How to Live Like You Are Already Retired
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Walking the money for the rest of that. This is a personal financial on money how IT works, how to invest IT and how to live without worrying about IT and your host David stein, today's episode thirty seven, it's titled how to live like you're already retired. If you're a long time listener to the podcast, that phrase and title might sound familiar.

IT was the title of episodes released in August twenty fourteen. At the time, nine years ago, our Youngest daughter was in high school or other son was in high school, and we had a son at university. The day that I recorded that episode, I had just dropped off our daughter for her first day of school.

I drove out to our farm and recorded the episode. And I said, the one piece of advice to my children is to live like you're already retired. Retirement is the freedom to pursue the activities we find most rewarding. When you think of somebody whose retire, they can wake up when they want a pursue whatever activities bring them happiness.

Won't we rather live in a matter today that brings us happiness and in a manner that could be sustained for decades into our seventies and eighties, rather than put off our dreams until were retired? I thought about this a lot. Recently, I were listening to a class by Joshua sheet of radical personal finance.

I wanted to support him in a retirement class that he's doing, and he records IT live in its hours and hours long. And i've been just listening to some of the recording is and the first lesson is on obviating retirement where you don't need to retire because you don't want to. And that's very much the same theme is living like we already retired, create a life we don't want to retire from.

In epo nineteen, I discussed two aspects of living like or already retired. The first is more mechanical, is to have an income that is greater than our expenses. If that's the case, if you always are bringing in more income and usually it's a combination of investments, works side projects, that income mixes can differ over time.

But if it's greater than what we're spending, then will never run out of money. And the only way to really do that to get started is to track what you earn and what you spend. I've been using mint since january first two thousand seven.

I was shocked how much we've spent since january first two thousand seven on mid top category was taxes, followed by home to IT, include mortgage, followed by charity shopping and then travel on a monthly basis. I take the output from mint and and I put IT into the spread sheet. We do an annual budget, and so I put that months expenditure into a spread sheet.

I calculate our network. And I I grew up to see whether we are generating enough income that is greater than our expenses. And the idea is to never have to retire.

I don't want to retire, and I have worked for the past nine years to structure life that I don't have to retire from. On the expense side, an important aspect is to keep hearing back, removing things, owning fewer things, to not get on the hidden isc tread mill. It's really easy.

And on the same way, we suddenly focus on something new that we want and we start doing all the research in doing comparison. And that can be intellectual stimulating. The pro did IT a few weeks ago.

We bought three years ago, a went in the midst the pandemic. We bide a camper. IT was a two thousand two suburban that have been converted into a camper. There was a bad IT had solar panels, a refrigerator, paid about sixteen thousand dollars for IT and have kept IT. We were gonna try camping and turns out that we don't love camping.

We don't love camping where we have to go find an out house in the middle of the night and bear country and the ceiling in the bed was really low. But at this point, we've put so much in repairs, we just kind of a keep IT at our cabin and then just drive IT when we're here in the summer. But on our driver from two thousand iho, the idea of, well, if actually had a car, we could this park anywhere, we could have a starlink satellite dish, we'd have internet.

And the idea sort took on a life of its one. What would that be like? As we drove through after my omelet and start value, we saw there was a brand new airstream dealership and we had looked at airstreams.

We like the base camp, a camper that more sort of off road like goodyer when they have some actually have inventory. And then maybe we can pull up with this suburban, but ultimately, we like to get A A different truck that has Better gas mallets, maybe even a hybrid. And as we go through the numbers as well, it's a harder and twenty thousand dollars for both of those.

We thought about IT a few days, then sort once the excitement wore off a little bit. I did some math and realized for a hotter and twenty thousand dollars, we could stay at a hotel sixty nights a year at two hundred dollars a night, really, you know, good hotel for ten years, and come out ahead and having the camper and truck. And so we're not going to do IT because the whole idea is to find easier ways to do this, to pair back things, to find joy and things.

They have peta that are used and not feel like we have to keep buying more neural things as you own things that are older and and they they have some stories to IT they have nicks dense could be a watch IT could be an item of clothing IT brings back good memories to its a form of happiness. So mechanically earn more, more income than we spend. You can last forever that way, like that income.

The work portion is generated in a profession, in a job that you find satisfying. And if it's not, get training and try something else, switch jobs. Been seven years since I quit my job.

Sometimes I worry about money. That's just what we do. And I tell myself there is enough.

