Sacrifice is not a Four Letter Word?
Is Sacrifice a Four Letter Word?
I am a big fan of sacrifice, The road to financial independence is long. The best way, in my estimation, to reach financial freedom is to front load that sacrifice. It’s a matter of compounding. Not only do monetary investments compound, but also experience and seniority in the workplace. After a good decade of grinding away, momentum kicks in. This is the point when both W2s as well as stature in one’s job skyrocket. There are no shortcuts. No easy ways to bypass putting in the initial effort that is necessary. Yet, sacrifice, it seems, has been getting a bad name as of late. With newer and younger folks discovering the financial independence movement, a backlash has been brewing. I contend, however, that sacrifice is not a four letter word.
Definition Sacrifice: A loss or something you give up, usually for the sake of a better cause.
The Next Generation
A new generation of young people is redefining our vision of retirement and financial independence. These youngsters grew up watching their parents slave away for decades under a traditional work environment with very little to show for their struggles at the end of the tunnel.
Rightly horrified by what they have witnessed, the idea of spending even short periods of time in the typical nine to five dirge is anathema. Work/life balance has become a rallying cry of the generation.
Spurred on by visions of the endless toil of their fore-bearers, career prospects skew towards choice, agility, and freedom to follow the wind in whichever way it blows.
Although I believe sacrifice is not a four letter word, it certainly seems so to this generation that prefers to build a life of purpose from the get-go.
Sacrifice and Fulfillment
Most of the rage against sacrifice seems to center on fulfillment. I believe, however, there exists a false dichotomy among these two entities. They are not mutually exclusive.
My professional pathway is a perfect example. There is no sane way to discuss medical training without using the word sacrifice. In fact, it is not uncommon to hear a physician say that they sacrificed their youth to become a doctor. Yet, in the same breath, they will tell you how fulfilling this life path has been and how they felt great purpose in the journey.
Sacrifice is simply trading one commodity for another. In medical school, I traded my time, money, and sleep for the advantages and joys of training.
And yes, even the current generation is making sacrifices. They are just not calling them sacrifices because they are more bent on the life side of the work/life balance. When you take a mini-retirement at the age of 25 and go backpacking around Europe, you sacrifice career development for life experience.
Sacrifice is not a four letter word. It’s a choice that we all make between competing urges and needs in our lives.
Sacrifice and Deceleration
When I talk about front loading the sacrifice, what I am really saying is that if you make the right work related sacrifices early in your career, the number of sacrifices you make will sharply decelerate over time.
In other words, find a fulfilling career choice early. Sacrifice work/life balance in the beginning. Lose a little sleep. Work a bunch of weekends. Maybe put off the mini-retirement for the first decade of being out in the professional world. Allow yourself to attack a fulfilling career with purpose and intention.
A decade later with money in the bank compounding, your sacrifices will decelerate greatly.
You will be able to forego working nights and weekends if you want to. Mini-retirements and travel will be easier and less costly to your earning power.
You will be coasting on momentum,
Final Thoughts
Life is too short to feel like you are spending every day at your desk in a cubicle doing mindless work and waiting anxiously for the hour hand to progress.
This is no way to live.
However, starting a fulfilling career by sacrificing time and energy during the beginning stages will not only pay endless dividends but will also lead to greater opportunity and less sacrifice later in life.
Sacrifice is not a four letter word.
One way or another, you will have to trade time for money throughout your life.
If you do it while you are young, you take advantage of the compounding effect early.
And we all believe in the power of compounding, don’t we?
Yes, love this… You might have just coined a new “FI” term… front loading sacrifice. That makes perfect sense…. The path to success usually entails some sort of sacrifice. Better to get them out of the way early, and let those choices compound into a much more comfortable and fulfilling life down the road.
Preach on Doc!
And sacrifice doesn’t have to be negative. Many sacrifices build character and teach you about yourself.
From idea to post in less than 24 hours. Impressive content frequency Doc G!
The best part about blogging is using the comments to form better ideas.
Great post. Sacrifice doesn’t get talked about enough. I suspect because a blog post entitled “Ditch the Daily Grind” gets much more traction than a post entitled “Sacrifice is Necessary to Achieve Your Goals”. But I firmly believe that sacrifice is necessary to achieve any worthwhile goal. You have hit the nail on the head when you highlight the importance of choosing to frontload that sacrifice. Making good choices early in life (ie early sacrifice) means you have more options down the road.
-Ray
We do this automatically in medicine. We sacrifice years in training, but the pay off is big.
You know sacrifice has such a negative context. I don’t view starting early as sacrifice so much as focus. Focus early on building to a brighter future. Then if you want it’s easier to goof off later.
Focus brings a much more positive connotation.
