By: Revanche

FIRE vs everything else?

January 24, 2018

I’ve been battling back some seriously expensive impulses lately. It’s been months of being grumpy because my rational side knows it’s right. It’s not the right time or it’s not in the budget for us, given our financial goals.

My irrational sliver of self continues to whisper and it’s frustrating the snickets out of me. It continues to say, “yes, but ….” HUSH, YOU.

I make pragmatic decisions every single day, regardless of what I wished or hoped or wanted. It’s easy because my first priority is to be efficient and effective. So why won’t my whole self settle down?

This is my attempt to work out what the problem is.

It’s relatively easy to say that we will go to Japan for a three week food fest or Australia and New Zealand to hike for a month someday but not this year because I don’t want to leave Seamus that long. I’m still traumatized. Those are my castles in the sky. I know the kind of money we’ll need to have ready to spend, and we are not ready to spend 5 stacks of money on a vacation between dogsitting (3 weeks away would cost at least $1000!), airfare for three, lodgings, food, and so on. Time off isn’t easy to come by right now, either, but that’s neither here nor there without the money piece settled.

I’m fine with giving up some things now so that we can have financial freedom later when it’s going to be critical for my health to have that freedom – we moderate eating out and travel, for example. We don’t stop them, we just don’t do it every week. But some thoughts keep chugging around my brain like they’re stuck on a toy train track, refusing to accept the pragmatic “No.”

I’ve always wanted a three dog pack again, like when I was younger, but oh how quickly the costs of multiple dogs can add up if you aren’t rooted to one spot for years. It worked when I was growing up because we were! We never went on vacation and someone was always home even if someone else was working all day and night or traveling for work.

Now, we both work and also prefer to adopt larger, older dogs. The latter preference increases costs because they invariably have health problems and need a lot of work, I refuse to just ignore my pup’s ailments. The former means that we can’t easily travel with more than one dog. Heck, it’s already expensive to travel with just one dog to bring with us or board. So that’s one huge project I want to take on even though our time and my energy is severely limited with a toddler to chase and parent, and with Seamus’s existing problems. But also, I want this for Seamus! He longs for canine companionship, and was really hoping to find that in Doggle, but we lost him. I feel like a second dog would make both of us very happy! But it would be such a big addition to the family.

PiC is on board with the idea though, so we’re slowly working on taking small steps to make this happen sooner rather than later. We met an absolutely darling medium sized dog in need of a home, fostering with some really good people, and we’re seriously talking about adopting her, whether it’s this pup or another one. We both want Seamus to have the cuddly companionship he clearly craves, but because we don’t compromise on our pets’ quality of life, we have lots of logistics to work out first.

Pivoting to the other big addition, I can’t shake the feeling that I want a second child even though everything rational in my mind and body are screaming NAY, TIS A TERRIBLE IDEA.

My mind says we’d have to come up with another $20,000 a year for daycare, $14,000 a year for college savings, and oh good grief, diapers, and bottles, and pregnancy which was 75% terrible and who is going to watch JB when I go into labor?? It isn’t ONLY about the money but money is always a huge factor. Let’s face it – our income is currently a zero sum pie. If we’re spending something on the order of a full salary on another two dependents in the family, that’s money we’re not investing for our sometime-early retirement to spend quality time with said family before I crash and burn. How do we balance all of these priorities even if we should have all of them? (See: health.) Conclusion: Terrible idea.

My body wants nothing to do with the whole pregnancy thing, risking PUPPs again, labor, risks associated with labor, recovery from labor, struggling to fit into any clothes again, sleep deprivation for at least a year or more. Even if I didn’t clearly remember the horrors of any of those, I blogged about it so I have it in writing. Some women have glowing pregnancies – I was not one of them. I’ve finally got pain meds that work to control the frequency of my flare-ups – I’d likely have to stop them because it might be terrible for a developing fetus.  I definitely stopped using all prescribed opioids when trying for JB because the benefits then were far too low to be worth any risk. But the truth is, for a lot of these medications, they think it’ll be bad but can’t be sure. I did take the current meds when breastfeeding and JB was completely fine but that’s different than when gestating. So, we’re talking about the return of the ovulating which is awful and triggers pain flares, and no significant pain medication, just to try to see if we can conceive. Because, as with the first pregnancy, it’s completely unclear if we’ll even be able to conceive. Conclusion? Terrible idea.

Sibling rivalry – JB still thrills to have a baby about for hugging, and was over the moon when a friend with tiny infant came to visit. It may have just been the novelty but this kid has a consistent desire to nurture young babies and it makes my heart melt. But how different is it when you have to keep the kid and share your parents, though? Looking at my own sibling, though I’m the younger one, the idea of a healthy sibling relationship is hard to imagine. We could never make this decision based on what we think JB wants because ze can barely make up zir mind about breakfast some days, but I can’t ignore that zir life will be impacted as well. For good or ill? I don’t know. The impact of JB on our lives has been a net positive.

Last, what about my career? (Congratulate me for thinking of this priority last for the first time in my life. Clearly, I have reformed from my workaholic ways!) We were very creative in raising JB in the first year, juggling both our jobs and a patchwork of help with part time care since we lost our affordable nanny and daycare didn’t have space for zir yet, but can I really handle working first and third shift again like that with a toddler in the mix? This is the part of me that wants it all – I want to cuddle my kid in their first year, every day, all day, even on the grouchy days and I still want to have my full time salary and status at work. I still want to be the Head Boss of My Division. But where is that energy coming from? Third shift work means getting even less sleep than I do now, performing at less than 100% at work, and I’m not in love with the idea of being a cotton brained zombie for another few years. But I thought it was entirely worth it to be able to hug my child even as ze tried to squeak some opinions on my conference calls, and maybe it would be again.

In the end, these are huge questions for me and us: Do I have it in me to raise a second? Do we? How do I squash these feelings if we don’t? How do I reconcile being ok with choosing, essentially, money and FIRE with my family in its current form, over growing my family?

NOTE: Comments and thoughts on working through your own thought process, and how you did it if you did, are very welcome but it should go without saying that I’m not asking for advice on whether we should have more dogs or kids. My regular readers know this, newer readers may not.

:: How did you make the decisions to add to, or not to, your own (human or furry) families? If you have multiples, was adding the second or third harder than adding the first?

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