An Unfortunate Truth

OK. Things were starting to go well. I was making friends. I even got some comments on my blog. A few tweets. A few retweets. I was starting to fit in. Maybe I could hide my unfortunate truth and be one of those people. You know, FIRE bloggers. Those peeps who leap financial hurdles effortlessly, prance around in second-hand capes, and giggle in the face of insurmountable debt.

That could be me. The real me.

Too bad I have to ruin it. Because I’ll never fit in. They will never let me wear a thrift store cape when they learn the truth. It’s an ugly truth. An unfortunate truth. *Shhh! Come close and I’ll tell you. Wait. Can anyone hear? Come closer. Closer. *

I Spend Money!

A lot of it. Wait, wait…don’t tell Mr. Tako (He’s been eyeing my cape!)

I mean, I spend three to four times what some of these FIRE bloggers spend. Root of Good? Forget about it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t spend frivolously. In fact I prefer to see myself like the guys over at ChooseFi. A valuist. But I find value in many things. In fact, I rarely spend money on myself (besides my stealth wealth fail). Life just cost money. I live in a relatively high cost of living area. I have a mortgage. We need extra childcare since both me and the missus have demanding jobs. We broke the budget and sent my daughter to private school after a particularly bad year in public.

So lets look at just a few of my budget items:

Mortgage 22K

Private School 20K

Childcare 25k

Charitable 20K

Travel 15K

And this is just the tip of the stack of hundreds. That’s a budget of like 3MM (Mr Money Mustache) already.

Do I sweat this? No. I have planned accordingly. I have fired up FireCalc so often that I think sometimes the creators are messing with the numbers to get me to leave their damn site.

In other words, I don’t think frugality has such a specific definition.

I think it is in the eye of the wallet holder.