Sacrifice is at the very core of life the way I see it. If you embrace it, it becomes fulfillment in and of itself.
Well said. Sacrifice and fulfillment are intimately intertwined.
The younger generations are certainly turning the old establishments on its head. I do think they are on the right track of prioritizing life experiences versus the 9-5 doldrums older generations had to go through. It is too early to see if the people who sacrificed the normal work life now will pay for it later. But hopefully it doesn’t have to be an either or scenario. A right balance may still give enough front loading for later enjoyment.
Good point. The world is not black or white. Maybe some blend works best.
I didn’t see my early years of school and training as sacrifice. I just thought of it as ‘working your ass off in something you believe in’. I’m totally in the same camp as you DocG. Work hard in the early years and reap the harvest in the later years. There is no shortcut to success. I’ve looked.
I think younger generations sometimes think of those initial heavy work years as sacrifice.
There is a philosophy from Zeno of Citium called Stoicism. From wikipedia
Stoicism is predominantly a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world. According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to happiness for humans is found in accepting this moment as it presents itself, by not allowing ourselves to be controlled by our desire for pleasure or our fear of pain, by using our minds to understand the world around us and to do our part in nature’s plan, and by working together and treating others fairly and justly.
It’s contrapoint also from wikipedia
Ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them. It is also the idea that every person’s pleasure should far surpass their amount of pain. Ethical hedonism is said to have been started by Aristippus of Cyrene, a student of Socrates. He held the idea that pleasure is the highest good.[2]
Stoicism has as it’s direction forward. It’s future based and rational. Hedonism has as it’s direction stasis. It pretends once happiness is attained that is the goal and further movement is unnecessary. That’s all well and good until the next moment arrives and stasis is no longer satisfactory.
I’m a stoic. I don’t look at it as sacrifice, but as engaging the moment in a way that controls the trajectory into the future. If that’s 10 or 20 years of saving half, it’s not sacrifice, it’s engaging reality and responsibility. My entrepreneurialism is a multiplier. It allows me to increase my efficiency. All of it however is endeavor. All of it is expenditure of my human capital, turning that into money which can then grow and compound until I have enough security that I can engage in a more leisurely but still stoic existence. Eventually my human capital will exhaust and I can use what I built to survive if not prosper. This is the path of life. I don’t look at stoicism as sacrifice but as rational discipline. Discipline has associated with it the notion of self scourging or mortification.
I think that last paragraph sums up well your generations beliefs. My generation is somewhat in the middle. I fear the younger generations want to forego stoicism (or sacrifice) all together. And if they are not careful, they will find out mid life is not so kind with no money.
I first heard of Stoicism when reading through all of the Mister Money Moustache blog. He has an entire post about it. He would agree with Gasem.
And in principle, I think stoicism is a great thing. But can it go too far?
My first job out of college was a two year stint in investment banking in New York City. I worked on average 90 to 100 hours a week. At times I hated the work, and it put a strain on my relationship with DGal (we were doing the long-distance dating thing at the time), but I pushed through because I knew the experience would open up so many doors career wise and financially. In fact, my investment banking work directly led to my next job (with normal work hours), where I ended up getting 3 promotions over 8 years and seeing my income grow considerably.
I could never work those crazy investment banking hours now, but were it not for that early experience, I wouldn’t be where I am in my career, and hence I wouldn’t be at the point of having achieved FI.
I think front loading is great as long as it doesn’t make you completely miserable.
Do you think the younger generations are lacking in sacrifice? Or do you think that the younger generations have different goals and values compared to older folks? Or maybe different industries have different values too? I don’t know the answer to these questions. But I did hear that a lot of silicon valley companies do look at “life experiences” such as back packing Europe or having “other worldly / life-altering” experience from events such as Burning Man as more of an asset than a liability.
http://www.businessinsider.com/tech-ceos-love-burning-man-2017-8#garrett-camp-co-founder-of-uber-6
I think younger folks sometimes want to jump right to FI from the get go. But 50-60 years of retirement is a long time. A bit of sacrifice in the beginning goes a long way.
Yes, I would agree with that.
Doc G: Great post. I have a little twist to the ending of your post. Sometimes people are better off sacrificing in a higher paying job that they really don’t like but do it in order to save tons of $$ and early on in their career. That way, they can FULLY take advantage of the power of compound interest and then when they are FI, turn to and focus on doing what they LOVE to do without having to worry over $$.
There is definitely wisdom in front loading. While I still advocate grinding away in a job you hate, if you can find something you like, those first few years working hard can really pay dividends.
Sacrifice is a 9 letter word. More importantly it is necessary to achieve FI. I am glad I prepaid the struggle in my 20s and early 30s when I was full of energy.
“prepaid the struggle”…Love it!