One of my hobbies is knitting and although I am somewhat of a beginner as far as knitting goes, I am trying to finish a sweater for my son. Hopefully it will come out good enough so he will think about wearing it out in public once or twice.
I have been following a blog written by Robyn Devine called Minimalist Knitter. She has a goal of knitting 10,000 items for charity in her lifetime. She just finished knitting 100 hats in one year! I am looking forward to knitting one hat for myself this fall and maybe a few for my family if mine turns out OK. Robyn just finished an interview with Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity which was very interesting. Hats off to Robyn for writing an interesting blog. Wish I could knit as fast as she does.
One of the advantages to retiring early is the ability to do things you never had time to do while you were working. My problem is that I have too many things going at once. I will need to prioritize them and concentrate on the most important and let the others slip for now. Blogging and finishing that sweater need to be my priorities for now.
Live and be active.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Achieving Financial Independence
I do not claim to be a financial adviser so I will not give any detailed financial advise but there are some general steps to take to achieve financial independence.
First of all determine how much money you will need to live your dream lifestyle. You need to be reasonable about your dream lifestyle to make it possible. In my case, I wanted to retire early and travel around the country in my motorhome. Research how much it costs to live your dream by talking to people who are already doing it. The internet is wonderful for research. Find blogs, look up costs of living in your target area, how much will health insurance cost and any other costs you will incur. Look into your current expenses. Quicken is great for detailing where your money is going. Many of your current expenses will continue on into your retirement.
After you have a rough idea of how much your dream will cost, figure out how to fund it. Look into retirement options at your place of work. Is there a pension plan? Do you have a 401k? I certainly hope you have been putting some money away into a 401k. From now on you should dump as much money in your 401k as you can. It would be nice to have your retirement income come from multiple sources in case there are problems with one of them.
As I said earlier, I will not give specific financial advise, but I will tell you what I had to work with. I had available three sources for income. The company I worked for would provide an annuity, my 401k and my savings. I could not do much about increasing the annuity except to work long enough until it would provide one third of my projected income, I was close so that was not a problem. I needed to grow my 401k until a 4% withdrawal would provide another third and I needed to increase my savings to provide the final third of my income. I kept a spreadsheet to help me determine where I was in reaching my goal. One of the happiest days of my life was when I determined I had what it would take for me to live without my job and could go into work and tell my boss I was leaving.
How can you make this all happen? Minimize your expenses. Pare down your life until you have enough to live your dream. Go through your current expenses and cut wherever you can. Question whether you really need all the stuff you think you do. This is where the minimalist lifestyle comes in. Sell everything you can live without and put that money into your savings. Stop buying things that are not essential. You may find you can move into a smaller house, cheaper apartment, or even move into a motorhome or RV. Some people even live in vans or cars, but that is rather extreme for me. Just do whatever is necessary to save up enough money to fund your dream.
Need extra income? Some people have been successful earning extra income with blogs using affiliate marketing or selling ebooks they have written. Sell stuff on Ebay. Provide consulting in your area of expertise.
What if you have no job and want to fund a dream of traveling? There are other options. Check out Workamper.com. Here you will find ways to get temporary jobs as you travel around the country. If you want to live in different places but not in an RV, you could work for companies like Home Depot or Camping World that will allow you to move to different areas and still work for them. Amazon has multiple distribution centers where you can get temporary jobs before Christmas.
Once you determine what you want to do and how much it will cost, keep digging until you find a way to achieve it or modify your dream to fit your funds. You can do it!
Have other ideas on how to fund a dream lifestyle? Post below.
First of all determine how much money you will need to live your dream lifestyle. You need to be reasonable about your dream lifestyle to make it possible. In my case, I wanted to retire early and travel around the country in my motorhome. Research how much it costs to live your dream by talking to people who are already doing it. The internet is wonderful for research. Find blogs, look up costs of living in your target area, how much will health insurance cost and any other costs you will incur. Look into your current expenses. Quicken is great for detailing where your money is going. Many of your current expenses will continue on into your retirement.
After you have a rough idea of how much your dream will cost, figure out how to fund it. Look into retirement options at your place of work. Is there a pension plan? Do you have a 401k? I certainly hope you have been putting some money away into a 401k. From now on you should dump as much money in your 401k as you can. It would be nice to have your retirement income come from multiple sources in case there are problems with one of them.
