The Beginning
What’s this about Freedom Jar? I’ve been interested in FI/RE (financial independence, retire early) for some time, but while we do an okay job of saving for retirement, we don’t truly have a handle on our finances overall.
Surfing personal finance sites one morning, I saw a “jar of debt.” Basically just a jar the person used to visualize their debt, not exactly a novel concept, but for whatever reason I liked it. The next day I went to HomeGoods and bought a fancy-looking jar, and some pasta to put in it. And then I got bored one weekend and started this blog.
Not wanting to focus on the negative (“a jar of DEBT!!!”), I opted to consider it a jar of freedom. When this thing is empty, we get to *choose* how (or if) we’re earning. Enter…the Freedom Jar of FIRE:
How the Freedom Jar of FIRE Works
While I think we’ve recalibrated it once or twice now to account for mortgage refinancing and things like that, the basic idea is this:
- All debt goes into the jar (so if we want a new car…the first step is to buy pasta)
- The little green ones represent Mortgage debt (at $3,000/noodle)
- Other debt (student loans, car, 401k) is represented by the white ziti noodles (at $1,000/noodle)
It all adds up to something like $780,000 of debt. Staggering, but not insurmountable! (though it helps to remember we’re lucky)
The last Saturday of every month we have a recurring ‘Pasta Day!’ calendar event. We make a little show of removing 3 white/1 green, as the average principal reduction/month is $3,000 of mortgage debt and $3,000 of other debt. Call it gamification of debt.
That’s it. There’s obviously way more to FIRE than paying down debt, but we’ll get to that. The point is, this one little trick kicked me into gear and got me thinking seriously about debt. Follow along as we (hopefully) empty this thing out!
While this is what clicked for me, I know everyone’s different. I’ve always been interested in the topic but for whatever reason (pandemic boredom? Job dissatisfaction?) this was the thing that stuck. A friend of mind has had success (if not fun) with the charts from debtfreecharts (I get nothing from you clicking that).
What’s your way of gamifying debt management?