Financial Independence Is The Summit, But The Climb Is More Important
A while back I was perusing a popular mountaineering forum website and read a post that piqued my interest. The author of the post had recently started on a quest to climb the 58 mountains in Colorado called the 14ers but was apparently ready to give up. His reason?
He was getting robbed of summit views due to weather. He wrote:
Last weekend I climbed Huron Peak and was once again denied clear vistas at the summit. The clouds and mist rolled in as my partner and I neared the summit and we wound up seeing nothing at the top. This is the 5th time out of six summits this has happened, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is worth it.
I went on to read the responses and many folks picked up on the exact thing I immediately thought when reading the post – dude you’re in it for the wrong reasons.
Regular readers know I’ve climbed all 58 Colorado 14ers as well as many other big mountains around the world.
And I can tell you that I don’t climb big mountains for the view at the top.
Do You Want It?
In his massive bestseller “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life” (<–affiliate link), Mark Manson writes about his attempt at rock stardom. Spoiler, he failed. Why? If you haven’t read the book he explains on his blog:
I didn’t actually want it.
I’m in love with the result — the image of me on stage, people cheering, me rocking out, putting everything I have into what I’m playing — but I’m not in love with the process. The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit. The broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling 40 lbs of gear to and from rehearsals with no car. It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what it took me a long time to discover is that I don’t like to climb. I just want to imagine the top.
Funny how he ends that with a mountain climbing analogy.
Payoff Or Process?
I love climbing mountains. Notice I wrote “climbing”. Do I love summiting mountains? Yes, of course, that’s the goal in the end.
But I also love the process, the climb. After all, 99.9% of the process is the climb, and if I hated that part I would never do it again just to have a chance to get 30 minutes on the summit in what is often cold and windy conditions.
To be clear I do usually let out a scream at the top and the feeling of achievement when reaching a big summit is amazing. But without the process of the climb – the things I learn during that process and the hardships I overcome – it would be fruitless.
That would be like being dropped off at the top by helicopter, where’s the accomplishment in that?
Arrival Fallacy
If financial independence is your metaphorical summit but you don’t enjoy the process of climbing towards it, I’m not sure you’re doing it right.
The arrival fallacy is a concept that says once you accomplish something, attain a certain goal, or reach a destination, you feel you will reach lasting happiness. It is indeed a fallacy, because you won’t. Having achieved FI and gone way way past it I can assure you the feeling of elation is fleeting.
If you read a lot of content from the personal finance community surely you’ve read that you should not rob yourself of happiness on the way to FI. It’s been said time and time again because it’s damn good advice.
You have to enjoy the process, because the process is basically your life.
If you eat ramen twice a day and rob yourself of all joy in a desperate effort to save money and achieve financial independence, you’ll almost assuredly fail before you get there.
Do you want to look back on your life and have only miserable memories, just to accumulate a pile of money?
Enjoying the climb
It’s About The Climb
Mark Manson wanted to be a rock star, not a rock musician. The person mentioned in the mountaineering forums above wanted to be a mountain conqueror, not a climber.
The question to ask yourself on your journey to FI is, do you want to be financially independent one day in the future above all else, or do you want to be happy now trying to get there?
The Mad Fientist is one of the originals in the FIRE space, and he has said that his biggest regret on his journey to FI was that he went too hard. He was saving so much and cutting so much out of his life that he realized afterwards he wasn’t enjoying it.
It’s great to imagine yourself in the future sitting on a beach and retired early because you saved up a couple million. Just as it’s great for a climber to imagine being on the summit, or an aspiring musician imagining rocking out on stage in front of a large crowd.
But you have to cultivate a life that you enjoy on that journey to FI and early retirement, because that’s 99.99% of the process. Just as the musician must enjoy the endless practice sessions and schlepping gear, and the climber must enjoy the climb.
So are you enjoying the climb?
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This process mindset is critical to FIRE. You have to enjoy the day-to-day, or else you’ll never make it, and it wouldn’t be worth it even if you did. This is one reason I’m such a proponent of lifestyle design and living the “FI” lifestyle long before actually reaching financial independence. I’m not FI yet but my wife and I live overseas, travel frequently, and I get to work on my own business and projects, on my own schedule. I love it.
Great point Brian, if you live the FI lifestyle first the transition should be seamless, You have an amazing set up working for yourself and living adventure!
The climb is good right now. Fortunately, after learning about FIRE in 2018, within roughly 4 months I knew that rushing it would be a mistake.
Rushing = bad. All good things come in time 🙂
FI should be a byproduct of an efficient lifestyle, not a focus of your life. Sadly that’s tough to do.
Dave, I can’t believe you didn’t caption your photos. Number 3 looks like Maroon Bells or Capitol Peak….
Ha, I didn’t caption cuz I didn’t think people cared. It’s awesome to know there’s folks like you out there and BINGO, you got the 3rd one right, it’s South Maroon! Amazing, you must know the 14ers well. The first one is Lindsey, and the second is nearing the summit on Sneffels looking back down.
I climbed South Maroon in my early teens via the Bell Cord and did the North-South traverse a few years later. Capitol about five years ago. That’s enough of those choss heaps, the rock is terrifying.
Haha, you ain’t kidding. And Pyramid across the valley was the worst – it’s basically a big jenga-pile. But the view of the Bells from the summit of Pyramid was spectacular!
I’ve often given the advice in interviews to “enjoy the journey,” don’t just give away all of yours days waiting for the future retirement. After all, the summit might be cloudy, right? Great metaphor, and an important message.
