. Figuring out our uniquely desired life that we want to retire to is part of the long process to get to early retirement.

My Recent Reminder That Our Preferred Retirement Lifestyle Is Unique And All Our Own

I recently  accepted an invitation to a reunion lunch with ex-coworkers from my first long career. People I had worked with from the mid 90s until I retired young at the end of 2009. We had come together back then under strenuous circumstances and created a successful long-lasting work organization. Although I’ve had no contact with them since retiring, I thought it might be fun to see some of these folks again. Especially those who I respected and enjoyed working with. Only about a dozen people showed up. Half had aged into retirement and the other half were still working for the remnants of the same company. 

One person who I had happily worked with and who was still working for the megacorp asked me what I do in retirement. My response was simple, whatever I want to do. She then pressed for an example of my routine day. After running through a typical day I could see that she was less than impressed. 

I had no urge to explain all of the non-routine stuff like our travel, my free-time hobby pursuits, community connection, volunteering, time freedom, my work in different careers and subsequent retirements since leaving the megacorp, etc. I love my retirement lifestyle and don’t need to dress it up or verbally create an attention seeking social media look-at-me highlight moment to satisfy anyone. What we find as an attractive lifestyle is unique to each of us and that’s all that matters. 

The Hypothetical Lifestyle I Envied And Was Driven To Reach

My young adult life’s story was one of constant work obligations, debt, zero time for any kind of personal life balance, and many hard years of unfulfilled needs for myself and growing family. There were many long periods where I went to night school and/or worked 2 jobs from early morning to late night 5 and sometimes 6 days a week. Our socioeconomic status was one that everyone we knew were also part of. We all shared a similar lifestyle of financial struggle and employment servitude. 

The life I used to envy and wanted to have for us wasn’t based on anyone I knew. It was the glimpse of a simpler and less hectic life that I would sometimes see in movies and on television. A life of community, balance, family, friends, and mostly just having time to enjoy living. It was more Mayberry and none of what was depicted on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. 

I was attracted to characters who had close to home non glamorous jobs and non glamorous lives. They were part of a community with time to be involved in good causes and people that they cared about. That’s exactly what I was driven to strive for and have successfully created. 

The Importance Of Knowing What We Want To Retire To 

I wish that it wouldn’t take a retirement to fully live this better life. Maybe it’s easier now for people to pull it off while still in the grind. But for me there was always the never ending and always growing work demands from a ruthless megacorp system. A system that was many times controlled by hardline authoritarian and sometimes incompetent management. 

My early retirement motivation was enhanced by focusing not only on financial independence, but on being able to live the kind of life I used to envy. It’s the life I wanted to retire to. By figuring out what that desired lifestyle is we can then figure out all of the financial necessities and other personal efforts required to reach it.

What each of us puts priority on or values is uniquely subjective. However, there are common things we can all benefit from working towards.

Basic things that will create the desired lifestyle we want to live.

• Concentrate on building strengthened close relationshionships with friends and family.  
• Having both the time and will to pursue meaningful and fulfilling projects of interests and passion. 
• Having and taking the time to maintain our mental and physical health by prioritizing self-care. 
• Find worthy opportunities to give back to the community through volunteerism to help make a positive impact. 
• Being curiously open to and learning about life’s full spectrum of difference and unknowns, from opportunities to cultures. 
• Enjoy the lifestyle we’re creating by finding fun in all the moments between life’s highlights.

The life I used to envy and saw examples of from afar were ones I thought would provide time to have a sense of direction and purpose. A life of more than the constant demand from the system of career and consumer servitude to obediently sacrifice all of our time to unrewarding obligation. Our desired lifestyle and what we value is truly unique to each of us and nobody else’s validation is required.