I am vacationing in Hawaii with my kids and relaxing and enjoying doing nothing. The road trip was awesome and fun and amazing. But it was tiring, exhausting, and stressful in it's own way. The last week of apartment hunting and learning our way around a new city was exciting but hard with two small children. Worrying about making the right decision but knowing it's a rental.

Also I'll admit it's a bit of a hard pill to suck knowing we are "renting". Easy to say and hard to do. Realizing that we hadn't rented in over decade. It's not just the money but answering to someone else!

Anyway though as I'm in Hawaii I'm enjoying my family and my mom keeps saying "oh I'm spending so much money with everyone visiting". You LAL, your brother, his family, etc. She says I'm retired on a fixed income. I point out her income with my dad's make them ineligible to contribute to a Roth IRA. And my parents still "contribute" to a backdoor roth at 84 and 62 years old! They draw on pensions, IRAs, SS, and investments, and make $200k/year and my mom is worrying about money.

They own two homes free and clear and she's worried about not having enough. She says the bills seem more than her monthly money coming in and she doesn't want to touch a penny of investments. I want to smack her. I want her to SPEND the money on herself and do whatever the HELL she wants. I keep telling her to spend, spend, spend. Enjoy it. Bathe in it. I don't know go on every wild and crazy trip or buy a Tesla or something ridiculous. But the idea of her spending her money I think she's going to die with it.

Yeah okay readers I know perhaps that's her pleasure but I don't want to inherit that much money. I would rather have had some cool story about my mom sky diving at 85 because she's spending her money.

I have a lot of my mom's financial personality I can't help it. My DH has his parents and they are the same way. We were raised to it and it's hard for us not to be this way. But my DH is pushing me along the route to stop worrying about money. He's talked about us not having income for a year. He's talked about us not saving anymore for retirement as aggressively. That perhaps it's time for us to cutback and relax the purse strings.

I'm starting to believe him. I think the purpose of money is to enjoy your life. Whether it be working or not. My DH pointed out in a recent conversation that we've saved and I've planned as though we are stopping work in 10 years. That he'll sit around and "retire" early like Mr Money Mustache. The truth? He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to stop working at 45 or even now. He likes to work and wants to keep doing it. Being able to say FU to a company is great, and he likes having that freedom. But he isn't ready to stop working.

So I guess I have to relax and start to stop worrying if we have enough. I have to stop and smell the roses. I think we'll have enough even scaling back by age 55. Beside if I don't I might miss a moment.

I am trying to convince my mom to not miss a moment either. Here is my perfect moment recently.



It really was great trip.