Tag Archives: Retirement

Back to Work

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I’ve been off work now for almost a month with the birth of my first child Wyatt.  This temporary freedom has been quite an amazing experience and I loved every minute of it, even the grump nights where Wyatt chose not to sleep.  There was comfort knowing that I could have naps during the day if require, I do love a good nap!  The freedom to do trips in the middle of the day to Jasper on a whim and not really have to plan or ask a boss for the day off work. 

It was just nice to have a full month off and take care of my family for the first month of having a family.  The transition of now having a little baby to take care of turns things upside down and It saddens me to know most people are only able to take a few days off, maybe a week, and then go back to work.  Having this month off has given us the opportunity to set a schedule with Wyatt, allowed us to get him used to napping in his crib now (a recent success), and just get into some kind of groove and really figure things out.  As new parents there is no manual or SOP given to you, you have to figure things out on your own.  You may say there are books, well yeah there are books, however every baby is different and trust me when shit hits the fan the last thing you do is look at a book. 

I could have actually taken 8 months off (paternity leave) if I really wanted to and not really have it impact us financially.  Because of the decisions we’ve made and the success we’ve achieved in our business, Lindsay was retired from a full time job working for another person almost a year ago, and now works on our business part time so I guess she’s semi-retired.  We were able to give her the choice of if she wanted to work full time or not, and well I think you know what route we took.  She didn’t need the maternity leave so that gave me the option of paternity leave.  I chose not to take it because of where I am in my full time job and how new I was in that role.  For the time being I still need my full time job and protecting that is still priority one.  Given recent events with how we laid off someone coming back from maternity leave, I felt it best to only take one month.

Lindsay can now comfortably be a stay at home mom so that we don’t have to put our little one in daycare once maternity leave is done.  I know not everyone has this option and can respect that and quite honestly before we got involved in our business we were in that situation as well.  However we decided to make a change and our goal was to not have him in daycare and we made those changes by streamlining our lives, by getting out of debt, by increasing our income stream outside of our full time jobs, all those things led us to where we are now and I wouldn’t change that for anything.  Everyone has options, it’s what they are willing to do to make it happen that sets them apart from those who are not willing to do what it takes.

So August 15th I go back to work, back to what I like doing, working with people, working with technology and toys, but what I hate doing is being away from my family and putting them on the backburner to build someone else’s company/dream.  That will ultimately change as we have a new burn, a burn to have me gain my freedom back from a full time job and give my best hours of the day to my family instead of the man.  Just like we were able to do for Lindsay we can do for myself.  It all depends on choices and options in life and what is important to you.  Having this temporary freedom has lit a fire under my arse to make this happen and we are and it’s going to be pretty fantastic.

 

NapTime 

So I welcome August 15th as it will be a burn, a good burn so that I can have many more days like this, chilling out with my kids enjoying that mid-day nap.

 

 

 

 

 

Follow other bloggers for this year’s Summer Blogging Challenge here:

Zita of Ignite Strategic Solutions, Cliff of Peer Pressure Works, Tammy of Tam I Am, Peter of Crazy Wookie Cookies, Chad of The Daily Grind, Vlad of Analog Coast, Robb of Blogging Life, Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings, Liam of ln The Now, Natasha of Natural Urban Mamas, Earl of My Name is Earl (J. Woods), Brad of Kick Me Out Soon

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Canadians Working After Retirement

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RetirementMythAn interesting article on CTV News today says the majority of Canadians plan to work after the onset of formal retirement and fancy that it’s mainly for economic and social reasons.  While this isn’t a shocker since as you head out to your local Wal-Mart you’ll see Grandma and Grandpa working as the “Wal-Mart Greeter”.  I’m going to get a bit ranty here but I highly doubt that they are working at Wal-Mart in their retired years because they want to.  I can only guess at that but if that’s true then that’s pretty damn disgusting.  As long as I live and have the power to do so my parents will NOT be working after retirement because we actually want them to see our family and not be working some job at your local grocery store.  I digress…

The article goes on to give some pretty interesting stats:

  • 69% of Canadians said they’d keep on working
  • 57% said they would work so they could stay socially active
  • 72% said they wanted to remain mentally active
  • 38% however said they need to keep working because they cannot afford not to

