How dealing with changes to FI plans & calculations can impact your mental health
As soon as I created my FI spreadsheet, something changed for my mental state. At first I would say that it was mostly positive. It made me realize that financial independence is not unachievable. Not just in general, but especially for myself.
Realizing not only that you can achieve FI – but when you can, is extremely helpful to continue to strive for this ambitious goal. Since this is not something you can achieve in weeks or months – but years – you need something to help guide you. A light at the end of the tunnel you might say.
For myself my target was around 5 years ahead. From when I made the spreadsheet I had to work hard for close to 5 years before I could finally call myself financially independent. Most people have a longer timeframe, but it is still very much achievable.
But as soon as I had this spreadsheet with the “holy grail”, or my “moment of truth”, slowly the worry came to focus. Slight changes today or tomorrow could have a massive impact on the 5-year financial plan I made for myself. And in the beginning I made changes to my spreadsheet everytime something changed that would have an impact – to see what actual difference it made.
This is something I will highly recommend that you do not do. This process was definitely not healthy for me – and only when I realized I had to stop updating this spreadsheet that often, I started to feel better again. But this took time – a lot of time to be honest. And it took me longer to get back to a good place mentally than it took for me to mess up my mental health.
Without mental health, the goal is completely irrelevant. And this was something I neglected – something I hope to help others avoid.
Of course you should be able to update your FI spreadsheet, without crawling down into a bad place. Just remember to do it at times where it will give you energy and motivation – not in situations where you cannot deal with the potential negative impact.
My therapist recommended that I only took a look at this spreadsheet once a quarter – maybe even once a year if possible. And forcing myself to live up to this expectation helped me a lot in balancing my mood on a daily basis.
Most people can probably update their spreadsheet once a year if they stick to their plan of living below their means, saving before spending, and investing from these savings. For me this was more challenging due to being an entrepreneur – and with several businesses to his name.
Some say; “more money, more problems”. For me, it was more like “more business, more problems”. I guess that is why people often refer to “focus”, rather than having too many projects at the same time. Something I’ve often thought about, but is much more difficult to actually do on a daily basis. New projects and things to focus on have always been exciting for me. But it has drained my brain for energy for much too long now – one of the many benefits of achieving FI some day.
Another recommendation my therapist gave me was to actively set aside time each week for worrying. This sounded crazy to me, since “worry” is not an active thought of mine. It is just kind of always there in the background, filling my head with noise during the day. If it was one of the really bad days, the bad feeling ended up in my stomach, causing me to eat and drink less.
His recommendation was to block time in my calendar for worrying – a maximum of 1-2 hours per week. And then every time a thought of worry came to my head, I could push it away with the reasoning that I’ve set aside time for this – and that time is not right now.
When I came to that time in the week where I was supposed to worry, the thought of the worries didn’t seem as bad as they normally did. This is the same that happens if you postpone answering emails. A lot of the emails you receive with issues for you to deal with will solve themselves if you postpone answers. The same happened for me with worry. If I had a bad feeling with something on a Tuesday, coming Saturday with time to worry, the issue was already resolved.
Conclusion (TL;DR)
As soon as you’ve made your financial calculations for when you can achieve FI, save the file, and only open it once a year/quarter to make the updates from the last year/quarter.
When you worry – and you probably will – do your best to believe in yourself and that the universe tends to find a way. If one door closes, another door will open if you are patient. I believe in good karma. So as long as you are a nice person, and treat people the way you want them to treat you – all the good you create in the world will come back to you.
Try setting aside time to worry (for example one hour per week) – and make sure to push the worry-thoughts away at any other time. It might sound crazy, but this made a big difference for me.