Let’s get the physical part of this blog in gear. I’ve got a lot of developments on that front to better enable me to work out the way I want to at home, especially in this time of coronavirus.

It had been surprisingly difficult to purchase the gear I wanted because of shut downs, but back in November one website finally had some of what I wanted, so with some encouragement from my lovely wife, I went for it. I got:

• $761: A bar and rubber weights from Vulcan Strength to allow me to do olympic lifts (note the bar is important for this – the axle of the bar rotates separately than the ends where the weights go).
• ~$442: A power cage/squat rack plus a bench from Amazon and a few related accessories like this and this.
• ~$790: this super fancy direct drive bike trainer plus a cassette and a couple related small items.
• ~$200 of construction supplies to make my homemade weightlifting platform (2 layers of 4’x8’ OSB + 1 sheet of ¾” 4’x8’x plywood in the middle, a ton of screws, and then some ¾’ foam matts on the side).

Rough total for this home gym: $2,193. Whoa! That is not chump change, at all. On one hand I could probably do body weight workouts and add a kettlebell, and certainly I could have waited it out on craigslist… but hey, I can definitely afford it and the good news is that by having exactly what I want it has really encouraged me to get on a regular workout schedule, and made it easy to just get started.

I’ve worked out every day I’ve intended to and basically alternate weights and the bike with a rest day thrown in after a very hard workout.

If I was in another financial spot I wouldn’t have done this and can’t recommend it. But for me, in a high intensity, high paying job, I needed something to make it inviting and easy to get started working out. This is a luxury, but it’s also an investment: in my health. I basically went from zero to working out everyday, so for me, this $2.2k is peanuts compared to the incremental benefit I’m getting from it. It’s also created a dynamic where I want to make my investment worth it. When I’m not feeling like working out I can remind myself that I purchased this high end gear to make it easy, and it’s just sitting there. That’s usually enough for me to get started, and when I get started I end up completing a full workout.

The impact on my mood is huge. Working out, especially with heavy weights, calms me down, makes me satisfied with a feeling of tranquility. And right now, that feeling is worth more than any $ sign. This isn’t an endorsement of all spending with no consequence, but it was short sighted of me to wrestle with the decision for so long as it makes almost no impact on my financial situation, and has motivated me to focus on my fitness.

And the thing about many people in the FIRE community is we are so focused on just the financials, but really if your investments are  “only” at 10,15, or 20x your annual spending you do not have money problems. At all. So it only makes sense that this is not the area to fret about once you have your money game under control, and that we should take a broader look at our lives and focus on the areas we’d like to improve – not as something to do AFTER we reach FI, but right now as part of living a full and rich life.