05 Dec Article Review: Mr. Crazy Kicks Talks Early Retirement

Every so often I come across an article I that so closely aligns with what I try to articulate to my clients that I just want to tell the world about it. Yes, that’s the life of a personal finance coach – sound advice about managing money gets this girl’s pulse racing.

Mr. Crazy Kicks is a recent member of the Early Retirement Club, the membership of which is simple: being so kick-ass at managing spending that you can retire well before your sixties. I found myself nodding my head as I read a recent post of his: “How to Retire Early: It’s All About the FI Lifestyle.”

There are a few awesome lessons that even average folks who don’t necessarily strive for early retirement of Mr. Crazy Kicks’ magnitude can achieve.

A couple lines really stood out to me:

“They go on a financial diet in hopes that one day they will be financially free and the sheer bliss will outweigh all the years of suffering. But just like a diet, depriving yourself will only be tolerable for a small period of time before you relapse.”

In other words, your financial well-being depends on your ability to make long-term commitments to things like your budget, spending habits, and the like.

Just like the yo-yo dieter who fiercely overextends himself, the over-ambitious budgeters often end up spending more in the long run when they get burnt out by Spartan spending conditions.

The moral at the center of this is, simply: the best financial practices are those that you can stick with. To frame it another way: the worst financial resolutions are the ones that don’t last.

It’s all about adherence. A plan that you can’t stick to is actually worse than you plan at all, since it comes with the price tag of you feeling crappy with yourself for not sticking to it.

As CrazyKick’s puts it, “if you don’t feel like budgeting, then screw it. If you’re already busy and don’t enjoy it, you’ll never make time to do it.”

Indeed. Couldn’t have said it better myself. A better plan for budgeting might be to figure out how to live a life that doesn’t revolve around spending. A recent study at Harvard suggests that happiness comes from experience, not things.

For anyone looking to keep tabs on Mr. Crazy Kick’s journey, I more than urge you to follow along and stop by his blog..

Tell him I sent you.