As I said earlier, I will not give specific financial advise, but I will tell you what I had to work with. I had available three sources for income. The company I worked for would provide an annuity, my 401k and my savings. I could not do much about increasing the annuity except to work long enough until it would provide one third of my projected income, I was close so that was not a problem. I needed to grow my 401k until a 4% withdrawal would provide another third and I needed to increase my savings to provide the final third of my income. I kept a spreadsheet to help me determine where I was in reaching my goal. One of the happiest days of my life was when I determined I had what it would take for me to live without my job and could go into work and tell my boss I was leaving.
How can you make this all happen? Minimize your expenses. Pare down your life until you have enough to live your dream. Go through your current expenses and cut wherever you can. Question whether you really need all the stuff you think you do. This is where the minimalist lifestyle comes in. Sell everything you can live without and put that money into your savings. Stop buying things that are not essential. You may find you can move into a smaller house, cheaper apartment, or even move into a motorhome or RV. Some people even live in vans or cars, but that is rather extreme for me. Just do whatever is necessary to save up enough money to fund your dream.
Need extra income? Some people have been successful earning extra income with blogs using affiliate marketing or selling ebooks they have written. Sell stuff on Ebay. Provide consulting in your area of expertise.
What if you have no job and want to fund a dream of traveling? There are other options. Check out Workamper.com. Here you will find ways to get temporary jobs as you travel around the country. If you want to live in different places but not in an RV, you could work for companies like Home Depot or Camping World that will allow you to move to different areas and still work for them. Amazon has multiple distribution centers where you can get temporary jobs before Christmas.
Once you determine what you want to do and how much it will cost, keep digging until you find a way to achieve it or modify your dream to fit your funds. You can do it!
Have other ideas on how to fund a dream lifestyle? Post below.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
What to do about pictures
After moving into my motorhome and having more time available, I tackled the problem of the many boxes of pictures I had accumulated over my lifetime. I brought them in from my storage area a box at a time and scanned them into my computer. This is a rather slow and tedious process but was well worth it. I had a digital camera at that point so all future pictures would be on my computer as well.
I now have all my pictures on the computer sorted by subject. You could also categorize them by date but since I did not know the date many of them were taken, that was not an option for me. I rather like being able to see all pictures of a certain person as they were growing up all in one place. To have unique names for all pictures in a folder, I just put the name of the subject and a number. I still have all my pictures available to look at but now they take up no physical room, which supports my minimalist lifestyle.
This also provides you with a backup of the pictures. In case of a fire, flood, tornado or some catastrophic event, your single physical picture would not fare so well. I made copies on CD or DVD and gave one set to my son who lived in a different city, kept one set in my motorhome and took another set in to work. So I had four electronic copies of my pictures as well as the physical copy still in storage. Overkill, I know, but making copies is very easy and my son wanted a copy of them anyway and I never have to worry about losing the precious pictures of my son as a baby. That peace of mind was worth the extra work.
I also now have my pictures available as a screen saver on my computer and since I have copied the pictures to my iPod, I can show those precious pictures of my son as a baby to everyone I meet. LOL Not really, but I can if I want.
So what have you done with your pictures?
Live long and simply.
I now have all my pictures on the computer sorted by subject. You could also categorize them by date but since I did not know the date many of them were taken, that was not an option for me. I rather like being able to see all pictures of a certain person as they were growing up all in one place. To have unique names for all pictures in a folder, I just put the name of the subject and a number. I still have all my pictures available to look at but now they take up no physical room, which supports my minimalist lifestyle.
This also provides you with a backup of the pictures. In case of a fire, flood, tornado or some catastrophic event, your single physical picture would not fare so well. I made copies on CD or DVD and gave one set to my son who lived in a different city, kept one set in my motorhome and took another set in to work. So I had four electronic copies of my pictures as well as the physical copy still in storage. Overkill, I know, but making copies is very easy and my son wanted a copy of them anyway and I never have to worry about losing the precious pictures of my son as a baby. That peace of mind was worth the extra work.
I also now have my pictures available as a screen saver on my computer and since I have copied the pictures to my iPod, I can show those precious pictures of my son as a baby to everyone I meet. LOL Not really, but I can if I want.
So what have you done with your pictures?
Live long and simply.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Cutting back
I have finished moving into the new apartment and organizing my room so I can start sorting through everything and get rid of anything I have not used in the last year. That will include lots of hard decisions on things that have a sentimental value. Maybe I can just take a picture of it or scan it into my computer if it is a document. It will be interesting to see how far I get with reducing my stuff based on a years criteria.
