Do you find yourself laying in bed, sick to your stomach, worrying about each purchase you have made recently or financial decision you have to make?
Or perhaps you obsess about not achieving your FI goal and being broke, even though deep down you know that you are financially stable and resourceful enough to always produce an income and eventually hit that goal.
Maybe you find you have missed out on opportunities, lost friendships, isolated yourself in search of your optimal financial performance.
This is all a product of Destination Anxiety (DA), something I find myself battling with on a sometimes-daily basis. It is unhealthy and I don’t have the answers, I want to make it very clear that I am not a therapist, councillor or phycologist, I am just a regular Aussie guy trying to achieve FI that wants to start the conversation and share some things I do to ease it when DA strikes.
I would define Destination Anxiety in FI as ‘Delaying happiness until your personal Financial Independence goal is reached’. Often for us in the FI community this is your FI number, the magical number where all your stress, anxiety, problems are resolved and you can sail off happily into the sunset…..or so you think.
At least for me that’s what my anxiety tells me, and I find myself being consumed by every small expense in my life and fear of making the wrong decision at the wrong time. It is ok to feel like this, you’re not alone
Happiness is worth much much more that the time spent dwelling over every little decision, or worrying about an often arbitrary net worth figure.
My main DA causes and how I deal with them:
1) Be happy in your work. We spend majority or our time either asleep or at work, if during those precious waking hours in your workplace you aren’t happy, you need to change. I understand that is easier said than done, I have worked in roles I wasn’t particularly happy with in the past, I also knew that I had bills to pay and couldn’t exactly drop everything to pursue a career as a florist or something immediately. Instead I decided to invest in myself by taking on some external study and working towards a job internal to my organisation as a project manager. Something that I knew would build life skills but it also gave me a fresh outlook on my work.
2) Acknowledge that ANY progress is GOOD progress. This extends beyond how much you have saved or how much you have earnt this month, obsessing over your FI progress and seeing a flat month or a negative month is not reflective of failure, it’s a number, and you are progressing even if the numbers don’t say so.
You are still progressing towards FI and any month that you track your progress, regardless of the result is a positive outcome. You are taking control of your money and putting it to work!
3) When spending time on forums do not compare your progress to anybody. I can’t stress how important this is and how much of a contributing factor to DA this is for me. Remember we are all on our own journey and the fact we are taking the time to become financially literate at any age is a huge step in the right direction. There will always be the few people on forums who love to humbly brag about how young they are and how much net worth they have amassed, dont get me wrong i am super happy and proud of those achievements, but take them on face value, extract some key takeaways and take some motivation out of it for yourself.
Just my thoughts, another post that’s given me a bit more of an idea.