Who aims to be FAT in their lives? No one wakes up and says, I would like to be FAT and then goes all out fulfilling the prophecy. No one! FAT just happens from the reality that you find yourself in one day when you take a reality check and realization dawns upon you as you find your fingers still grasping the nachos you were stuffing your face with as you fell asleep.
I think we’re FAT. Like FAT FIRE though, not FAT FAT. For all we talk about on being frugal and living a simple life, we’re in a reality that would qualify as FAT.
| What We Wanted – Ideally | What We Have – Realistically |
| A gorgeous and affordable HDB by the greens | A gorgeous and expensive condo within the greens |
| Travelling by public transport and if needed, a cheap people mover | An over-initial-budget, 2 year old Mazda that is sexy as hell YES WE BOUGHT A CAR! |
| Living by ourselves, managing the kids and home ourselves | A helper |
We’re not the first ones to exclaim “How did we end up being FAT??”and certainly won’t be the last.
Once again, we have yet to dig into the finances to see where we stand versus our FI goals. Life has been hectic for us, the night before I wrote this, we were in the A&E when Coco#1 had a fall and a nasty gash on his gums. The day before that, we were out buying a car which was extremely tiring! A post on that is coming up when we stop and catch a breath!
Truth be told, I’m having trouble reconciling our lifestyle now with our inner selves. We have found ourselves in this reality and try as we might to keep thinking of restructuring ourselves into the reality that we desired all along, we need to look ourselves in the mirror and face a possibility we never identified with before. Maybe we ARE Fat FIRE?
Maybe this is the lifestyle that we want to keep? Maybe we need to reconsider our target nest and work towards a revised and much higher number?
This year has taken a pleasantly surprising turn for us. We were meant to be on a single-income and scrounging away (I cringe as I say that as I’m fully aware of the many trips overseas we have taken) and plotting how to get Mr.C a sweet sabbatical so we can have the first of our many trips on a lifetime in Spain and neighbouring countries. We were pumped and focused and life was going great except that the markets went down before we realized some of the gains we were banking on for better financial security. Not the end of the world but just a bit of a damper we had moved feelings about (refer here and here!)
Just towards the year wrapping up, we’ve suddenly ‘ramped up’ to a dual-income family with a car and helper and not even looking at our favourite FI tracker nor dreaming about our planned trip-of-a-lifetime. Plans can change and people can change! Being dual-income and loving work makes FAT FIRE seem possible (just to emphasize, we’re not all that close to our Lean-FIRE. FAT-FIRE just a probable scenario when we aren’t rushing FI and loving work)
Do you ever dream of FAT FIRE-ing? Have you taken a close look at your lifestyle to actually recognize what kinda FIRE you’re headed towards?