When I quit eleven years ago, I had to buy out from my advisory firm, but they were going to pay over seven years. And I didn't know if they would still be in business. They could have got suit or something could have happened.

So I knew I had to create some type of income and ultimately created money for the rest of us. And now I work with my two sons. And this is our business that we own together, and we surely enjoy working with each other.

But we don't know how it's gone to turn out that just the way businesses are, but we're doing in a way that we don't have to retire and maybe the business changes over time. So that's the physical aspect. The second is the mental aspect, the attitude, the feeling that we're living like we already retired in of nineteen.

I quoted from aristotle and politics, he said, some people suppose that IT is the function of household management to increase property, and they're continually under the idea that IT is their duty to be either safeguarding their substance in money or increasing IT to an unlimited amount. The cause of this state of mind is that they're interest are set upon life, but not upon the good life. The good life and my mind would be living like you are.

You retired that you have freedom to pursue activities that bring you happiness, that bring you reward, that are satisfying. Aristotle didn't really define specifically what the good life is. If aristotle played baseball might have described the the good life as hitting the sweet spot, the right spot on a bad.

And how satisfying that feels are a tennis racket. The word that he used, though, as a philosopher, greek physical, her living in four hundred bc, was the good life, was the life of virtue. And by virtue, aristotle meant taking actions and having feelings that were not excessive or deficient, that hit the mean that I was the right amount at the right time and the right manner for the right reason.

He called IT the golden mean, this idea of virtue. Robert and Edward scull ski in their book how much is enough money in the good life? Do expand more on what the good life is.

They point out that there are some basic goods, some universal goods, that we need as a starting point for the good life. And these basic goods are finally means they are good in themselves. They're not something we need in order to get something else, and they're indispensable.

The first is our health. In order to live a good life, to live like are already retired, we need good health. And that is certainly a function of genetics, but it's also a function of lifestyle.

I take a nap every day, and I I have taken a nap every day since my late teens except for that five or six year period I had to work in a traditional office. But once I started tell a commuting, I I just take a nap and it's something I I picked up when I lived in mexico because that's whenever ver one else did they they had cats. I saw a report that taking an APP, this was some researchers out of london that IT keeps the brain from shrinking and and there's articles on in this differences opinion on napping.

But I like IT is because it's a way to break up the day. I can work in the morning, do a lot intellectual work, writing, preparing for the podcast business activities, and then I can get a small amount to eat, and I can take a short nap, maybe thirty minutes, maybe it's an hour when i'm really tired. IT could be ninety minutes.

I don't, I don't set an alarm. I just take a nap. And that contribute to my mental health, my well being. That's one basic good health. The second is security. The skull ski, say, security means an individuals justified expectation that his life will continue more or less, and it's a custom course that IT will be understood by war, crime, revolution or major social and economic pevsner. Having in security, home and security can be incredibly stressful.

We've been working with a software development team in ukraine for a bad a year, and most of their individuals are based in cave, but they've been dealing with our situation. They, the K, F, gets air attacks frequently and the air rates sions go on and IT. It's been instructive and inspiring to see how they have managed to continue to find joy despite all the pressures the country is facing.

But IT would be so much Better if they had the security that we need as a basic good. The third basic good is respect, which the skills is described as a certain recognition that individuals take account of our point of view. They might not necessarily agree with our point of view, but they they recognize us as humans and that we have a point of view and that we are someone.

And they mentioned that we might be affectionate toward our pet, a dog. But we don't respect to disrespect the dog. We respect humans. And that means all humans, that means individuals that are begging in the street that are easy took door, something the pro i've done for a few years now is in our car.

We have an envelope with five dollar bills, and if somebody is on the street asking for money, we're just not going to judge. We will give them five dollars and after to go buy a small meal or or something to drink. And we looked them in the eye.

And IT is giving that respect when people don't feel respected. That's when they tend to lash out in many respects. The fourth basic good is personality, which the good l skis describe as the ability to frame an executive plan of life reflected of one's taste, temperament and conception of good. And they point out as the french philosopher mountain, that having a private space, a room behind the shop, maybe to the studio, my sister has rented a small studio, and it's anadi just so you could do her art and have IT scattered out. It's called organized on the table, on the table.

