Yesterday we left off talking about your best life – what is it that you want to experience while you’re here?

And that to me is the most valuable thing to understand, especially before we talk about retirement.

You see, I don’t think talking about retirement makes sense if we don’t know what exactly we’d be doing during that time. There’s no emotional connection to it so it feels like we’re sacrificing our now for some unknown future.

However, even now that we have a clearer idea of how we’d like to spend our days, I still think retirement is a stupid idea.

Why do we have to wait until we’re old and less able before we go live the lives we’re meant to live? Why can’t we start living those lives earlier?

So instead of retirement, I’d like to call this our buy back time. Whether that’s taking unpaid time off, or taking a longer break between the two different jobs, we can use this money to pay for our expenses while we spend more time on our hobbies or find out if we enjoy something we’ve always thought about.

For example, let’s say you have always wanted to write a book. So instead of going from one job to another, you find a way to start the next job one month later and during that month, you will spend writing your book. The first few days will probably be a lot of fun, but after a week, you start running into writer’s block. You then start to get frustrated and eventually the hype of writing a book disappears. But because you were able to test this out so early, you can quickly move to thinking about something else you might enjoy.

Or let’s use another example. This time about me. I had always thought that building a shipping container house would be something I’d enjoy doing some day. So after I left my second job, I took a 5 month break and renovated my condo. I tore out walls, built my own kitchen, built my bathroom, did my own plumbing and electrical work. The first 3 months was a lot of fun. I had a blast coming up with the design, ripping out the old stuff and putting in the new. I had fun doing my own plumbing and electrical work. But the last 2 months were super boring. By then I was at the finishing touches part and was putting up walls and making them look nice. I hated it. But because I went through that experience, I am now that much more confident in building a shipping container home and know that I would simply outsource the last bit.

So in this case, I know how I would spend my time next time I have an extended break from working.

This site also started during one of these break periods. At first, I decided to write a book about personal finance that all 20 somethings should know. But after I finished my first draft, I realized that this book will not get into your hands because I don’t have a way to get it in front of you. So instead, I turned the material into blog posts, which eventually turned into a program.

That’s right, a lot of the things you’re learning now was originally a book that I had wrote.

But as I built out this program, I realised that I really enjoy building a site that helps people and so I’ve spent a lot more of my time doing this. In other words, I had found a hobby that I can do the rest of my life. And this hobby can potentially become a side business that gives me money.

Back to you – do you have a few things from your most important question list that you think you’d like to do once you have time? Then let’s start saving 5% in our buy back time bucket to give you that time to do it now!

Who knows, maybe some of those things that you end up doing or creating during this time can become a source of side income in the future.

Your Task

• What are some of the things you would like to explore that would take months, years to get really good at?
• How can you create a mini project that takes a few weeks to test if you really enjoy it?
• How do you think this project can provide you with a small amount of side income for you to continue buying back more time to do it?
• Share with the group what you’re thinking of trying out