Thank God for the plague.
Not a phrase you expect your inner voice to say, but I said it.
This pandemic has been all sorts of crazy for all sorts of reasons mixed in with all of the other events of 2020 on a macro scale. Change is in the air, and although it’s stressful, the members of the Financial Independence / Retire Early movement and other business owners that I follow on Instagram are constantly posting wins and success stories. The call to action is to keep pressing on and grab the opportunities available.
For me, that meant that I took what was my 2-hour roundtrip commute and told myself “you have to do something useful with this time, you’re not allowed to waste it.” And let me tell you, that looked like A LOT of different things over the course of the past six months. I’ve re-organized my work-from-home space three times, fixed all the broken jewelry and clothes I’ve been meaning to mend, learn to code an android app that I promptly broke and discarded, started investing in real estate, finally took the plunge and bough a proper microphone for voice acting, landed a few voice acting roles, and I’m learning to actively trade stocks! Whew, that was a long list.
But most relevant to why I’m writing this is that I’ve spent time with myself. I was never an extreme partier, extrovert, go-do-things-by-myself-outside-the-house type of girl, but this isolation bit has really forced me to dig deep. Yes, I’m reading all these self-help and business books, working on my mindset, growing my context, yadi yadi yada. I started borrowing ebooks from the library like crazy, going down the Rich Dad Poor Dad rabbithole, had my mind blown by Atomic Habits, got annoyed by Grant Cardone’s alpha male tone to the point where I had to read 10x Rule outloud in an obnoxious greater-than-thou voice to get through it (just kidding, my loan expired while I was still trying to convince myself I cared), and then came to a full stop with Think and Grow Rich.
And this bit troubled me. Something about visualizing what I wanted couched in a book about making your fortune had me really floundering. No matter what scenario I imagined that I could put a dollar amount to, I would come back to the fact that whatever that goal that could be bought with money was, it was never big enough to light me on fire with inspiration or make me feel like I really had to hussle to achieve it. There was no life-or-death, the-only-way-is-up feeling that I could conjur around making more money. It just isn’t a driving force for me right now. That’s not the space I’m in.
Some background, I was raised in an upper-middle class, Asian American family where debt was anthema, parents paid for college because their kids are their retirement plans, and my mom set the example that woman are good with money. By all means, I was handed a great foundation for pursuing Financial Independence. I studied the “right subject” and “got the right job” and make more than enough to live comfortably in my 2 bed, 2 bath condo with my cat, Abigail. I’m a certified Project Management Professional, which is apparently a ticket-to-ride when job hunting, and I’ve hit a point in my career where the next promotion is more about years of experience than it is about any hard skills I can check the box for.
What I’m saying is, I’ve plateued. And yes, I’m doing the investing shtick. 401k, IRA, HSA, after-tax brokerage, real estate, active stock trading, business consulting, great cool, I know that I can maximize those and build all sorts of other businesses too. But that’s the thing, none of those things are my dreams.
Yes, I love love love to optimize my finances.
It’s like a game to me.
But where I’m at now? Honest to God.
I want to build a family.
Full stop.
That’s all I want. I don’t care about making more money or acquiring more fame or retiring me from my “9-5 W-2 Working for the Man” job. All I want is to find a romantic partner to build a life with.
I feel like I have to caveat this confession by recognizing all the “I don’t need a man”, Beyonce Single Ladies, independent woman, femisnist power stuff that I respect and understand wholeheartedly.
What I’m saying is that I’m lonely, and I don’t find any point in re-programming my brain to erase the social conditioning that trains little American girls that finding a man is a rung on the ladder to being a successful woman. I get that, and I don’t care.
To me, a life partner is the inner circle. The constant companion that knows you day-in and day-out, and therefore conveniently already has all of the context to be your best sounding board without having to re-explain what’s going on with you and why you’re upset about the latest frustration or how exciting it is to reach a tiny milestone. Oh wait, that description applies to several of my ex-boyfriends-turned-best-friends.
What’d I leave out?
Oh no, wait, this might be awkward for some of you. But what I’m also saying is I need that person in my life to do those things for me AND support my ambitions AND be my rock to lean on AND-
to make a life long commitment and have regular sex with.
That’s what I mean.
Yes, I’d love it if they were on this Financial Independence journey with me, were ambitious and successful themselves, and all those other great qualities ladies have on their wishlists. But maybe I need to tell you the story of how it is I even ended up on this path in the first place.
When I hired my collague to design and build this lovely website for me, I had just quit my job and decided to go independent. I had also just asked my boyfriend of two months to marry me, ring and all. He said “sure”, and I thought I was on my way to checking off the “find a life partner” box, and happily planning the rest of my life around him.
I already had my money shit together, so adding my finace into to mix looked like this: He makes good money, spends it on a whim, loves to travel, gives generiously without any expectations of being paid back, and there’s nothing wrong with his financial trajectory. But what my ultra-cost-conservative money mindset said to me was that he’s expensive to keep. Everytime he’d just randomly buy a new computer monitor or a tv or book a hotel for a trip to Vegas, it was a punch in the gut to me.
My coping mechanism?
Make more money. Build up such a nest egg that he could do whatever he wanted, and there would still be plenty for retirement, moving in together, having kids, and all that fun stuff. Oh, and I also happened to be bored out of my mind at work. So I started reading articles on Money.com and following Jamila Souffrant of Journey to Launch, and became part of this Financial Freedom / Retire Early movement that was coming into the spotlight. Increasing my income, starting my own business, continuing to watch my expenses like a hawk, great things. I had plans and ambitions of being an independent business owner and building a network of consultants to work with me on projects, bringing positive change to people’s businesses, and bouncing ideas off of my fiance, feeling proud of the path I was on.
And then the romantic relationship took a nosedive…
and then took a u-turn,
and then sank to the bottom of the ocean.
That didn’t stop me from continuing my plans to become financially independent and exploring ways to get there faster and succeed in that way, but what it did do is break my heart every time people in the community got excited about all the cool tax strategies you could leverage if you were married and your spouse was X. Or when guest speakers would talk about how having a dual income or a stay-at-home partner or even just the emotional support of the spouse got them to where they are today.
And all I can say is that I felt alone.
Everytime a guest speaker would talk about all that they achieve on their financial freedom journey and then drop the word “we” into the conversation, I feel a twange of dissappointment. Usually, the story is of how one spouse had to convince the other to get onboard with the investing and the saving and the retiring early, and I’m left with a question mark. If I want a romantic partner, do I have to find them while they’re ignorant of the FI/RE movement and coach them to see it my way? Or do I have to just somehow meet this single man who is already part of the FI/RE movement and hope that that’s a romantic fit? Worse yet, how do you manage that investment partnership mixed with a romantic relationship when you met them on a DATING APP? Like what even? All I have is questions and confusion, and if you’re into FI/RE, you know that this isn’t stuff I can talk about with my real-life friends.
So that’s why I’m ACTUALLY hitting the post button today. Because I feel alone. I feel like I don’t have a community of like-minded individuals who are dealing with this aspect of the struggle to reach financial independence. Where are all my single FI peeps? Does anyone else feel like I do? Who else is trying to reach FI solo, but still wants to find love?
Leave a comment below and let me know I’m not alone.