But just having your own private space and the freedom to pursue the activities that you want for their own sake, to express your personality, to feel like you have the freedom to be able to do that and the private space to be able to do that, the next base is good that contribute to the good life, a life that we all aspire to live in harmony with nature. And the best way I know to get in harmony with nature is to take walks or hikes in nature. It's something that I do twice a day, typically alone in the morning and in the evening or late afternoon, with the l pretty grow in his book about walking, said, think while walking, walk while thinking, and let writing be.

But the light pause as the body on a walk rest in contemplation of wide open spaces. Another way to get in harmony, nature, is to let go of things, pair back things that distract us. They keep us from nature.

They keep us from living the good life. And social media would be example in in throws time. He called IT news to the reading other morning papers, and how distracting that can be, because as soon as read the news, it's not new anymore.

Then we get into this, this desire to to to see something new. IT could be so helpful to just quit that. Now I read the news.

I do read the newspaper every day, typically the evening four, five of them, but I do that very quickly, steaming just in case. And maybe that's not a good habit, but I, I do IT for my profession. But I have more, more quit social media.

I'm rarely on facebook. I'm rarely on twitter. I just cancelled our youtube premium subscription. Second guessing that one, because I really find youtube ads disruptive. I'm spending less time on instagram.

But the idea to get rid of the distractions, to allow more time to think, to just get in to our head and listen and get a custom to listening to our internal thoughts. Before we continue, let me post and share some words on this week. sponsors.

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Net sweet dot come slash David. The next space of good is friendship. And they're been ample study suggesting that one way to maintain our health is to avoid loneliness.

And the way to do that is to have friends. And the way to have friends is to invite people over, invite them to dinner, invite them over to your house. The pro, i've been so thankful that the pandemic has waved to where we could just have people over or just invite a couple over.

And if they have kids with their children and we just have deserve something simple, maybe its ice cream and cookies, maybe the person makes something, maybe we will buy something, but we just sit and enjoy each other, other's companies for several hours. And now IT seems just don't get invited out very much. We here and I know we last summer, we invited a couple out for dinner and we had done at the year before, and they mentioned, you know, we we actually haven't been out to dinner with with anybody in a year you'd gone out on their own, but just having dinner with them.

We have been a whole year we invited them. And then the next year, we invited them again and they went a whole year without going out to dinner with anybody. In march, we had an easter, big, hot, something that we hadn't done in an over decade, used to do IT all the time when our kids were Young.

We just invite a bunch of families over and pot luck. I spent weeks buying vintage eggs of ebay to use because we didn't have any eggs left, and we had twenty kids and over thirty people and just headed outside for a few hours. And one of our friends mentioned how nice IT was just to go somewhere and just be and not feel like there was a program that needed to be follow with just just the idea, just having time to mingle and develop friendships, which take a long time to develop friendships.

The final basic good, that is leisure. And leisure is this sense when we do something for its own sake, surely, because we enjoy IT, not as a means to getting something else. Last week the novel is correc.

Mccarthy died. He was a writer for its own sick. He had, he was a full time writer, and he started writing in the mid sixties. But his first five novels, or unsuccessful, he didn't have any of these novels, sell more than twenty five hundred copies in the late one thousand and eighty.

Mccarthy wrote to a friend, I have been a full time professional writer for twenty eight years, and I have never received a royalty check that our betcher is a record, so he got his advance providing the novel, but he never earned out the advance because IT novels never sold enough copies. He was getting some literary acknowledges, but no one thought his work until one thousand nine hundred and ninety two, when he released all the pretty horses and IT won the national book award and was adapted and became a movie staring mad diamond. Twenty eight years literary critic Diana trilling says people want to be writers because of the promise of celebrity, by which most writers won't get that.

So that's not a good reason to be a writer. All I met, i've written a novel, and i've written a published book, and I had visions of the celebrity that would bring the daydreams. And I realize not happening isn't happen for most books.

So that's not why we do IT. But the other reason people want to be a writer, according to Diana trilling, is because the life of the artist promises freedom to make one's own rules. And the freedom to make one's own rules is living like you're already retired to having that freedom, that flexibility.

And we need to do that with a plan that doesn't require us to become famous or to have celebrity or even to have that leasure task generate enough income. We can find other ways to get income, but the leasure needs to be things that we not do for money. We do IT for the sheer joy.

We do IT for its own sick. In the nine years since I published to live like a retired episode, one aspect that I didn't talk about in that up, so that I thought a lot about, i've reread a lot of books on, is time. Our attitude or time, is, I think, one of the biggest aspects of living like a retired to recognize that there is enough time that we we don't have to rush, that we don't have to optimize.

