About us…
We are a couple in our early 30’s with very different approaches towards money. Me — Mrs. OFJ — am naturally frugal. I rarely buy anything unless I have been missing it for a while and truly need it. My partner — Mr. OFJ — loves to live life in the moment. Money is something that allows him to do just that and also, he can always work to earn more, so why sweat it?
Needless to say, it was not love at first sight. Fortunately, we soon realized that this is but a small aspect of each of our lives and what brings us together is so much stronger. We both love science — we met during our PhD studies in Bioengineering — we both love to travel — we fell in love during an awesome trip to Thailand — and we both love to learn and never say no to new experiences. So we are now building a life together that will revolve around our 3 great passions: science, travel and exciting new challenges! Investing is thus nothing but a tool that will allow us to build this life we aspire to.
In the process of building this life together, we found a great balance between us two. I am much more relaxed when it comes to money. He has helped me realize that there is great value in spending money on something that will save me time or improve my life in a measurable way (even if I don’t strictly need it). I, on the other hand, have helped him think more in the long term. There is also great value and much to be gained in delayed gratification.
Like so many in the Financial Independence community, we owe a lot to Mr. Money Mustache for introducing us to the topic, to JL Collins and the Bogleheads for showing us a clear path for our investments and to ChooseFI for being a daily source of inspiration and amazing content.
We are very much not FI yet, but we have decided to live our best life now! Inspired by Slowly Sipping Coffee we plan to do a Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC) going into 2022. We are building a financial plan that will allow us to live a life of our own design that will hopefully include lots of travel and eventually our own business back in Portugal (where we are originally from). This blog will help crystallize our plans — as it will force us to think things through as we implement our decisions — and document our journey — how great is it to have something we can reread decades from now and share with friends and family?
For everyone else that chooses to follow us on our ride — a warm welcome! Hope you enjoy it and feel free to comment and share your own journey, we would love it!
See you on the path,
OurFIJourney
