Retire at 35. My daily life
By: Retire At
Tags: Retirement Planning, Financial Freedom, Financial Independence, Investing, Retirement

An occasional reader would probably expect to see photos from the Thai beach in this article. But there will be none. Wasting time sleeping under a palm tree is silly. Of course, I have tried it, but it gets boring after about a week.

Imagine if you had an extra eight hours in your life. Where would you spend this time? In 2018 I was faced with such a question. I found all the answers in books as usual. It turns out that everything was established a long time ago. There are several important areas in our lives:

· Family and loved ones.

· Self-development and hobbies.

· Business and investments.

· Community outreach.

If one of these areas falls behind the others, we feel unhappy. For example, a downshifter who moves to some island does not feel so happy. He has deliberately cut out the most important thing in his life — family and loved ones. The life of a businessman or an employee is dominated by career and money. A housewife’s life is dominated by raising children. There is nothing you can do about it. You have to choose and sacrifice something.

Retired investors have the ability to even out the proportions with capital. Is it really that easy? Yes it is.

Look at the picture. This is what my everyday life looks like today.

What I do during the week.

I am incredibly careful about choosing what I want to do. I make sure that the schedule does not include someone else’s “wants”. There can be no “have to” nor “must”.

Of course, that’s not all. There is much more to do: going to cafes, talking with children, thinking about life, visiting conferences, meetings with investors. In my schedule, I purposefully showed my routine activities only.

Before and after

Now for the most interesting part. I sketched out a chart and only now I have realized how much my day has changed.

After just two years of living by this schedule I have stopped recognizing myself in the mirror. The eye bags under my eyes were almost completely gone and I have dropped a few pounds off my body weight.

But most importantly, I began to listen to myself. A slight discomfort became a reason to change my schedule.

So, where are the photos from the beach?

Below I will post a few random photos. Lately, it has not been the peakiest experiences that sticked in my memory. It’s the moments like these that fill me with happiness. You can’t buy something like that with money. You can only get it by freeing up your time.

Walking with my wife at 2am around empty and snow-covered Moscow. ❄️ Expenses = $0.

This is the forest, in which I have trained for the entire quarantine period. And also where I wrote my first book.🌲 Expenses = $0.

Playing Sega with kids in the Yandex (main Russian Google competitor) museum.🎮 Expenses = $0.

Going to the match of my favorite childhood Chinese hockey players team. A lot of cussing, fighting, 5 players end on the penalty bench and a surprising final score.🦅 🇨🇳 Expenses = $1.5.

Coming to cheer for my buddy, with whom I go train together.🥊 Expenses = $0.

Going fishing. The last time I went fishing was when I was 14 years old.🎣 Expenses = $40–65.

I’ll repeat my question that was at the beginning of this article. Imagine if you had an extra eight hours in your life. Where would you spend them?