We are Mr. and Miss Defy- a couple in our 30s who are enthusiastic about adventure with a desire to live an intentional life. Currently, we are taking time off from our jobs and are on a year-long trip around the world. Our travels may be together, but our experiences and journey to get here are far from the same. Below we’ll expand on what the blog will be about and how each of us got to be here.
Part I: Mr. Defy
When I was a 20-year-old in college, I looked ahead and was nervous about going with the flow of the typical American lifestyle. I saw a life where I would hate my job but would need to go to work to afford a certain lifestyle. A world where I would know I would be polluting, but would lack the means, time or inclination to do anything. It alarmed me- it seemed so counter to everything I wanted but I didn’t know what else to do. I could only see two choices-
The first was to just say screw this system- I’m not working for 40 years and waiting to fully live life. So I started to experiment with the dirtbag/vagabond lifestyle. Extreme minimalism. It costs $100 to fly to Arizona from Colorado? I’ll walk instead. Food prices seem high? I’ll spend $20 a week on groceries eating fried rice, eggs and PBJs. It’s expensive in the US? I’ll travel abroad and see if I can make my few dollars go farther.
Then I ended up in Argentina for 7 weeks. I paid $800 for a plane ticket, and managed to pay $1,500 for the rest of the trip. I saw some amazing sights, but also missed out on a lot because of the tight budget. I skipped going to any of the world class steakhouses (called parrillas) because of the cost, and would routinely take long bus rides over flights (one 20 hour bus ride saved me $40 vs. a 2 hour flight).
I discovered through traveling in Argentina that this wasn’t quite working. I wanted to choose to have a nice meal periodically, or the ability to save hours of time even if I had to spend a little more. I also found myself getting stressed if my bank balances started to drop (which is inevitable if you’re living off savings). And even though I tried to cut myself off from the “system,” I still relied on money to navigate the world.
And that’s how I found myself exploring the second option- learning the game (especially personal finances) so that I could adjust it to my standards. I found the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, where Robert Kiyosaki writes about escaping the rat race through saving and investing money into income producing assets.
I had no illusions of grandeur; I only wanted to learn the game and get to a point where I felt comfortable and then stop. I dreamed of having income producing assets (not even knowing what they would be) so that I wouldn’t be living out of dwindling savings. If I could start investing, maybe I could tailor part of the system to work for me instead of feeling the need to completely abandon it.
Since reading this and countless other personal finance books over the last 10 years, I am seeing Kiyosaki’s advice play out. I’m not yet at financial independence (FI), but I have already been able to make a number of investments and experiment with the lifestyle.
For me, this blog is about sharing what I’ve learned on the path to FI so far, sharing some of the (many) mistakes I’ve made and helping others take a more efficient path. And crucially this blog is also about why FI is so appealing and why it is worth pursuing for me and my wife.
I’m blessed beyond measure that I’m not on this journey alone (both in life and in the blog) with my wife as my partner. It was at her insistence that we take a year off, even though we aren’t at FI yet. If we hadn’t taken a step back then this blog most likely wouldn’t exist. Together we want to share our experiences and research with you as we struggle and succeed on this path. Welcome to the Defy the Joneses Blog!
Miss Defy has her own origin story as to what motivates her on this journey. Check it out in Defy The Joneses “How We Got Here Part 2”.
