Retirement Daily Schedule Planning and the Need for Discipline

Retiring from work, and especially if you are going to spend most of your time on your own, the lost of structure could be a frightening thing. For example when you are working, you know what time you have to wake up to go to work, the commute is routine, and at work you have given task to complete, and when it's time to knock off, you go home, eat your dinner, rest, and next day repeat.  But when you stop working, what do you do with your time? And who is going to be there to ensure you don't slack off? Well, the answer is up to you! And nobody is going to be monitoring you and telling you that you are wasting your time or cutting your pay! And that to some people, may be a frightening thought.

Well you first have got to have a plan. Perhaps have your days planned out. Have some kind of structure, yet enough freedom so that you don't feel like you're confined by anything. How your day goes its entirely up to you! But I would definitely recommend that you have some idea before you just go cold turkey! Cause if you don't, you may end up wasting a lot of your time away not achieving much. Even if your plan is to rest and do nothing for a month, it's still a plan! Just remember, you are going to have A LOT OF TIME the moment you stop working! 40 hours extra at least, if you're a working adult in Singapore.

Here's my rough plan for my weekday:

1. 6/7am : I still wake up early cause I love morning when its cool and quiet.
2. 8am:     I'll go to the market to do my marketing (yes I do my marketing on a daily basis, pretty French chic eh?)
3. 9am:     Have breakfast (optional to have it earlier as well), clean house
4. 10am:   Prepare meal of the day after that. 
5. 10am:   Spend 2 hours on a project. (Step 4 and 5 can be interchanged depending on the effort of the meal)
6. 12noon:Have lunch at noon
7. 1pm:     Spend 2 hours on a project
8. 3pm:     Have tea.
9. 3:30pm:Spend 1 or 2 hours on a project
10. 5pm      Go for a walk or exercise
11. 7pm:     Bath and have dinner
12. 8pm:     Entertainment: TV, read, internet, music, planning next day's meal
13. 12midnight: Sleep

Projects in the above list can mean: crafting, writing, researching things up, baking, experimenting, going out exploring, planning, reading, volunteering, blogging, learning a new skill, learning a new language etc.

Ideally I can afford gym membership after I retired, and there is a gym I can get to without spending money on transport cause I love my gym! And doing things while everyone else working solves the crowd problem all together. Even eating out on weekdays can be significantly cheaper. 

Why do I have such a detailed list? Cause I have been doing the same thing whenever I am off, or there is a long weekend holiday. I have also been planning my retirement for more than a decade now! My only fear is discipline. Cause when you don't have to report to anyone, it is easy to get distracted by the computer, by your bed, by Facebook, by almost anything. And it is also easy to slack off by putting off preparing your healthy meal daily, or skipping your exercise. Also, don't forget the discipline to control your spending now that you have removed the luxury of a regular income!

So I think retiring early involves a lot of planning, discipline, and creativity! Something you won't be having much of if you work full time cause work is going to dull your thinking! (unless you're doing what you love of course).

Retirement Reading Up

I know I'm 40, but I have been reading about the good life and retirement planning ever since my mid 30s. And after starting this blog, I wanted to read more so that I have enough references to write about in the blog. So last weekend, I went to the National Library and borrowed a bunch of books to read up. I wanted to retire, but I was also not sure whether it was the right thing to do at the moment. So I thought, researching it would be a great idea.

The reason I read is for the following reason:

1. To see if I am making the right move

2. To see if there is anything that I may have left out in my checklist to retire

3. To know more about other people's experience and learn from their mistakes

4. Learning about what defines a good life.

5. To show the readers of this blog that I am serious about this early retirement thingy!

And the book "The Secret of Shelter Island" by Alexander Green was just what I needed. It inspires me to start a reference link on the right on Recommended Readings for a Good Life. In fact, this book also inspires me to listen to Mozart Sonata, and recommended more books to be added in my reading list. And that is what a good book does, lead you to more things and widen your horizon. 

Besides reading about finance preparation for retirement, I think it is equality important to read about why you would want to retire early. And many a times for me, it is about living a more quality life, a good life, your life. Which also references another book on the Recommended Reading list "The Importance of Living" by Lin Yutang. 

