Are You Wasting Your Greatest Gift?

This summer has been superlative in many ways – travel, family, friends, sailing, BBQs, the weather. Despite being the 6th driest in Dutch history, it has produced bountiful harvests of berries, grapes and colourful hydrangeas in our garden. All these set me thinking about how privileged it is to receive  gifts of nature, freedom, kinfolk, friendship, togetherness and joy.

According to Oxford dictionary:

A gift is a thing given willingly to someone without payment.

Because every gift is embodied with goodwill, it is tagged with a responsibility to be treated or used  well. There is an inherent obligation by the receiver to not squander it, as a way of honouring the gift, and the giver. Of all the gifts you’ve received in your lifetime, which is the most precious?

The Greatest Gift

The greatest gift of all, is life. The moment we were born, we were gifted time to which we are to add our own collection of experiences and relationships to make it unique to each of us. Life is a gift because it is endowed upon us without anything in return.

If life is a gift, isn’t it our responsibility to live it well and to the fullest? How can we build a life filled with shades of our choosing, splashed with experiences, relationships and vividness to become a canvas that truly represents us, reflecting who we are?

Even though I had cautioned about early retirement in my previous post, I am a staunch believer in making the most of life once the threshold for a dream retirement is reached. This is the principle why I advocate a F.I.R.M retirement over a F.I.R.E. retirement. To live life to the fullest, understand yourself well to know what you want out of it, then go about tenaciously to acquire the right skills and tools to make it a reality.

Time For Money

In his book “Die With Zero”, author Bill Perkins introduces the interesting notion of ‘net fulfilment’ over ‘net worth’. He proposes that to lead a fulfilled life, one should maximise experiences and aim to die with zero wealth. Any wealth left over after setting aside pre-determined inheritances is considered a waste of effort, time, energy…well, a waste of life itself essentially. 

Most people who spend a large part of their adult life working hard to build a sizeable nest egg for retirement may not have the ability to enjoy their wealth by the time they eventually retire. Because health and wealth are conversely related. At the peak of our health most of us are busy working to accumulate wealth. And by the time we have enough wealth, our health would have deteriorated due to old age. 

Trading precious time and energy for excess wealth that spills beyond death – after bestowing inheritance to children, relatives or other deserving parties – is pointless. Once retirement threshold is reached, start accumulating experiences instead as these pay back lifelong memories and warm fuzzy feelings. Use this formula to compute personal retirement threshold : 

[ Annual living expense  X  Expected years in retirement ]  X  0.7

When Is Enough Enough?

The underlying reason why many people trade time and endure work stress to accumulate excessive wealth is a fear of running out of money before they die. Valid concern indeed and perhaps a nightmare scenario for most of us. That is why you should not rely on the 4% withdrawal rule  for retirement as it no longer works in an era of high inflation, uncertainty and longer life expectancy.

The way to guard against this is to build up regular and passive income streams during productive years that will continue paying well into retirement: 

• Annuity pay-out
• Pension income
• Rental income
• Dividend earnings
• Interest income from bonds
• Reverse mortgage pay-out

There are also many others who are slave to the idea of working hard: being busy, running from one appointment to another, feeling important and indispensable. They may make good money but are starved of time and freedom, the very ingredients needed to enjoy what they deserve. What is the point of working late into the night, through weekends, during vacation, sacrificing time with family and friends  and affecting your health?

For the growing number of singles and childless couples, working beyond personal retirement threshold does not make sense. There is no need to build and leave legacies for children and future generations, which are the motivations for most parents. 

Autopilot

My husband and I were the archetype for DINKies. As we got more and more disillusioned with work, we started asking ourselves for whom were we enduring toxic office environment and work stress, sucking the life out of us? We were then about 8 years into retirement planning and had amassed enough financial resources and passive income to retire well.

Unfortunately, we were on autopilot like we were for more than 25 years of our lives, chugging along on the treadmill of work. If you have driven a car on cruise control you will know what I mean. It takes a lot more effort to brake or slow it down.

It took 2 incidents relating to a close friend and a colleague to trigger my decision to stop work. Inertia, social expectation and peer pressure are powerful forces against less conventional behaviours. It is much easier to go on as before and do as everyone does. 

Once the decision was made, I felt a huge sense of relief as it takes guts to finally pull the trigger. I was immediately pumped-up with excitement and anticipation, and started to plan for a more adventurous and rewarding life, even digitising personal records in anticipate of more travel.

One Life 

We are all gifted one life, with a finite span unbeknownst to us. Every passing day takes away from what is left. We do not know when life will end. Neither do we know when ill health may strike.

Given what we know: that life is finite, time is precious, health is fragile and that only so much money is needed before it becomes ‘wasted’. Isn’t it time to pause and think about living instead of just surviving?

Life happens now. The life that is postponed until retirement will never be the same life because the most important element – you – would have changed, along with other aspects.

The world has so many places to be seen and explored, we all have dreams to be fulfilled, adventures to  experience, meaningful conversations to be had and relationships to be built or restored.

Start orchestrating the symphony of your life while working towards your retirement threshold. Live with the motto ‘Why not now?’, honour the most precious gift of all – life.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.  ~ Mark Twain

 

Yolo,

Savvy Maverick

 

(Main image: Praia de Camilo, Lagos, Portugal – Savvy Maverick)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are drawn from my own experiences and do not constitute financial advice in any way whatsoever. Nothing published here constitutes an investment recommendation, nor should any data or content be relied upon for any investment activities. It is strongly recommended that independent and thorough research be undertaken before making any financial decisions, including consulting a qualified professional.