I'm making myself an iced coffee on a lazy Thursday afternoon. I am off on a weekday, which feels luxurious.
It's not just having more time - I live like a baller. Let me explain the many ways, small and large, that my life feels abundant.
I added some oat milk to my iced coffee just now. Oat milk is rich people milk, one of those caviars of milk. At Costco, you can get eight generic oat milks in a box or a dozen Kirkland almond milks. Years as a value-conscious shopper always pushed me to get the milk with the lower unit price, either soy or almond.
Now, financially independent Monopoly caricature that I've become, when I pull my shopping cart to that part of the warehouse, I check the price with my monocle, adjust my top hat to a rakish angle, and load up on oat milk with a devil may care attitude.
When I replaced the oat milk in the refrigerator, it sat next to two ginormous cartons of blueberries - another rich person food. As a kid, my mom used to spring for a once in a blue moon teeny tiny carton of blueberries the size of my fist as a rare indulgence, but they were expensive and imported and my allotment came out to maybe ten from that box.
This is not a strike against my mom - she instilled the same values of frugality I try to pass onto my own kids. These mega-boxes in my fridge come from Chile, and we have them available nearly every week of the year. They are as much of a staple in my kids' lives as rice and beans were when I was growing up.
This summer, I'll be taking my family on a bucket list vacation to not one, but two places(!) of world heritage significance that I've dreamed of visiting together to see the experience through my wife and kids' eyes.
Normally, I plan our trips out with do-it-yourself pride and frugality, but this year, I'm springing for a guided tour to one destination, while the other will be spent staying at the kind of wellness retreat center that gets write ups in Conde Nast Traveler.
How does a gutter flower become a white lotus? A year ago, my wife listed off the number of friends and family members we care about who had received life-changing (and in some cases, life-ending) diagnoses in recent memory. She made the case that we might want to hedge our bets and move one of those big travel summers I'd envisioned a decade from now into the present tense.
Being financially independent meant I could consider this without being pained by the additional cost. While it certainly registers - we'll spend for two weeks twice the sum I spent on last year's three week vacation - it won't impact our long-term goals adversely. I told her she was right, and we made it a hell yes kind of decision.
On the coffee table next to me is a birding guide to one of the countries we'll be visiting on our trip. I bought it used in mint condition for half the list price, because some habits are hard to break.