Last week I logged onto Vanguard and tinkered with my investments. I didn’t sell or buy anything–nothing that I would call bad investing practice–but I did reduce the amount of money being shoveled into my beloved VTSAX each week by half. This reduction in after-tax cash going into the markets wasn’t driven by any emotion, though I did have an emotional wave of guilt wash over me when clicking the edit button on my auto-investments. It’s always the same internal debate of the saver: Spend for today or save for tomorrow? For me, this question arises when opportunities to do something cool and expensive now comes around.

Do I really have to reduce what we’re investing weekly? I thought as I typed different numbers into the auto investment value bar. I teetered between keeping the amount the same, maybe 25% less than normal…or 10%. Before I could waver anymore, I entered in the number I’d come up with months in advance and talked about in my monthly Coffee Chat with my wife.

It doesn’t feel good to take your foot off the pedal while on the road to Financial Independence. It sucks. Especially when making good time and the markets giving that extra push of momentum. My entire family seems to be locked in on our frugal arrangement. Our heads are down in the grind and we don’t even notice that half our take-home pay is being used to buy chunks of index fund shares. 2021 has pushed us to 40% of our FI number. Why disturb this oiled machine? Why shut it off when it’s humming and churning out better than I could have imagined.

Because it’s time for a little living for today. It’s time for overseas travel. It’s time to make up for the trip I’d originally planned for March of 2020, canceled, and rescheduled before my airline voucher expired in December 2020. Back in December, this October seemed far away enough that I hopefully wouldn’t have to reschedule again and face both disappointment and monetary loss.

It’s looking good so far. Portugal has now vaccinated 80% of its population. They are one of a few EU countries willing to remain open for non-essential travel from America. Everything is looking like a go for the trip. So the vacation bucket must get filled, hence our reduction in investing.

From the very start of our decision to officially pursue FIRE, my wife and I agreed that we take an international vacation once a year. This means at some point each year we will reduce down our investments to accommodate our life’s passion for crossing borders and oceans. I read an interesting blog article a few years ago about not missing out on life while you save for retirement. I think anyone pursuing FIRE should at least read it, it’s here.

With my kids both being under 10, we can’t spend the entirety of this golden age of parenting hunkered down counting dollars. Our kids want to hang out with us right now. It’s a good age to go out and do things with them before the teenage years kick in. We do countless free things on the weekends with them, but some outings cost money: going to Aquariums, museums, ball games…international travel. The same guilt I might feel for spending an extra hundred bucks on something, I doubly feel turning things down because I’m worried about keeping my savings rate intact.

On the other hand, a critical factor that makes FIRE so appealing to my wife and me is the potential to spend more than a few hours in the evening and chaotic weekends with our kids before they become adults and go away.

The more we save, the sooner we can have this unencumbered time with them; but the more we save, the more we sort of pause the types of experiences that might cost a bit more than a 50% savings rate allows for.

How do we balance these opposing forces of now and later? This is the eternal battle of the saver.

For me, the question lies in asking the simple question: What are we saving and investing for?

The simple and easy answer is: “We’re saving for FI, duh.”

But it’s more than that.

I save for tomorrow. I save for that shiny dream laced lucratively over the horizon, glistening in the distance like a welcoming beacon of hope. This glorious future of mine, the one I’m so diligently saving for, sadly doesn’t even really exist–nor will it ever. That includes my version of Financial Independence. I’ll hit my FI number someday and pull the trigger, but I’m sure that day, and all the days that follow, will be much different than I imagine they will be. I’ll be a different person in the next few years. I’ll likely have slightly different wants and dreams, so will the people I live with.

I’ve come to realize that the impermanence of what I’m saving for is why I’ll always feel like now is not the time I should be pulling my foot off the saving pedal. The attachment to things that are unstable and impermanent—my future, a monetary number, a specific dream— is the root cause of my “saver’s worry” that I’m either failing my future self or not fully enjoying the present moment.

The irony of being a saver is that I have more than enough money to justify splurging on 1st class tickets, 5-star hotels, and dining out for every meal while in Europe. I have enough money to last our family a decade or so without having to work.

Yet here I am trying to squeeze every efficient dollar out of all my decisions. The mindset required to save a giant chunk of income consistently makes it difficult to throttle the reason why you shouldn’t choose the cheaper option all the time. It’s very hard to turn the spending switch back on, even if it’s temporary. But I know that every memory I make taking my kids to far-off lands will be worth it years from now. My oldest will be turning 8 years old in Lisbon. My hope is that she will carry that memory with her forever and I’ll never look back at our accumulation phase of FIRE with any regret of “holding back on now” during this golden age of being a dad.

So back to balancing out spending for today or saving for tomorrow. I see two truths to the question of enjoying the moment or securing a better future. You can’t separate the two from each other.

Today and tomorrow are the same. When I save, I choose today and tomorrow. When I spend, I’m still choosing both. I don’t view today and tomorrow as independent entities. Nor are they one. They are interconnected by a web of delicate strings, like that of a marionette, each pull today changes my future tomorrow. And I also need to remember that today, was once the “future” of yesterday. Inverting the phrase also makes it clearer and truer for me: today is what I’m saving for and tomorrow is what I’m spending for.

One of my greatest fears is to be an old man with many regrets. I like to frame any tough decision through this lens. I know for sure reducing my savings rate to create awesome experiences with my children and wife will be something I’ll never regret. Achieving Financial Independence a year earlier, but missing out on life in the process because I’m only focused on saving? I’m not willing to take a risk on having that regret.

What about you? How do/did you handle splurging in the FIRE accumulation phase? Are you trying to balance out living today or are you hunkered down to FIRE as fast as possible?