26
Sep
Well, that was intense. =)
Hi again everyone! I’m sorry that I have been completely off the charts for the last few weeks. Our baby was born on the first of September. I absolutely love being a dad, but at the same time, it is a lot more intense than I thought it would be. My hat is off to people like Trent at The Simple Dollar for being able to keep posts up even when he had a new little one around. I don’t know how he did it. My wife and I have been full out taking care of the baby and each other and sleeping for the past three weeks.
Having this little one around really intensifies our goal of financial freedom. I have spent the past three weeks with him and my wife around the house and I absolutely loved it. I loved that I didn’t miss anything in his life, that I was there to support my wife when she needed me, and that my time was my own (even though there were plenty of demands on it). As we look to the future and we have more kids, there is just more and more reason for us to become financially independent. I want to be able to be a stay at home dad with my stay at home mom. It’s still a way off, but if we are very prudent, it could happen in as little as 10 years. 10 years old seems a long way away, with this little one being 10 (!) by the time that happens. And all those years that I would miss in between.
So perhaps there is a new plan that is called for in our lives. I don’t know exactly what it is, but some images from The Four Hour Workweek are in my brain. Perhaps life could be a series of breaks instead of one long break at the end. Certainly in 3-4 more years we’ll have more than enough money saved up to last us for a year off. That way I can be with the little ones when they are little, and the whole family could move to some foreign country just for the experience. Whatever it is, I know that I can’t spend the next 30 years of my life at the full-time work thing. I’m lucky since I am in a relatively high paying field that allows us to save up money quicker than some (although we also live in one the most expensive areas of the country, so that offsets the salary quite a bit!) I’ll keep talking about this in the future as our ideas shape and form. But for now, I’m going to just enjoy spending time with my family!