Interesting article on Nomadic lifestyle

spoon059 wrote:

irishtom29 wrote:
Some of you jaspers must have sore arms from patting yourselves on the back.

Adding contempt to misery is unseemly.

Nah, I'd be willing to bet that most of us planned ahead (see the common theme there...?) and stretched before we started patting. That should alleviate most of the pain.;)

This was written tongue in cheek, but the message is still there. Those that plan ahead tend to be better off when we eventually get to the "ahead" part. Not all will be successful, but most will be far better off.

Like I said, I drop $400 a paycheck into a retirement plan. That is on top of an IRA in which we put "extra money" at the end of the year. That extra $800 every month sure would be nice to spend. Heck, I could have afforded a NEW Ram instead of a used. My wife could afford a NEW car instead of her 10 year old car. We could live in a much larger house. We could eat out more. We could vacation more. We could do a LOT of stuff now... but we are choosing to plan for the future instead. I'm 37 and I've been putting away AT LEAST $300 a paycheck since I was 21 years old.

I should be much better off than the majority of my coworkers... you know the ones, those guys laughing at me for living frugally now. I might fail, I might lose all my money. But I also might do alright. I might learn to leave within my means, even when my means are far greater in 20 or 30 years.

There's got to be a balance. There have been people who saved and pinched penny's all their life only to have their health fail by the time they retire and not get to enjoy life. I'm somewhere in the middle, my wife and I religiously put money away every month but we live in the now too. Tomorrow is never guaranteed and we are healthy and able bodied today. I don't want to save all the fun for when I'm old.

Dan