We're not trying to get the maximum amount of output that just too stressful. Jane'll, in her recent book saving time, wrote to try to reduce the rich topography of experience to a means of maximum output. The idea we got to get the maximum done in the minimum out of time, if that's what our data experiences like he says, that part of the same philosophy that would turn its back on the ocean or to one's inner landscape or something new, is always coming in on the tide.

People that are retired or living like the retired, have time to just let things be, to let opportunities just to rise, to not rush things. And when something happens, they take the adequate time to to enjoy IT. To experience that I found on my APP couple years ago, I realized that my iphone was counting steps.

And so then I started fixing on how many steps I was walking each day. I first did ten thousand for one year, on average. six.

Well, by the ten. I can do twelve by twelve thousand steps every day last year. And then this year, like, well, I could.

Do twelve thousand five hundred up until yesterday, when I took my morning walk and then IT rained and we had other activities. We went over and visit you with the neighbors, and I didn't get my steps in. So I think I provided three to four thousand steps.

I didn't look because that decided this is silly. I know roughly how many steps I walk each day. I need to stop optimizing my step count.

Let a go pair IT back. Doing so makes life less time sensitive, less pressure to the optimize, to just be to let things flow in on the tide. Last the professor, the illusion, adam Miller rites, love is just a matter of time.

Love is a question of who I give my time to, and then how I handle the giving of that gift. Time, like life can be kept, you can only be given. And I give IT by paying attention, and I wasted by being distracted.

He continues. The essence of care is to pay attention rather than being distracted by the past or the future. I pay attention in the present.

I take care. I attend, i'm cared for my either focus. My hands are death and gentle.

I can tie my shoes without rushing. I can wash the dish without digesting. I can stop and listen without daydream. I can sit in traffic without anger. Whatever i'm doing, I can do IT with care.

I can care this year, instead of having goals, which I don't typically said, I just have three words, and one of those words is care. Another word is breathe, just breathe to be present. And the third is time to realize. There is plenty of time that I don't have to rush that.

As Oliver burkman says, instead of just being time, IT becomes difficult not to value each moment, primarily according its usefulness for some future goal or for some future oasis of station you hope to reach once your task are finally out of the way we spend our life leaning into the future, rather than just being present today and realize there's enough time we don't have to rush another book on time I read this year was time surfing by paul lumen. And it's it's a then approach to time. And he describes time surfing as doing what comes naturally when there's nothing urgent we have to do, when there's no pressure or obligation involved.

This is our natural approach, the time. So instead of having this list in checking IT off and feeling pressure about IT, not that there's anything wrong with this, but his view is that, subconsciously, we already know what we want and need to do, and that will bubble up naturally from a subconscious. So the elements of time surfing is to do one thing at a time and finish what we're doing, and then to create a breathe between one activity or or next, get up and do something else that doesn't really take a whole lot of mental thought.

And then you'll be inspired. What IT is that you do, you will do next. And then when we get an interrupted, which we do give a full attention to what he calls droppings, so that were there and present, and caring for that, given an eruption, and to use intuition to choose what to do next.

Sometimes I make a list if there's something absolutely have to remember to do, but most of the time I do. And I this is how i've naturally Operated even before reading this book, so was gratified to read somebody that sort of addresses time the way I do, instead of having this laundry list of task. I mentally know that there is there, but I focus on a life of rythm. I know that every tuesday, almost tuesday, I have to produce the podcast and so myself, of consciously thinking about what should we talk about this week, or in some cases, who should we interview? But we naturally know what to do next.

And if we can just step back and not be so time optimization focused, then we can live like our already retired by having the right mental space to do that, which is a life of realizing there's enough time and to being present, to being caring, to helping others access the basic goods that we talked about and ultimately laid to make sure that we there is enough income from multiple sources to cover our expenses. And if we can live and create that income and away, that's not impressive that to ourselves and others, then we could sustain IT for decades and not worry about if and when we retire because we already be living like or retired and recognizing someday we might not have those basic goods like health, in which case we will need some savings and some surplus. But IT doesn't have the last forty years or thirty years.

If we can structure a life with the flexibility, sufficient income, lower expenses, having things that we enjoy, having a space to exhibit our personality, to have friends over and define the joy in day today, living that episode for thirty seven. thanks. We're listening.

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