Paridhi Kothari, Sangeet Chandaliya
Context
After discussing with Paridhi what FI means to us, we started researching how much time and money would it take to reach our goal.
There are primarily 2 factors that determine this calculation - our needs and our wants. We survive off of our needs. Our wants, on the other hand, make us happy — some in the short term (a dessert) and others in the long term (a cycle, perhaps).
For a healthy FI journey and post-FI life, we decided to focus on our long-term happiness, in addition to our needs. We reviewed the past few months to come up with a list of things that have made us truly happy.
Oddly enough, they weren't things at all!
Happiness and Financial Independence
An important step in our journey is calculating our “FI number”. That is, the minimum sum of money we’d need to save (read 'invest') before we retire, to be able to live on the interest from our savings (read 'investments').
To calculate this, we tried to understand the financial implications of our needs and our wants. We survive off of our needs. Our wants, on the other hand, make us happy — some in the short term (a dessert) and others in the long term (a cycle, perhaps).
For a healthy FI journey and post-FI life, we decided to focus on our long term happiness, in addition to our needs. In a way, COVID-19 has made us realize our priorities. We reviewed moments from the past few months to come up with a list of things that have made us truly happy.
'Things' that made us happy
Paridhi:
- Spending time with my family (Papa, Ma, Bhai, Sangeet).
- I feel both healthy and at peace after doing yoga, dancing, and cycling. And this feeling is incredible.
- I enjoy preparing my own meals, trying out new recipes, and engaging my mind to understand what would make my meals even healthier and tastier. I also often use this time to catch up with my friends and family. This time, thus, is dually special for me.
- I enjoy going out to new places.
- I enjoy meeting my friends whenever I can.
- I feel happy after I have read something worthwhile. I get a singular rush from having written something good.
Sangeet
- Playing cards with my parents every night - I am happier when my team wins
- Discussing how my day went with Paridhi, and cracking jokes without thinking
- Pranking / irritating my sister and my grandmother
- Working on difficult problems
- Taking out some time every day to read an interesting book or an article
- Investing our savings
- Watching anime, comedy specials, and sports highlights (provided that I choose to do so consciously)
What we learned from our Lists
- Our lists have a few similarities as well as a few differences. And that's fine! After all, we do have different personalities and different interests.
- Ironically enough, most of the things weren't things at all — they were experiences! And, these don't cost us any money.
- We didn't restrict our list to some arbitrary number of experiences that we derive happiness from. It's just that there are only so many that make us happy.
- Most of these are experiences that we have on a daily basis — and are not one-off moments.
- Writing down what makes us happy has helped us realize that we don't need to buy into prevalent narratives that tell us that an expensive wedding, a 4BHK home, or a big car will make us happy. It made us focus on experiences that we actually do want to spend our money on! For example, we want to have a small library in our home. We also want to travel the world, stay in different countries and experience their cultures.