When you retire, you will have so much time on your hand, and maybe not so much cash. So what would you be spending your time on? Do you have a plan in mind? Are you going to make good use of your time and life after retiring? Or are you just going to waste it away mindlessly?

For me, it would mainly revolved around cooking and eating, exercising, reading, writing and creating craft. It would also mean trying out new things, learning new things, volunteering, and maybe even meeting new people and trying my hands at socialising. 

Travelling would be limited to cheaper destination, with maybe a part time job to support that indulgence. I wish there were more scenic places in Singapore for me to hike in, but that is unlikely going to happen anytime soon. 

I have fantasise about maybe living a year or so overseas just to experience living near nature. Maybe I may even move back to Penang to live in my little apartment. I know I would enjoy fixing it up into a little cosy place and spending the remaining days of my life in my beloved hometown. Maybe even start up an Air B&B business! 

There are so many possibilities when you are not tied down to working all the time! So for now, I am just in the phase of reading and planing and researching. Maybe by June I will start living it and try it out for 6 months of a 1 year just to see whether I am ok with it. Whether I can manage with so much time to myself, and whether I can manage down sizing my life. No more restaurant indulgence, no more multiple trips overseas. I guess those are the only things that would set me back. But if I do work part-time, I don't think that pose much of a problem to me :)

So yeah, when are you going to start your own journey?

Maybe we can even plan together and start a community of people who retire early, or just people who learn to enjoy the good life?

An Experiment with Retirement

Recently when I share that I wished to retire at 40, I received a lot of critical opinion like retirement is when you have no options, or retirement is when you let your brain dies, or retirement would be the death of you. It seems people have the misconception that being retired equals being useless, inactive, lazy, giving up, and lost of purpose for life. So much for labels. I've learned that most people who retire early don't really care what other people think. It is all about how you think about yourself, and what is best for yourself!

The reason I wanted to retire at 40 is because ever since I started work back in 2002, I have never stopped or took a break. When I graduated I was in debt and I had like 800SGD in my bank account to last me 2 months. I was so nervous that I thought I could start work the moment I left school so that I could start earning money. My new employee told me to wait and start 2 months later. I came from a poor family, had no asset, and no savings. I only had a few goals in life then: to travel, and to own a place of my own. 

After working for 15 years, I realised that each job demands more of my time, and although I was earning good money, I found myself lacking in time to actually do the things I wanted to do.  Leave and vacation was limited to the number of public holidays and number of leave I was entitled to. Even then, I traveled. I travel every year. This was one of the reason it took me ten years to pay off my study loan. 

As I travelled, I was always pondering the balance between youth and physical fitness, and the time to do all the things you've wanted to do. Many people wait till 50 or 60 to retire and travel. And when the reach the places they have always wanted to go to, they couldn't make it up or down the stairs, couldn't walk properly, was so burden with so much health issue they couldn't enjoy the food there. So, would you still enjoy all the joys in life then? 

The other thought always in my head was, what if I never live up to that age? After all, life is unpredictable. Sometimes I worked till there is no evening or night time for myself, or even weekends and holidays. After a while, you start to question, what are you really working for? What is your purpose here on this earth? Is it just to work and earn a living? Or something more? When you work too much, you don't even have time to think and plan your life properly. 

Because of that, I always keep journals, writing down my thoughts and my ideas. Above is one of them. Here's the thought process:

• What if, you have one whole year free. What would you do? 
• What if time was just a concept, and you can live your life without it? Not having to report to work, never late for meetings, always having plenty of time on your side? No need to rush anywhere....
• What if you cook and eat your own food instead of eating out?
• What if you stop buying things and start making things?
• What if you have no excuses to skip exercise?

How would you spend your time then? To me, time was the upmost importance. We can all carry on earning money, but we can never get back time that has past, and we can never extend time once it is over....

So that is what retirement means to me - Freedom from time and money.
Freedom to plan my own path in life. To live on your own terms.
And this blog is the beginning of that journey....
I will write more about money in the next blog. Stay tune!