5 Tips for Coast FI Dads to Balance Work and Family
A friend and fellow dad recently asked me how I balance freedom over my time with covering my current financial obligations. It’s a great question, and I think it comes up a lot when you first hear about Coast FI or Slow FI.
If you are coasting to financial independence or on the path to reach Coast FI, here is the cool thing: You only need to work to cover your living expenses. Once you’ve saved and invested enough for retirement, you can simply turn off contributions and let your assets grow and compound for decades in the background.
You are now free to match your work to your living expenses. So, if you need $5k to live comfortably each month, earn your $5k in as much or as little time as you need, and spend the rest of that time however you like—with your family, enjoying hobbies, reading books, etc.
Whether you’ve reached Coast FI or are on the journey to Coast FI, here are five tips to help you create a healthy balance between work and family:
Stop moving the goalpost.
One of my favorite personal finance quotes of all time comes from Morgan Housel’s book The Psychology of Money. In it, Housel writes:
“One of the most important financial skills is getting the goalpost to stop moving. It’s also one of the hardest.”
When balancing your work and your family, getting the goalpost to stop moving is critical.
Think of it like this: the more you want, the more you need to work to buy the things you want. The more you work to buy the things you want, the less time you can spend with your family. So, the more you want, the less time you spend with your family.
Everything in life is a tradeoff. The more shiny stuff you buy, the less time you have to hang with the family, plain and simple.
Now, all that said, it’s perfectly normal to want to upgrade things, and there are things in life that are worth buying. But, if you’re starting to get tired of the 5-year-old car and daydreaming about an upgrade, just be candid with yourself about the tradeoff.
Sure, you can spend the money and upgrade your car, but understand that you will need to spend additional time at work to pay for that car, time you could be spending with your family.
Understand the role of a provider.
I think the role of a dad has evolved pretty significantly over the last few decades. The old narrative is: “Dad is meant to be a financial provider. So dad goes out, works as many hours and jobs as it takes to provide for the family, and tries to be as successful a businessman as he can be.”
While there are many benefits to this approach, including financial security, I think the role of a provider has taken on new meanings.
Your family needs you for more than your earning abilities. Your family needs an emotional provider, an educator, and a listener. Your family needs you to provide your time and life energy, not just monetary value.
When you begin to view it this way, it can help you slow down and challenge the existing narrative.
If you can earn enough to provide financially in 20 hours of work each week, why would you need to work more than that? Why wouldn’t you take the additional time and give it back to your family, providing for them in other ways?
Every time I’ve heard a story about a dad going back to work the day after their child is born, I have cringed. If you are financially able, why wouldn’t you take that time to provide care for your partner and child?
Once you realize that you are much more than a financial provider, you might begin to look at the work/family equation a bit differently, opting for more free time over additional income.
Find flexible, seasonal, part-time, or freelance work.
I think one of the essential keys to coasting is finding work that will allow it. Sure it might be great that you can cover your expenses in 20 hours of work per week, but that doesn’t mean your current job will allow you to put in 20 hours for the week and be done.
Most employers want to maximize the amount of value they can extract from their employees, and why not, this is the way.
For you to have control over your time, you need to find work that will allow it.
For me, this looks like a combination of seasonal and freelance work. I work as a seasonal tax preparer for TurboTax every year from January to April. I specifically chose this job because not only does it have a definitive start and endpoint, but it also allows me the ability to set my own schedule during that time, as long as I hit a minimum of 20 hours per week.
Depending on my family’s financial needs each year, I can choose to grind hard for the tax season, racking up as much overtime as possible, or, I can choose to coast through, putting in the minimum 20 hours while taking that extra time each week to use as I please.
In addition to tax prep, I work year round as a freelance personal finance writer, writing blog posts and articles for various companies. The beauty of this work is that I can do it from anywhere at any time, and I can scale it up or down as needed.
There are endless opportunities for flexible work and infinite combinations of freelance, part-time or seasonal work that you can use to create the right work situation in your life. In the end, it just boils down to being intentional about what you want, and creating a clear path to get you there.
Be where your feet are.
“Life gives you plenty of time to do whatever you want to do if you stay in the present moment.” — Deepak Chopra
This is essential advice for anyone: Be present. If you are at work, be at work, 100% focused on the task at hand. When work wraps up for the day and you’re spending time with the family, be there, focus on your partner and kids, stay in the moment.
By being where your feet are, you will feel more balanced while also giving your work and family the undivided attention each deserves.
Trust the math.
Last but not least, trust the math. I can’t tell you how many people in the FIRE movement are suffering from one more year syndrome. Even though they have hit their financial independence number and checked the math every way to Sunday, they still think: “Maybe I should keep working for just one more year to pad things a bit.”
Coast FI is no different: it can be scary to downshift your work life once you’ve saved enough to cover your future retirement needs.
But, if you’ve run the numbers and know that your retirement is taken care of and you just need to cover living expenses, trust yourself. Start coasting and regain control over your time, my guess is that you won’t be disappointed.