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The fun now begins because Jonathan and I finally get to enjoy the fruits of our labours. The book Victory Lap Retirement has been written, the website and blog has come to life and our first pre-orders are starting to trickle in.
But there is much work to be done to accomplish our goal of building the VLR tribe and helping as many people as possible start their own version of a VLR lifestyle. Great things take time but the results are well worth it once you get there!
Everyone needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning
During your primary career, when you worked for money to ensure security for your family, you had a good reason to get out of bed each morning. But in VLR now that you have achieved Financial Independence (FI) and left your primary career you will need to find another good reason and we believe that some combination of work/leisure will satisfy that need for you. If it is work for pay even better!
In my case I didn’t want to have a boss anymore, (two bad bosses in a row will make you think like that) so I decided to create my own job that would deliver significant job satisfaction — not in monetary terms but in terms of helping others and contributing to the greater good.
Now don’t get me wrong — the money helps and I need some fun money to fund the future adventures I have planned for me and my family but that wasn’t my primary motivation for doing this. I’ve always enjoyed helping people and there’s nothing that brings a smile to my face faster than when someone thanks me for lending a helping hand. Helping others makes me feel good, reminds me that I matter and that’s what is important to me at this point in my life. When you help others you will find that you are really helping yourself.
Is it just me or has the world gone really stupid?
The present state of our world really concerns me and I don’t like the direction it is going in. Most people are really working hard, they are out of balance, have trouble sleeping and because of that they tend to do dumb things. People are just plain scared these days. They worry about their future and have no plan for what to do with the rest of their lives.
They know in their hearts that their must be more to life than working like a dog for thirty-five plus years and then just retiring. A full-stop retirement is not the answer for all their concerns. People know they need more, that there must be a better solution and our promise is to provide people with guidance and inspiration in their search for a better way.
I lived in fear for more years than I care to admit, fear of possible job loss, fear of my boss not liking me, fear of not having enough money to retire on. People are so busy trying to survive day to day that they are unable to address their fears and take corrective action. Our goal here is to share our first-hand experiences and expertise and lend a helping hand so others can also create a great life for themselves.
A few words of warning
Please do not make excuses about why you are not capable of making positive changes in your life. I get that habit change is hard and I struggle with it myself (more on that later) but get really tired when people tell me they are too old to change, too old to learn new things, too old to change jobs and find something more interesting.
Complaints or defenses like that are just excuses for not making the effort. Using myself as an example I had never written before and now I have co-authored a book and run my own blog. I was never very good with a computer and stayed away from social media, but now I have my own website, and I’m going to be on Facebook and Linked-in. It wasn’t easy and I still have lots to learn but my results reminded me that nothing is impossible if you want it badly enough and are willing to put in the hard work. The key is to just commit to the goal you have set for yourself and then just get it done!
Book excerpt in Summer Retirement Issue of MoneySense
For you readers of MoneySense, there is an excerpt from our book (VLR) starting on page 27 of the summer retirement issue. These days everyone is trying to figure out how to create a happy and successful retirement for themselves and this edition of the magazine looks at the world of retirement from a number of different angles. The important lesson here is that retirement is about much more than just money.
Pre-Orders for the book
We are now taking pre-orders for VLR and expect to deliver books late August 2016. It was a lot of hard work writing the book but the response has been overwhelmingly positive. That tells us that writing a retirement book about not retiring was maybe not such a bad idea after all!
After talking to numerous boomers it’s apparent that most people really don’t want to retire, but for some reason (blame it on the status quo) they didn’t realize they had a choice. Many people now are making positive changes in their lives and creating a satisfying lifestyle that matters to them, that delivers on their needs and that they can enjoy for as long as they can. After that they can always retire!
Mike Drak is an author, blogger and speaker based in Toronto. He can be reached at michael.drak@yahoo.ca. Victory Lap Retirement, co-authored with Hub CFO Jonathan Chevreau, is now available for preorders online and should be available in bookstores later this summer.
