How much time does that dress cost?

Stage 1: Hunters and gatherers (Surviving)

In those times when we were hunters and gatherers all our time was committed to surviving. Since fridges were not invented yet we were forced to be in hunting mode most of the time. No hunting meant no eating which meant sure death.
Fast forwarding to 2019 things have not changed much since we still hunt for 8 hours a day, although they call it working nowadays. Strange since fridges and even freezers have been invented long ago. Actually, it’s not just 8 hours, but for most people surviving takes all the remaining time they are not sleeping.
If there are 24 hours a day and we need 8 hours for working and another 8 for sleeping that leaves only 8 hours left for “thriving”. But we don’t really “Thrive” since there is a tone of other things that we “HAVE TO” do: Eating, shopping, commuting, cleaning, exercising, grooming, walking the dog, taking kids to school, etc. Everything that we “HAVE TO” do is still surviving.

We now live in the era of “The rat race” where there is little time for “thriving”, doing the things that we really “WANT TO” do. We may have one or two hours a day for thriving if we are lucky, but by then we are so tired that the only thing that we want to do is lay down on the couch and watch TV or any other brainless activity trying to get some of our energy back before moving to the next chore.

This leaves only holidays for the real “Thriving” (Assuming some money is still left for that).

And here comes the so well known expression: “Is this all what life is about? really?”

No matter how much money you make, 50.000, 100.000 or 200.000 per year, you are still in stage 1. If you are a CEO of a big company you may be making 400.000 a year but you have a lot of responsibility, and no time, and more and more stress and grey hair. Always remember that you are paying for the all the goods you buy with your time, unless your income is passive.

Stage 2: Through the desert (Growing)

The goal must be to get our life back, get our 16 hours that we are awake plus our energy back. In other words, moving from Surviving to Thriving mode.

If we want to get our life back we need to stop working, but we cannot stop working because we need the money to survive. So if we want to stop working we need another source of income, passive income to be more precise. Money that you don’t have to work for, money that you are not exchanging for your time.
We can get passive income through our own business, investing in the stock market or investing in property.

You can also get your wealth through other means like stealing, marrying a rich person, winning the lottery or inheriting a lot of money but none of these will get you what you want. Stealing will make you feel guilty and you may end up ruining your life. Marrying a rich person will make you feel very unfulfilled and you also become dependent on that person. And for the other two, if you don’t have the knowledge to make your money grow, or at least last enough, you will soon end up worse than you were.

No matter how you make your money, saving for long years, winning the lottery or through inheritance you need to learn how to invest it and make it grow. And for that you need to grow as a person. If you don’t know where to start, just start reading books.
The key here is to maximize your scarcest resources. In particular:

• You need to manage your time so you can use it to learn how to invest your money once you have it.

• You need to manage your energy so you can have more free time to learn faster.

• You need to manage your money so you can invest more of it that will get you through the desert a few years faster.

It’s important to set the right expectations so we don’t get frustrated and we can endure. This is going to take time. Depending on your starting point, how you manage your three scarcest resources and how high is your desired living standard it could take from 10 to 20 years. Maybe less if you are very aggressive but normally it won’t be too far from 20 years.

One key thing here is to start as soon as possible. If you start when you are 20 by the time you are 40 you will come through the other side of the desert and won’t need to have a job anymore. If you are in your forties or fifties don’t despair since we are going to be living beyond 100 years.

Another expectation to set is that mastering something takes time and you are going to fail in your way, many times indeed. Try not to get frustrated. You are going to invest money and you are going to lose it. You are going to trust people and they are going to rip you off. You are going to pay money (and time) for useless seminars and materials. Don’t get discouraged because all this is normal, unfortunately. It’s already hard enough out there, don’t beat yourself for it.

A third thing to keep in mind is that since this is hard and also long, don’t push it too hard if that makes you quit. Push as hard as you can but not that hard that makes you quit after a year or two.

Many years are required to learn and to save money and many more to invest it and give that money time to grow.

If we manage to endure all these long and hard years, one day we’ll find ourselves on the other side of the desert and finally we will be financially independent. Yahoo!

Now we don’t need to work anymore, we have freed 8 hours a day. There are another 8 hours to be set free because we still need to go shopping or cleaning. If we keep growing our passive income then we can also free this time by paying someone to do it for us. Paying a gardener to keep our garden, paying one or two (or three) maids to go shopping, cook and clean for us. You can pay someone to do everything you don’t want to do, all your “HAVE TOs”.

There are a few activities that you may want to keep doing if you change them to make sure they fulfil you. You may want to take your kids to school yourself, only that now it will be more relaxed, and spend time with them, and be more involved in their lives and socialize at school. So basically you have moved the activity from “Surviving” to “Thriving”. This is the reason why you had kids in the first place, isn’t it?

It’s ironic how in stage 1 you swap as much time as you can for money and then you pay money to buy that time back.

This won’t be always like this since at some point there will be a historical moment where there won’t be a need to work anymore but unfortunately it won’t happen in a near future. My blog post 0% employment shows a glimpse of that society.

Stage 3: Facing the void. (Reinventing)

At this stage we have so much passive income that we don’t “HAVE TO” do anything. We also have all the time to do only what we “WANT TO” do.

And here comes a new problem. We have spent so many years without time and without money, surviving the slavery, that we have forgotten how to thrive. We don’t know what to do with so much free time. We don’t know anymore what we like and what we love, so first we need to find that out.

We may find that many things that we used to like we don’t enjoy them or we cannot do them anymore. We have to reinvent ourselves. Something useful is to write a list of all the things you enjoy and you want to do, even if that list has only one item. Start there and by doing that you will start discovering other things through the new experiences and through the new social groups you will be engaging with.

Even if, while still on the desert, you compiled a list of things you wanted to do when you had money and time, another thing that could happen is that after an initial period doing them, travelling to many exotic places and buying many toys we find ourselves bored, unmotivated, empty and asking ourselves again the same question that started all this, “Is this all what life is about? really?”

Here is where it gets interesting. You have to sit down and decide what do you really want to get out of this life. You are actually in a very privileged position because you don’t have to work and your time is back in your hands.

You need to find MEANING and preferable meaning beyond yourself.

We never asked ourselves this question. No one at school ever taught us how to thrive. They teach us only how to find a job, work and survive.

Maybe you wanted all your life to join a Non For Profit Organization but couldn’t because you didn’t have money. Maybe you want to go back to work, but this time to jobs you enjoy and fulfil you and where you learn. Now you won’t be afraid of changing jobs every other year if you don’t enjoy them.You need to set goals, you need to write down your bucket list.

Isn’t this exciting? You can ask for whatever you want, and now you can pursue it.