i knew this guy that was all into those big personalities doling out personal finance info. we were in school together. at the time i was just frugal due to my former and then-current circumstances. my friend was far more comfortable, but wasn't dumb with money so he managed to hang onto it better than his parents did theirs.

10 years later, we had both improved our income. in the interim, i had gotten into reading about personal finance. my takeaway was about developing my own decision tree for what to do with each month's unallocated income. emergency fund vs. student debt vs. long term/goal savings vs. retirement, with the benefit being that once i had it figured out, i stopped having make decisions every payday about it. i just put the money where i went based on current conditions and then got back to my life. when emergencies came up, i had a fund for that and used it. i adjusted the size of the emergency fund based on stability and risk.

all that to say, i came up with a way to personally relate my income to my lifestyle to my goals. admittedly, it was pretty low key, but that is sort of the unspoken victory of personal finance: it's personal. there are things i do not give a shit about, that don't bring me joy, and i can skip doing those things and treat myself in other ways that i do enjoy... without feeling like i'm being irresponsible. after being poor for a long time, there is a real victory in creating that distinction for myself. it turns out, my personal satisfaction is a cheap thing. the real benefit was rarely needing any executive function to make operational spending decisions anymore. just put the money where it goes and spend it when it needs spending. car shit its bed? well, that's budgeted. i shit the bed? that's budgeted too!

anyway, my friend was in much better circumstances than me, but he was deep into the ramsey sphere of B.S. by this point. we could talk personal finances easily and shared the jargon, but he was always thinking aggressively about "putting money to work". retirement and long term savings weren't flashy enough, so he was always looking for those "opportunities" to try and acquire "money-making" assets. or investing in a self-employment scheme that he put together, but was far more work than he anticipated and had to exit a few years later. or taking the highest paying job he could find that required doing miserable work and spending +3 hours a day commuting. that "hustle" kinda shit. his financial setup was very impersonal to his actual circumstances.

i had been sliding into marxian thinking about my time/labor and was absolutely moving in the other direction. i was/am always on the lookout for things and ways to reduce my operational costs so i never have to work more hours than is absolutely necessary to achieve the cost baseline. nor do i have to look for opportunities ascend upward to positions of more responsibility and stress for more income. my goals are all in service to that end: reduce long term costs. learning cheap ways to eat healthy and buying the things needed to make it easier. i dropped significant bucks and took a paycut to relocate across country to a job/place with a very limited commute requirement and access to civic/public transit infrastructure, bike trails, etc. when i spend savings its for lowering energy use and reorienting toward renewables. i am within striking distance of having a commute that is short, sweet and powered by home solar.

there's no real flash to me, but my professional situation is calm/engaging and the things i get excited about are simple. i have much to do before i can really start kicking my feet up, but it all makes sense and is within reach over the next years. i don't know that i could retire early, because healthcare is FUCKED in the US, but i could probably negotiate some kind of nominal job where it's almost like i am retired.

my friend, the ramsey acolyte, has hit some frustrating dead ends, drives hours and hours a day to work with complete assholes (think wannabe MAGA chud influencers) in an unstable professional landscape of toxic competition and i think he's locked into the climb where if he doesn't continually make significantly more and more money by skipping rungs on the ladder, it may all come crashing down. just thinking about living like that makes me wanna BARF.

it's sorta weird because he calls me to brag about shit every year or so, but none of it sounds good to me.