So true Fritz, I can’t tell you how many cloudy and miserable summits I’ve had. But I enjoyed climbing those climbs too!
i can remember when i first got on the right side on the money ledger in the mid 2000’s. i was like a fat guy who got skinny and the process was addicting of building assets. i remember the same went for when i was a decent runner ages ago. i loved practice and my teammates and i beating on one another in the workouts. we even did it in summer without any suburban type coach/parental pushing. i just read the workouts in runner’s world and we did them.
my adirondack local friend goes crazy when he talks about these dimwits with their challenge checklists charging up to the summits and not enjoying the journey. i agree with him. there is a certain code of conduct in the woods and i’m sure you know all about it.
That’s funny about the dimwits. I of course did have to keep track of my 14ers in order to know when I had finished the all, but I didn’t treat it so much as a checklist as just plain fun. I’ve climbed 8 of them twice and some three times! And I’d gladly climb any one of them again because I love it.
Love this advice! If you don’t enjoy the process, find a new goal!
Amen to that, thanks Jessica!
Great article! Nothing motivates me more than paying off debt, but then it feels somewhat empty at the finish line. I’m thinking of using this in real estate, taking a mortgage (which I swore I’d never do!) and then paying off as fast as possible. In any event, I’m so grateful I learned about the possibility of FI, as more than anything, it’s made me more intentional and awake.
If you’re going to do the mortgage thing do it soon because as I’m sure you know rates are climbing and will likely continue going up. Thanks for the comment!
Funny you mentioned this book as I just finished the audio version a couple days ago. Very good book! As I journey toward FI we have indeed found ways to save more and spend less, but our approach is more one of spending less on things we don’t really value and more on things that we do value such as our upcoming trip to Iceland in a couple of weeks! Who wants to finally get to retirement and not have any memories to look back on. You are right, the journey IS your life. 🙂 With some balance you can still achieve your goals and live a life full of joy and happiness.
I did the audio version too and with the sheer volume of f-bombs it felt like I was back in my misspent youth in Baltimore!
Oh wow, that’s good. You have to enjoy the climb and the summit. If I didn’t enjoy saving, investing, and being efficient with money, I wouldn’t have lasted this long. That’s probably the reason why so many people give up on FIRE. They force themselves to climb. I love the climb so I’m still at it.
It’s more than apparent that you love the climb Joe, your blog shows that clearly. Keep setting the example and thanks for the comment!
Just found these words from innovative fiddler Richard Greene in Strings Magazine:
“All you can do is put your art out there. You do the work, you give people a chance to discover it, and you keep on doing it. But most important of all, you have to love it. You have to love what you’re doing, whether or not anyone is looking at it, or listening to it.
“If you’d do it just to do it, just to be happy, then you’ve found what you should be doing,” says Greene. “And if you happen to make some money from it someday, well, then, that’s just something extra.”
Exactly – what a great quote! I love to design so I think my business is a great set up for me, I’d probably be designing stuff whether I sold it or not. Thanks for the quote Mike!
Came up for air, got on the internets; saw this article. “Enjoy the journey” is so hot right now in FIRE space these days, and this post echos that for sure. Wish such a theme had been as persistent in my early FI days; like Carl over at 1500 days, I went hardcore death march mode for years; it was easy to focus on a future goal when my job/life sucked. Hit FI a few years back and was pretty “meh”, if not depressing due to how anticlimactic it was. Defaulted to staying at work because, well, what else was there to do?
Took a lot of inner work to get to the point where I began living in the moment, and actually started living my life, which weirdly led me to doing the RE part of FIRE sooner than I planned. Odd how stuff works out sometimes.
The climbing metaphor is especially apt for me. When I was towards the culmination of burnout with my career and close to hitting my FI number, I found your blog and the accompanying 14er stuff. You helped me plan to summit my first 14er, Mt. Elbert(major thanks for that!). I made it to the top with your advice, which was particularly helpful since I live near sea level. Despite grinding it out, I found I didn’t really enjoy the climb or all of the logistics involved. This led me to doubling down on mountain biking, a hobby I actually enjoy whether I’m climbing, blasting downhill, or just wrenching in my garage. This insight of focusing on stuff I enjoy instead of grinding towards a goal eventually trickled down into more aspects of my life, which led to me having a much better life now.
So thanks again for being a part of the change I needed in my life. I needed that grind up Elbert for stuff to click.
Holy smokes, I don’t know what to say. I remember your email and the advice I gave you and I’m stoked you summited Elbert – what an accomplishment! I’m also stoked that the process of doing so opened the door to finding out what you like even better, that’s really cool. Mountain biking is so much fun and as you said you get the added bonus of being a bike-tinkerer which for geeks like us is part of the fun. Warning – it can get expensive, like really expensive, if you’re not careful, haha.
Dude your comment made my week and I’m so glad I could be a part of your journey. Thanks again and get out there on the trails and shred!!
In the immortal words of Pascal, “It is the struggle that pleases us, not the victory.” Sadly, it seems many forget this and your message here is very welcome. You cannot be a rock star without being a rock musician or summiter without the climb. But really, it is the engaging in the process of achievement that is the real fun – and the real victory.
I’m gonna guess you’ve schlepped your share of gear and dealt with broken strings. It’s all part of the game!
Dave, a lot of folks end up asking the question, “What’s next?” after achieving FIRE.
One of the reasons why I don’t talk about FIRE so much on my site is because there are so many fun and important things to do after FIRE. FIRE is just one stage.. it’s all the things along the journey and what you do with the money that matters most.
I’ve enjoyed Brandon’s journey into music and stuff. I do wonder whether he longs to do something more. I think a lot of us do. If you don’t have kids and have a working wife, it may be easy to lose purpose or have a huge voice to fill.
Every day seems never-ending for me now due to FS, a book I’m marketing, and my two little kids. It would be nice to take a break. I hope I will.
Sam
I imagine with kids they would take up all of your focus pre-FIRE or post, and that’s how it should be. So you may not be getting a break until they’re 18 or so, haha, good luck!