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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tanja Hester
Read between
March 7 - May 3, 2019
This put my career goals in direct opposition with the happiness and fulfillment I craved. And even when I enjoyed the work, I was still spending my time and energy on someone else’s agenda, not my own.
You’ve worried that your life is passing you by,
And we made the choice to design a different kind of life: a life we’d live on our own terms, not an employer’s or a client’s.
That’s what Work Optional is all about: reclaiming your life from our nonstop work culture so that you decide what role work will play in your life, instead of society deciding for you.
that sets you up to weather whatever future storms come your way and with a purpose-filled life plan that will keep you motivated all along your journey.
one of the lucky few for whom work is a true calling,
Over the years, we both got a steady stream of promotions, none of which ever came with less work or with that promised happiness, and those trips into the mountains became fewer and farther between.
We just didn’t want to let work be the defining feature of our entire lives,
to detach myself from the artificial time constraints that school and work had always imposed on me and get in tune with my own schedule.
That’s because early retirement isn’t actually about money at all. It’s about living your best life as soon as possible—complete with that indescribable feeling of true freedom—and money is merely the tool to help you do that.
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Saving money just for the sake of saving is not nearly as much fun as knowing that every $100 or $200 that you save will buy you a day of freedom from work.
Most of us get stuck in day-to-day tunnel vision and don’t take the time to check in with our partners periodically on our larger aspirations and dreams.
We trade our time, energy, and brain space for a paycheck. In essence, we’ve already paid for the money itself by the time it arrives in our hands.
When we recognize that the money we earn can in turn be used to buy back our future time, it’s suddenly much easier to determine what feels worth our money and what doesn’t.
The more you can simplify your decision-making, the less you rely on your limited stores of willpower when mulling over whether to buy something.
My money’s mission is to provide for my life of service, adventure, and creativity, eventually allowing me to retire early and stop working for money. To support that mission, I will stop shopping online without a list, I will stop shopping at Target, and I’ll notice when I’m spending aspirationally in hopes that a product will make me better in some way. And I’ll be more mindful about the money I do spend on adventures so I get the full experience without spending more than I must. My money’s mission is to enable me to travel more and spend more time with my kids, made possible by saving
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The “magic” is really just the compounding of interest, capital gains, and asset appreciation earned on money you’ve invested, meaning that what you earn each year is multiplied on top of prior years’ growth, not just added, making the growth happen much faster.
planning your financial life actively and earning your income passively.
A big part of getting comfortable with investing is getting comfortable with risk, and the best way to do that is to accept that there’s truly no such thing as a risk-free path.
As an investor, your goal is not to fall for the fallacy of trying to avoid risk, but to manage it and to remind yourself as necessary that any option that looks “safer” probably comes with its own risks.
