A Sad News (Wake-up!)

Whenever an email pops up with a subject, ‘Sad News’ at work, seriously I feel my heart gets shrunken as if I witnessed a crime scene before even opening the email, and today was not exceptional. 

 

‘Again?’

 

I quickly checked how old he was (Geeee… not too old). His appearance was confirmed by a colleague who quickly browsed the company website to find who he was (Ukkkkk… I know him). It is never pleasant to hear ‘a sad news about death’ but it gets worsen when you know the person. He was working till the last day of his life and now gone forever. My colleague whose age is closer to the person looked quite shocked as she heard the news but soon faced back to her monitor and continued her day as nothing has happened, but I, as an early retirement seeker couldn’t stop questioning myself about the working life.

 

‘What is the point of life when you spend most of your life at work?’

 

Our pension age will soon go up to 70 (hopefully, still alive…) and also Superannuation access age has been proposed to be 70 along with the pension age. So, should we be ready to work till 70? I am already not young enough to be qualified as an Early Retirement Extreme but I refuse to imagine myself to be at work until 70. Definitely, I am not mentally ready for it. Therefore, I have got to do something NOW.

 

Why I want to be free from workforce as soon as is very simple.

 

Life is finite. Unfortunately, I have got limited life to live so I cannot simply waste it. I have been spending most of my youth at work to make money and career that I thought the most important things in my life. As time goes by which means as I am getting older, my view on money and career is not same as before any longer. I finally realised that they are not worthy enough to exchange with my precious life. There is no rehearsal in life so it is time to play my own role that I have been wishing for a very long time.

 

Do what I want to do and when I can do. Working 9 to 5, 5 days of week and 48 weeks out of 52 weeks a year has been limiting me from what I have been wanting to do. Living with not enough time and energy for my own wishes is not acceptable to me any longer. Getting up in dark and coming home in dark, and not enough time for myself stress and demand me clear answers for working life. I am supposed to work for living but work has been ruling my life. I do not want to limit my wishes that make my life happier and fuller by the reason that I have to work. I want to travel more, spend more time with loved ones, paint more, write more, find new things to do, etc… Mostly, I want to feel free about my life. So, I have got to depart the workforce as soon as possible.

 

Lead my life under my control. I do not want to be told what I need to do, what I should work on, how I can improve my work performance, when I should come and go, when I can travel, what I have to listen, what I have to accomplish by when, etc…  My mum never said what I had to do when I was a kid (as she knew I would not listen any way). I was responsible for my actions and it grew a strong confidence in my life. However, it didn’t work at workplace. I have been told to listen what to do, how to do, when do to, so on. Who am I? I feel totally lost at works without guidelines, policies, plans, strategies, etc…, which don’t mean anything to my personal life. Working life freezes our ability to think and confines us to live under the scripted life (like a clone). I have been living in it without examine my life and I am not happy to continue it any more. It is time to control my life according to my own plan and be my own boss in my life.

 

Utilise life energy for my life. I have been exchanging my life energy to work in order to make money (too honest? but I cannot think nothing else.) since I finished studying. It is time to use my energy for enlightening my life. If I don’t have to go to work, I would (finally) have time for doing what I have been wanting to do. Imagining that I can do whatever I want at any time soon keeps me coming to work nowadays. I have seen many people who postponed their dreams to continue their working life and when they finally got the freedom, they don’t have any energy left (too old or dreams are not viable any longer) to pursue what they wanted to do all their life. I believe timing is very crucial in life and I want to complete my bucket lists as many as I can when I can.

 

“I know, but HOW???”

 

I know many of you would share the same opinion with me but ‘HOW to achieve’ is always a big question mark, isn’t it? We need to work on what we want to achieve as I and my husband have been working on our future diligently. 

 

Financial independence is the first and the most important step to free you. We have been saving as much as we could and our saving rate has been close to 80% of our income. Our savings and passive income have become higher than our expenses so we are financially free at the moment (without jobs). It has not been easy as we both came from overseas and had to study again and also had to start new life in a new country. However, our student like lifestyle helped us to keep our expenses far less than others. Until I hand in ‘the letter’ to my employer to set myself free (hopefully by the set day), we will constantly save up for welcoming ‘the days’.

 

 

Working on ‘Simple living lifestyle’ offers me enormous freedom. I try buy what I need not what I want. When I was younger (and stupid), I felt ‘never enough’ even though I had more than enough. I bought things because I wanted to buy not I needed to buy. New things offered me very short pleasure and emptied my wallet very long time.  Since we started thinking about our future and practicing simple living, I feel free from satisfying myself by having more things. Now when I can buy whatever I want, seriously I don’t feel to buy anything. Having less offers me peaceful mind and makes my wallet fuller. Have things that you only need and live below your means will free you eternally.   

 

 

‘Don’t worry, be happy’. I try not to worry too much as I know ‘What ifs’ will lead me nowhere. Frankly, I am nervous about the new chapter of my life as it is considered as an unusual path and as I don’t know how it will go and end. However, will it be worse than spending all my life at work and chase things which are not meaningful to me? I have got to go and have a look to find how it will be otherwise I will never know if it is good or bad. I believe that we have got ability to solve problems on the way and lead our life to where we wanted to. I respect people who take action to reach their dreams and I want to be one of them. I know we will be just fine.

 

 

Surely, the sad news will be forgotten as fast as it came to us (especially, who are willing to spend all their life at work) but definitely not to me. I am glad that we have started working on our financial freedom long time ago and can see the light from the end of the tunnel called ‘employment’.  As foreigners from non-English background started with $50 in the bank accounts in a new country have made this far so, why can’t you?  Nothing is too hard if there is a will.