What scares me the most about the two statistics about staying socially and mentally active is why do people feel that a JOB has to accomplish this?  Are we as a society so beat down by work to think the only way to stay mentally and socially active is through work?  There are THOUSANDS of ways to stay mentally and socially active after retirement.  There are associations such as The Alpine Club of Canada if your interested in that sort of thing, where you can meet a lot of new people via that interest.  There are clubs, organizations, volunteer work, and many more things that could easily fill your days and keep you mentally and socially active.  Best of all, for the cost conscious, a lot of these types of organizations are inexpensive.  So can we as a society finally get off the damn bandwagon that a JOB is apparently the only way to stay busy and or active after we retire??

The article talks about what some of the plans for these people with retirement include:

  • Travel at 86%
  • Spending time with friends and family at 72% (Can’t do that working a job or at Wal-Mart!)
  • Reading at 61% (Should be reading now! 15 minutes a day is all it takes)
  • Exercise at 60% (Boy I sure hope you don’t wait until you retire to start with exercise)
  • 50% say taking up a hobby
  • And lastly and this is scary (to me at least, cause I hated it) go back to school at 24%

What’s funny about the travel is that travel ain’t cheap and while 86% of the people want to travel, 55% of the people have hardly put any money away; less than $20k over the previous 5 years!  At that rate you are going to keep working for the rest of your life.

The last set of stats are around what people figure they can fund their retirement dreams on:

  • 56% believe they can fund their dreams with less than $1 million in savings
  • 28% believe they will require between $1 million and $2 million and
  • 16% expect they will need more than $2 million to live out all their retirement dreams

What’s very sad in my opinion is that a lot of these people will never reach the majority of their dreams and will probably also downsize as well.  Want to know if you can live retired?  Try living on 1/3 of your income right now.  Think you can do it?  Why should we have to downsize?  The traditional retirement is around 65 and as Canadians more and more of us are living until we are in our late 90’s if not 100’s.  So with that said how do you want to live for the next 30 or so years?  Think about it and think about it hard.  To many of us are worried about what we are doing today and are so short sighted that we will end up at the age of 65 and look back and say “what the heck happened?”. 

So with all those articles on retirement, debt, income, savings, etc. that continually come out through the news, have you done something about it?  Or do you turn a blind eye and keep living the same life day in and day out?  I’m not saying you need to build a business like ours utilizing Amway and World Wide Dreambuilders, but I’m saying you better figure out your future and figure out how you are going to afford it and fund all those “retirement dreams” you have because I’ll tell you your current job isn’t going to cut it!

 

Check out the full CTV News article here

US Government Thinking Pension Cuts

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Still think the government is going to help you in your retirement?  Think your pension is going to be there for you?  Maybe it’s time you think again.  This is just the start of things to come…

I don’t know about you but this is just one of many reasons why I’ve looked at other options to help secure my future because I know the government sure as hell isn’t going to help and there will be no pension for me when I retire.  Yes there are other options and I respect that however we feel what we are doing is the best option out there.

Pension Article from Fianance.Yahoo.com

Planning For My Wife’s Freedom Day

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stressfree This weekend we started planning for my wife’s freedom day.  What is “Freedom Day” ?  Freedom Day is the day that Lindsay gets the choice of working or not.  Sure she could continue to work, have some other man control when she can have lunch, when she has to show up to work, how late to stay… OR, she can choose not go to work anymore and decide to wake up when she wants and pretty much do whatever she wants with her day. 

