“I’m moving to Canada!” my work appointed housemate exclaimed a few weeks ago. I responded by sipping my instant coffee and nodding. Best not to verbalize my actual thoughts.
You see, she’s a budgeting noob who lives pay to pay in order to accommodate her lifestyle.
She’s also a self-proclaimed sufferer of hard-core FOMO.
So what is FOMO?
The Fear of Missing Out (or FOMO as all the hip kids are calling it these days) is a serious thing. It leads us to do strange things, often when we don’t want to, and has been the destructive force behind the collapse of many a budget.
It is the single most dangerous occurrence when saving for long term travel.
Most people need to save to travel; unless you’re a trust fund kid or an established digital nomad, some element of saving is involved. If you’re planning to travel long term (a few months and onwards) then you’ll normally spend a lot of time shuffling budgets and pinching pennies. The calculator becomes your best friend and you get good at Excel pretty quick.
I’m four and a half months off the trip I’ve thoughtfully labelled ‘The Final Escape’, and I’ve been saving for eight. Even that feels like an eternity, and I am well aware of my uniquely fortunate situation. Not everyone can say that they’re saving 76% of their weekly pay check.
So how do I overcome FOMO?
I try to focus on Future Me. She is still just a fragment of my mind, but she’s got her shit together. Future Me is my hero; she’s off exploring old U.S.S.R. bases in Estonia; she is playing language charades for directions in rural Bulgaria; she is getting drunk on half carafes of Serbian wine for $3 a pop.
She has escaped the high cost of Australia and the horrors of a Full-Time Hospitality job and she is NOT looking back.
The thing is, to ensure her happiness and bring her to life, Present Me needs to make some sacrifices.
I squash excitement with hard facts and daunting numbers.
Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
Trust me, even I can’t force myself to say that. Because clearly it’s not. But it works.
When something comes up that I’m excited about and that is obviously going to cost money, I force myself to stop, breathe and think.
Take, for example, the upcoming Aquaman movie. I never grew up with comic books, but I’m a deep fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Due to that, I also like to see everything that DC does, so I can join in the rival company trash talk with clear, hard facts.
Also. Well, Jason Momoa.
Everyone here is planning a night of dinner and drinks and then a trip to the cinema to bask in the cheesy goodness of yet another superhero movie.
No doubt it’ll be a great night, but let’s do the math.
Dinner and Drinks: $40
Movie ticket: $19
Movie snacks (that we don’t need, but will still get): $10
That’s a $69 experience.
I’m going to round that up to $70 in order to fully break it down. To have that money in my hand after tax, I would need to do three hours of work. That’s not much, right? Actually, it sounds pretty doable, given the hours that I work.
“So why not go for it,” the voice of FOMO whispers in the back of my head.
Future Me answers that little devil by consulting her budget. Three hours of work could buy me four to five hours of present-day fun. $70, however, is my daily budget for Eastern Europe and then some.
Now I take that idea and flip it. What am I going to regret more? Missing the movie or having one less day in a faraway place?
That answer is pretty obvious, at least to me. Besides, with any luck I might catch the movie as in-flight entertainment on my travels.
Defeating FOMO isn’t easy.
If it was, everyone would be doing it. We’d all be rolling in the cash and chasing our dreams. No future goals would be unattainable.
But don’t you go stir crazy?
That question would suggest that I was sane to begin with. Ha.
But yes. Yes, I do.
I sit here in my room and listen to my housemate get ready to go out on a Friday night and I swear a part of my heart just breaks. I want to do that! I want to get dressed up and curl my hair; pull out a set of eyelashes and see if I can still get them on straight. I want to drink and dance and party until the early morning, and then do a hangover fast food run the next morning.
While everyone is out at the movies, I’ll be the one at work. After all, someone has to man the fort while others aren’t there. They’ll be spending money while I earn it. They’ll be having fun while I’m stuck answering phones and processing accounts.
But! In four months and two weeks when I’m sipping wine on a cruise between Stockholm and Tallinn, they’ll still be here. They’ll be working and chasing a goal that will always be just out of reach.
Remember, FOMO is only as powerful as you let it be.
“I’m moving to Canada,” my housemate exclaims on a Thursday. It’s a great idea, and one that I fully support. She’s sick of being stuck here and wants adventure. She wants to get out and explore, and see more of the world and chase different experiences.
Yet on Friday night that text message will come through. “Come to the pub,” it’ll say, and she’ll agonize over it. I’ll tell her not to do it, advise her to think of her Future Self and Canada as I’ll make ready for a Friday night in; bad TV and some microwave popcorn are my weekend night staples.
Tucked safely away in my room and in my pyjamas early, I’ll hear heels against the hallway tiles and the sound of the front door closing.
FOMO strikes again.
How do you deal with FOMO? Are you like me, where you beat the urge down with numbers and the dream of something more? Or do you find that you often give in to that fear of missing out?
