A letter from Jeanette & Henk

Hoi sukkel!*

In a previous post this year I told you about a bike trip I made out to Lidingö with the wrap-up question "Maybe a life in corporate life is like burning the high-way in a comfortable car while living the FI life is more like bumping around on a bike in unknown terrain"? Three months into early retirement I can respond positively to that question. No more fancy hotels on business trips nor heavenly restaurant visits for representation. But absolute freedom and everyday adventure. Yes – adventure. In a svenne banan version that is, not mountain climbing or cuddling with almost extinct animals. The FIRE adventures are more of the genre "meeting new people" (looking at you Katarina), "walking a random dog" (looking at you Ludde) involving a wide range of learning opportunities such as "how to leach train a dog" or "how to train a dog not to eat horse shit".

The dog is a chapter in itself. So much joy and discomfort in one creature. But in my case, the dog involves plenty of advantages, ranging from a steady stream of wine and sparkling from the owner to conversations with Benny Andersson.** Occasionally, the dog snifs up random objects such as PET bottles, that he likes to play with. And this is why I write this post in English because in one of these PET bottles, I found a letter. En flaskpost***. This is a picture of it:

And this is the letter:

"Hi. We are Jeanette & Henk. We visited Stockholm on 25-9-2017 and made this message in a bottle. If you find this bottle, please let us know at vroegoplaatwakker2009@gmail.com. Thanks in advance, Jeanette & Henk".

I must admit, I was a bit disappointed that the letter did not come from someone imprisoned or stranded on a desert island. But then it occurred to me: Maybe they are imprisoned? In corporate life! I would guess Jeanette & Henk are two rather young professionals (say, 27-30 y o?) working the 9-5 in order to afford fancy trips to Stockholm and keeping up with the Joneses (the van Lekkerhosens?). Risk is Mr Money Mustache has not yet conquered les Pays Bas and therefore, Jeanette & Henk lives with the wide-spread assumption that you work the shit out of yourself and consume a lot of crap until you are 65-70, and then you feed pigeons and die.

I don't believe in faith nor destiny, but I believe in opportunities. We, spiders in the Swedish FIRE/frugal weirdo/investment for dummies community, happened to get a couple of Dutch insects in our web. This is our chance to convert them into the true faith and enable them to have the 17 virgins/raisins at death. Why waste this opportunity to spread the FIRE? This is what I wish for: Please post in the comment field the one best anglo-saxian FIRE blog post or podcast episode link for a beginner. In a few days, I will send a link of this blog post to Jeanette & Henk. Hopefully they are still a couple and hopefully they don’t take fruefficientbadass@gmail.com as spam (I mean – who would?).

Met vriendelijke groeten/
FruEfficientBadass

* Dutch for "Hi sucker". What a strange language.
** It turns out he has a dog and during the awkward moment of our dogs sniffing each others behinds we made conversation. Not about the excellence of Chess or ABBA reunions, but about our dogs (age, gender, race that kind of shit but what have you, it was Benny Andersson - he would not have turned up in my previous job asking to have a chat with me, that's for sure).
*** Given the dutch I already know**** I would not be surprised to know that Flaskpost is Flaskpost in dutch also.
**** Brandslang=Brandslang. Handduk=Handduk. Båthals=Båthals.