One major item I have decided to sell is my motorhome. Go over to my born free blog to see information on the motorhome. Hopefully selling it won't drag out too long.
I really like it better if I don't have too much stuff. Cleaning is much easier. :-) If I am looking for something, it doesn't take much time because there are only a few places it can be. There is less worry about things like storage spaces, breakage, maintenance, moving things around to get at other things and moving to another place to live. I would like to get to the point where I could move all of my possessions minus the furniture in my van. Actually, I may not be too far off from there now. Most of my furniture is on loan to me from my family so I just need to give it back if I move on. I do need to cut back on my books though. I always have too many.
Being minimalist is an ongoing process. You need to constantly re-evaluate what is essential and what can be eliminated. When buying things, make sure it is a necessity and you have nothing else that could be used instead. If you really keep on top of it, you will save money by not buying things and not needing a large home to store it all.
Sounds good to me.
One major item I have decided to sell is my motorhome. Go over to my born free blog to see information on the motorhome. Hopefully selling it won't drag out too long.
I really like it better if I don't have too much stuff. Cleaning is much easier. :-) If I am looking for something, it doesn't take much time because there are only a few places it can be. There is less worry about things like storage spaces, breakage, maintenance, moving things around to get at other things and moving to another place to live. I would like to get to the point where I could move all of my possessions minus the furniture in my van. Actually, I may not be too far off from there now. Most of my furniture is on loan to me from my family so I just need to give it back if I move on. I do need to cut back on my books though. I always have too many.
Being minimalist is an ongoing process. You need to constantly re-evaluate what is essential and what can be eliminated. When buying things, make sure it is a necessity and you have nothing else that could be used instead. If you really keep on top of it, you will save money by not buying things and not needing a large home to store it all.
Sounds good to me.
Monday, August 16, 2010
The minimalist life
I started toward a minimalist lifestyle before I even knew it had a label. In 2005 I sold the house I was living in and moved into a 26' motorhome. I spent 6 months or more sorting through my possessions and deciding how to get rid of them. After the dust settled, I had everything I owned in the motorhome and a 10x10 storage unit. That unit also contained my sons stuff while he was away at college. In the next few years I went from a 10x10 unit to a 10x5 when my sons stuff was moved out and then to a 5x5 unit after more clearing out.
I was working toward my dream of retiring early and traveling around the country in my RV. I accomplished that goal in May of 2009 at the age of 58. At that point, I unplugged the motorhome and took off to live my dream.
Unfortunately, life does not always follow our plans. My Mom and older sister were having difficulty managing on their own and needed help with cleaning, grocery shopping and doctor visits so they could continue living independently. Since I was retired, I was available to help them out so I moved to Wisconsin into an apartment close to where they lived.
Starting out in an efficiency apartment, I felt I had all kinds of room to live in and I started buying things. Not too much as my income is low but more than was absolutely necessary. Recently, I moved into a 2 bedroom apartment so my younger sister could move in with me to save money and found I had an awful lot of STUFF to move. The stuff from my 5x5 storage unit had joined my other stuff by this time. I decided it was time to go through everything again and get down to a more comfortable level.
So this is a blog about how I managed to retire early, move into a motorhome and then switch everything around to move into an apartment while still maintaining a somewhat minimalist lifestyle.
I was working toward my dream of retiring early and traveling around the country in my RV. I accomplished that goal in May of 2009 at the age of 58. At that point, I unplugged the motorhome and took off to live my dream.
Unfortunately, life does not always follow our plans. My Mom and older sister were having difficulty managing on their own and needed help with cleaning, grocery shopping and doctor visits so they could continue living independently. Since I was retired, I was available to help them out so I moved to Wisconsin into an apartment close to where they lived.
Starting out in an efficiency apartment, I felt I had all kinds of room to live in and I started buying things. Not too much as my income is low but more than was absolutely necessary. Recently, I moved into a 2 bedroom apartment so my younger sister could move in with me to save money and found I had an awful lot of STUFF to move. The stuff from my 5x5 storage unit had joined my other stuff by this time. I decided it was time to go through everything again and get down to a more comfortable level.
So this is a blog about how I managed to retire early, move into a motorhome and then switch everything around to move into an apartment while still maintaining a somewhat minimalist lifestyle.
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