Is the Financial Independence Community Inherently Judgmental?

Do you feel pressured to do something perfectly? Do you feel like “they” expect you to do everything to its fullest extent or most extreme manifestation (even if you secretly don’t know who the ever loving hell “they” are)? Are you **cough, cough** perhaps putting that pressure on yourself? If not, then feel free to head on out of this blog post, because it ain’t for you. This is for the folks who internally wrestle with the am-I-doing-enough question on a constant basis, and are perhaps comparing themselves to others who seem to be doing a better job.

With that out of the way, welcome dear fellow obsessor! There are a couple arenas in life where I personally feel the expectation of 100% commitment and/or perfection most palpably. I’ll start with the one that isn’t personal finance: Environmentalism. Then I’ll tell you how I’m dealing with both of them.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the greenest of them all?

I’ve always been pretty much a granola crunch. Since I was a teenager, I have been obsessed with saving the planet. I was lucky enough to have a mom who supported my journey. We recycled for years before there was a city-run program and when I stopped eating beef at age 14, she totally had my back. Anyway. Around 10 years ago, I was talking to my friend Trevor about a mutual acquaintance who professed to be an environmentalist, but had some habits I felt were decidedly un-green. (If you know colour theory, I guess that makes them red.) Yup, I was getting up on my soapbox while slipping into my judgy pants. I was all, “Yeah, she rides her bike and composts but she uses mainstream laundry detergent and her toilet paper isn’t recycled! And did you see her getting her coffee in a paper cup? What a hypocrite! Why does she even bother?!” Trevor is a scientist and a fellow-treehugger so I assumed he’d back me up. Instead, he looked at me for a moment and gently and said, “But just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you should do nothing.”

Well. That shut me up, didn’t it? Of course he was right. And who was I to judge anyway? I’m no David Suzuki over here. When it comes to green living, zero waste, and using clean stuff on our bodies and in our homes, everybody is going to find their own mix of strategies and commitments that is sustainable for them personally – sustainable in terms of their time, mental and physical energy levels, and their pocketbook. And within Trevor’s words was the implication that small everyday actions we take to save our planet ABSOLUTELY add up over time. Hmm. What does that remind me of?

Fast forward many years, and I still remember Trevor’s words as if he said them yesterday. They come to my mind when I’m hard on others or myself for not taking every last little green action possible. Whenever I catch myself thinking along those judgy lines, I remind myself that a) I’ve got a lot of other shit on my plate and I cut myself a break. b) Other people have a lot of shit on their plates and I cut them a break. Come to think of it, I’m finding joy in avoiding any claim whatsoever to perfection, “100%” or “total” anything. I’m happy to occupy a little spot on my “kinda” spectrum. I’m not 100% green. I’m greenish. I’m not vegan, I’m veganish. I’m not… oh, you get the idea.

Finding joy in the “ish”

While people like Old Andrea would judge Now Andrea for not being 100% committed to the planet, I want to pat her head and say, “Oh, honey, there is no such thing as 100%.” And in any case, if it gives you joy to point at me and yell, “Hypocrite!” I’m good with that. Yell yourself hoarse. I know in my own conscience that what I’m doing is sustainable in my life. Maybe someday when I don’t have a young child who needs near constant attention I will have more leisure time to make my own shampoo bars in my off-grid homestead! That would be really lovely. (Okay, that sounds flippant but it’s not. That would seriously be my dream come true.) But right now I’m happy with cooking mostly plant-based meals from scratch every night, recycling and figuring out how to compost in a city that just kinda doesn’t.

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the most frugal of them all?

So how does the joy of “ish” apply to personal finance? Many writers before me have pointed out the symbiosis of environmentalism and frugality, so these are not strange bedfellows.

I’m a member of several online FI forums, where I have picked up a tonne of frugal tips, plenty of which I have attempted and adopted, while others I recognize as too extreme for me. For instance, I gave up my salon visits and now routinely colour my hair at home. Woohoo! Frugal win! I’ll definitely keep that up. However, it would be most frugal to simply not colour my hair at all. Or to shave my head. These are totally options. But my whole jam is Nourished by FIRE, and I wouldn’t feel nourished doing either of those things. I don’t want to feel starved and pinched and parched on my way to FI. I want to glow and be radiant and happy.

While there is certainly heaps of good information being shared in our online community, and plenty of cheerleading going on, I also regularly observe a bit of judgmental commentary – usually (though not always) for not being frugal enough. We regularly tell each other to eschew the “keeping up with the Jonses” ethos of consumerism only to easily adopt a Freaky Friday version of it – one where we try to out-frugal each other to ever greater extremes. At our worst moments, we’re a crowd of reverse snobs.

We regularly tell each other to eschew the “keeping up with the Jonses” ethos of consumerism only to easily adopt a Freaky Friday version of it – one where we try to out-frugal each other to ever greater extremes. At our worst moments, we’re a crowd of reverse snobs.

“He calls himself Mustachian but he takes public transit. What a diva!”

“Oh yeah? You think you’re frugal with your ketchup sandwiches? That’s nothing. I just ate road kill and foraged weeds for supper, and meal prepped the rest for lunches all week!”

So, to come around to my click-baity title, is the FI community inherently judgmental? The movement asks us to question long-held beliefs, habits and “what everyone else is doing” in general, which perhaps carries a slight risk of overdoing it. For instance, we know that others have peeled back their spending to such a degree that a scarcity mindset takes hold and depression sets in. That’s a huge red flag that one’s level of frugality is not sustainable.

While we’re on this journey and making our various commitments large and small, let’s go easy on ourselves and each other, okay? Stay classy. There is always someone more frugal than you. The fact that some of us either can’t or choose not to make every cost-cutting measure known to humanity doesn’t trivialize the changes we are able to make, and it definitely doesn’t mean we should give up. Thanks, Trevor, for staying in my head all these years.