How did we come to this point? With success from our business and also streamlining our life.  We’ve been able to reduce significant amounts of debt in our life to the point we don’t have to pay that money to some creditor or to some credit card company etc… If you really think about it, paying a mortgage, visa, line of credit, and vehicle payments adds up to a full time salary at least for my wife (yes we owed a lot, just check out some earlier blog posts).  We’ve also decided to streamline our life in areas like cable TV, we don’t watch as much as we do so why not cut the cable back and then just download the shows we want to watch.  We’ve decided to sell our condo and rent a place for the next few years because all indications from multiple sources say the market is going to slow down after this quarter and we don’t want to have to re-sign our mortgage when the market is low and interest rates will be high.  We also crunched some numbers and know we can save more by renting then our house will ever appreciate in a year.  So that when we move to Kelowna we will be in a MUCH better position when we buy a place there.  So smarter decisions like that have allowed us to free up a huge amount of income to the point it makes no sense for Lindsay to show up to a job.  We’ve also started making some decent money with our business through hard work and persistence to stay core, which we’ve seen first hand works.  It’s quite amazing to look back at my outlook almost a year ago when Lindsay started this and how negative I was towards her.  I’m glad that I didn’t steal her dream because I almost did! Where would we be then? She’d still be working for some other company telling her what to do and not able to give her FIRST best to her husband and family.  She’s continue to be stressed at work and we’d end up having to put our kids into a daycare or day home. NO WAY!

That is why what we do is worth it!  Lindsay gets to have some time off work before we start to have kids so that she can really know who she is.  She can become that amazing woman she is supposed to be, free from someone telling her what to do in a job.  I know that she’ll be looking forward to doing Yoga in the middle of the day instead of before work or after work, she can do it on her own schedule.  Lastly she can serve our family the way it’s meant to be served.  Now I’m not saying she’s gotta be in the kitchen slaving over the stove, don’t misunderstand me.  What I mean is she can serve me and our future family bystress_free giving her best time to me and us instead of her second best.  That is some powerful stuff.  I’ve seen first hand through this business the people who have been freed from a job and how much less stress there is on their marriage and how they are able to just be a family or a couple.  The impact that has on people is out of this world.  You will never know yourself until you are free of stress, I like to think we are pretty darn close to that after she retires.  Just have to get me free! :)   

So if things continue on the way they are now we are looking at Lindsay to step away from her job this July.  I cannot wait to roll up to her work in the middle of the afternoon with all our coaches and mentors and walk in and pull her out of that job.  It will be a HUGE party that’s for sure.  There will be tons of pictures and good times.  Her work won’t know what hit them.  It will be an amazing day and I cannot wait to share it on her so that we can inspire people to do the same regardless of what vehicle they do it with.

Do You Have A Plan For Retirement?

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retirement According to David Dodge most Canadians are not, and I believe him.  It’s apparent because of how many people lead a careless irresponsible debt ridden lifestyle.  We are in a recession (even with this short upswing) and people are spending money like it’s going out of style. People are just not getting it and are living in the now.  Check out this article – CBC News Link.  Basically the biggest item from this article is Canadians need to save between 10 and 22 per center of their PRE-TAX incomes each year for at least 35 years.

This is just one out of many reasons why we’ve decided to build an amazing business with amazing people.  We want to secure our future and if we have to put in hard work over the next 2 to 3 years to make that happen then we will.  See the thing about “Retirement” is once you are retired you now have to watch your money.  You cannot live the same lifestyle you may have lived before.  You have little money coming in and you are basically pulling money from the pile you worked 40 years to create.  Oh and then the best is when people say “I’m downsizing”.  Why should you have to downsize?  If you retire at 65 years you potentially have another at least 20-30 years to live.  Why would you downsize and live somewhere you really don’t want to?  Wouldn’t you rather have a residual income coming in so that you can live the lifestyle you want?

One amazing thing I love about what we do is that we can build an amazing legacy for our children.  Sure there is some hard work up front like I said but I’d love to be able to work hard and then make sure my children and my children’s children are secure with financial freedom.  How cool is that?  Can you pass down your JOB to your children when you die? Don’t think so.  So if there was just one reason to build this, that would be a pretty damn good one.

Check out this article and really take a hard look at your life and see if you are in a vehicle that will allow you to have financial freedom, will allow you to have a dignified lifestyle well into your 80’s.  Some people have their own vehicle and as I’ve told them I respect that but one thing we agree on is there are A LOT of people who don’t and it’s those people that need help.  It’s those people we want to impact and help them setup a legacy for themselves and their family.  That’s a pretty amazing goal in my opinion.

Lastly what’s up with all those ads with old people being depicted as retired. Who said you have to be old to be retired??