Posted by Robert on May 24, 2010
Stephen Covey famously teaches, in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you need to begin with the end in mind. By this, he means that we are most likely to achieve our aims when we know what we are aiming for. Two years ago, if anyone had asked me where I would be in five, ten or twenty years, I’m sure I wouldn’t have known how to answer. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I felt that having sixty or more years of life ahead of me, I should really have a plan that amounts to more than the default: work, eat, sleep… repeat. Isn’t there more to life than that?
Life is what we make of it. I suspect that many people, like me two years ago, don’t begin to realize the degree of control they have over their own destiny. We can live our lives on someone else’s terms: get an education that leads to a job, get a job that leads to a promotion, take on debt, increase our lifestyle expense and not get out of the rat race until we’re too old to contribute any longer (at least, that was the original intent of “retirement”). Or, we can determine our own purpose, and work to reach it. I wish I could say that my life’s purpose struck me like a revelation, but that wouldn’t be true.
My wife and I, after we were married, but before having kids, lived in Taiwan for two years. I took Chinese language and culture classes to complete my university degree and taught English part time. My wife taught at a preschool full-time. It was not always easy, but we really enjoyed it. We moved back to Calgary and settled down, bought a house, had kids and I started working full-time. After a few years, when my wife saw me casting about for a goal to work towards, she asked, “Why don’t we move to Hong Kong?” (More on this in a later post.) She offered that she could go back to school to become a teacher, after our kids were all in school. If I could earn and save enough, we could live on one teacher’s salary in Hong Kong and our retirement savings could continue to grow at home, until we were ready to come home. We thought we could do this by 2019, when I would turn 42.
Everything didn’t just fall into place at once; we spent a lot of time thinking about our plans. We talked with my wife’s family. We looked into the requirements to become a teacher. We learned about the international schools in Hong Kong. We planned and calculated how much money we spend now and how much we would need to save by 2019 to have enough to come back and retire in Canada. The more we talked, the more excited I got. I thought that maybe we could even be ready by 2016.
The more we planned and prepared, the more things came together. I work with my father as a financial advisor, and he’s planning to retire in four or five years. He’s preparing to work with a successor who can take over the business. When I finally felt comfortable sharing our plans with my family (it came as quite a shock), my dad felt that he could take over my business and allow his successor to buy it all. We will then be able to pay off all our debt and have enough income from our investments to fund our living expenses. Separately, I found that I’m very interested in education, and would like to go back to school with my wife to become a teacher. We learned that international schools require two years of teaching experience, and there’s a possibility of doing student teaching, and getting those two years of experience in Macau (near Hong Kong). If everything works out, I’ll retire in 2012, go to school for 18 months, and be in Macau in January 2014.
Two years ago, I had no definite plans. Today, I have a specific set of events planned for my near future. It keeps me focused and motivated on doing whatever it takes to make what I want of my life. It may not work out exactly as I’ve envisioned, but early retirement makes it easier for me to remain excited about my life.
Posted by Canadian Dream on May 21, 2010
Well approximately six weeks ago I stopped writing a Monday post and much to my amazement there was not much of a ripple on the site. No massive uprising from the readership (no one stormed the virtual gates) or no huge drop in much of any of my site metrics (actually I had a hard time seeing any noticeable difference). Yet that empty slot did bug me a little bit. I’m so used to this blog posting five days a week for this long I sort of felt guilty. So I thought why not have someone else write a Monday post?
Thus a series of emails started between Robert, who had previously did a few guest posts for the blog, and myself. Robert already has his own blog, but posts about once a week. Our views are overall fairly compatible and we managed to outline what we expected from each other. So I’m proud to say starting next Monday this blog has a new writer.
If you are a bit new to the blog and have recently checked out the ‘About’ page, you would have noticed Robert already has a brief summary up. To save you clicking and scrolling I’ll copy his bio here.
Robert lives in Calgary and works as a financial adviser. He is married, has three kids and plans to retire at age 35. Robert and his wife then plan to return to school and become teachers, eventually living and working overseas.
So please welcome Robert to the blog!
Now onto some links. First up the give-a-ways. If you haven’t already entered, you can still get your name in to win a copy of The Retiring Mind. The contest closes tonight. Also of interest to all technology geeks out there is Preet from Where Does All My Money Go is giving away an iPad!
Million Dollar Journey has a very interesting post about some mortgages that are not being renewed?!?
Just in time for summer Squawkfox has a tasty twist on ice cream…mmm…looks good.
Money Smarts (formerly Four Pillars) blog just turned three and need your help!
Larry MacDonald is seeing some cracks in the EU.
Also of interest this week was apparently people just don’t talk to their bosses.
Posted by Canadian Dream on May 20, 2010
So I have a spring birthday and I have managed to get a year closer to my goal of free at 45 which got my thinking about how much progress I’ve made toward financial independence. In a world that too often sends a lot of time on numbers as measures of progress I thought I would point out the other side of the coin: what am I going to do with all of that extra time?
I personally have tried to ensure I have a well rounded set of interests to support a meaningful life when I leave the world of full time work. As such here are a few things that I will continue to build capacity in:
- Volunteering. I have to admit after doing the school board trustee job for a while I rather like doing some meaningful work in my life. I can see helping out in various organizations as I have the time and using my skills to support the work they do (I’ll have to shop around and find out who’s work I like the best).
- Reading. I continue to read a lot regardless of how busy I become. I also try to keep expanding my sphere of interest by trying new topics.
- Gardening. I’m not a good gardener, but I keep trying to get better at it as I learn more from others and library books.
- Writing. Beyond keeping working on this blog I’m going to try to working on a couple of manuscripts that I have going. I will also expand into the publishing side a bit by trying to self publish at least one book.
- Physical activity. Including yoga, roller blading and I’m thinking about buying a bike (I haven’t owned one for years) since my oldest has now learned to ride a bike.
- Wine Making. An old hobby of my that I could easily spend more time doing in the future.
- Building Things. I enjoy fixing things and in the next couple of years a couple of family members will be building new cottages so I intend to help out and expand my skill sets in construction, electrical and plumbing. I’m also thinking about doing a furniture project as I can’t find a new desk that I like.
- Politics. I’ve also been a bit of political junkie so I might spend more time supporting a party or running for a different office in the future. The other side of the coin would be to do more on the activist side for a particular cause.
- Family and friends. I could easily spend more time keeping in better contact with people. This is one of my week spots at the moment as time has been tight lately.
Of course this isn’t every I could do, but rather some ideas for building capacity in various interests. Over all I’m not even worried about filling my time. I think at least on that side of the coin I’m ready for early retirement when I get there. So do you try to expand your interests and try new things? If so what have you tried lately?
