Never Retire - Say No To Bold New Year's Resolutions...
Say yes to feasible lifestyle changes.
Bold New Year’s resolution: I’m going to lose weight.
Feasible lifestyle change: I’m going to go to yoga 5-6 times a week and eat more salads for dinner. We’ll let the number on the scale or reflection in the mirror take care of itself.
The feasible lifestyle change has a better chance of happening, taking hold, and being successful.
Specific action that really only requires a modest level of dedication. I apply this philosophy for making change to most things I do in life, including with money.
A common personal financial example.
I’d like to have an extra $150 a month to put into my travel fund. So I’ll stop going to the coffee shop every day. There’s no doubt this can work. But I like coffee. And going to the coffee shop. So why deprive myself of this not-so-guilty pleasure?
Because you know you’re gonna fall off of the wagon at some point anyway.
But we’re conditioned by mainstream personal finance to nickel and dime ourselves to improve our money situations or fix money problems—
For the longest time, I accepted a monthly car payment as a perfectly normal, if not required part of my budget. When I could no longer be car-free, I didn’t think twice. I took on another car payment.
It’s easy to settle into this way of thinking.
The budget experts lead you down this path with the percentage — usually 10 to 15 percent — they deem acceptable for your transportation expenditure as part of your overall budget.
Conventional budgeting can do this. It compels us to overspend for things such as housing or transportation and feel okay about it. However, it’s these costs that can leave people living paycheck to paycheck.
You gotta meet that big rent or mortgage payment every month. You gotta do likewise with the car payment. Before you know it, you’ve used up somewhere around fifty percent of your income to satisfy these two expenses.
When you realize this, you let go of the hysterical and pointless personal finance platitude of not buying $5 lattes at the coffee shop on a regular basis. Because, unless you’re spending recklessly on a bunch of small things, the small expenses actually don’t add up. It’s the big ones — led by housing and transportation — that do.
That excerpt comes from a December 25, 2021 Medium article that pretty much nobody read. Serves me right for publishing something on Christmas!
All of this to say—
When I bold and italicize Never Retire, I do it because it signals a lifestyle. One where you take something seemingly negative—not being able to quit work altogether at a target age—and turn it not only positive, but into a more attractive alternative to the prescribed norm. That alternative being—hopefully—the semi-retired life now and for the duration.
One-off personal finance hacks don’t create much meaningful or lasting change.
Nor do they establish a lifestyle that will stand the test of time, and your will power.
When you take your thinking about money—as it helps facilitate life—to this next level, the $5 a day at the coffee shop becomes inconsequential. Maybe you’ll spend it today, maybe you won’t. Doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
Think strategically and bigger picture.
What’s my situation today?
If necessary, how can I make material changes to it that will put me in a better situation than I was yesterday. Immediately, or within a reasonable amount of time.
Is this new reality the one you’re going with for the duration or do you need to devise a phase two that will take more time to accomplish?
For me, it was establishing the lowest cost of living I could possibly have in Los Angeles. I’m close to where I’d like to be, but not quite. When I get there, it’s time to officially commence phase two.
Move to a place where I can decrease my cost of living even more so I can double down on the semi-retired life in relative old age and beyond.
That place being Spain!
Purposeful segue to say I’m already outlining the posts my girlfriend and I will make to the newsletter in February. Which will set up March.
At least 40 posts in 59 days.
I’ve never been more excited about a series of posts as I am these ones.
So now is the perfect time to join or upgrade as a paid subscriber.
As you might know, my partner and I will spend February in Spain and Italy.
The intinerary—Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Rome, Naples, Barcelona
For the month of February, I’m currently planning a month-long series of 20 Never Retire newsletter posts in 28 days.
Each post will include the following (in no particular order)—
Photography from the cities we visit.
Thoughts, observations, highlights from the cities we visit.
A breakdown of what we spent each day to compare the cost of living in Spain and Italy to the United States and elsewhere.
A Never Retire checklist item. A total of 20 practical money/work/life-related boxes you need to check to live the semi-retired life you wanna live now and for the duration.
Then, in March, I’ll do 20 posts in 31 days, meticulously detailing each of the 20 items.
A Spanish apartment we’ll be staying in on the trip, courtesy of Airbnb