Forgot retirement who wants to retire anyway?

The Goal:

Saving to build a pipe. Building a pipe so I can have greater control of my time. Greater control of my time gives me more freedom to direct how I spend my life.

Now to buy a pipe and get it running smoothly!

Lifestyle Budget

For the last few years towards the beginning of each year my wife and I sit down and create a budget of the money we will spend, the money we will invest, and the money we will save and each year we have refined this process and have gotten better and more realistic with regards to our spending and saving habits to a point where we have a good balance. . . there is still room for improvement.

For the first time though we decided to create what we have called a 'lifestyle budget' to better allocate our most valuable asset, our time. We are still building out what exactly this will look like but we have realised that with our growing commitments we haven't done a good job balancing the allocation of our time. The draft of the plan for now is to focus primarily on weekends and perhaps add a few midweek events. It feels a little clinical as I type out this plan but our hope is that by doing so we better invest our spare time with our kids, friends, family, and each other. After all what is the point of the financial budget if there is no free time to enjoy some of your hardwork?

I envisage that there will be a crossover between certain areas of these budgets for example we have an ING account for vacations and we only have so many vacation days a year so when I build out my 'lifestyle budget' I hope to marry these and other factors together. Hopefully by the next post I will have a more complete approach to share.

From buckets to pipes?

In a conversation the other day I was reminded of something I had read some time ago, I think, in Rich Dad Poor Dad. In the book the author talks of building pipes rather than carrying bucket. The idea being with work there are only some many buckets a day a man can carry so he is better to focus on building pipes to move water then he can move as much water as he wants and build more pipes too.

I think this is where I am now I have to focus on building pipes to provide me more time for my family and for other ventures. The goal being to maintain/grow income while reducing the amount of time I have to spend on this area of my life.

Now what pipes to build and where?

Blog Objectives

Spent a lot of time reading, watching, and listening to numerous sources on how they got rich, got out of debt, started saving, started investing, and have found myself now in position where I have my savings in line with my goals, have my debt under control, and have a balanced personal finical budget. But I haven't found any sources yet that discuss in a meaningful / useful way what the next steps might be in finical evolution.

What I hope to do . . . time permitting (something I never seem to have a enough of or control over) . . . is use this blog to track my thoughts and work toward some answers.