"...before we can accumulate riches in great abundance, we must magnetize our minds with intense desire for riches, that we must become 'money conscious until the desire for money drives us to create definite plans for acquiring it.'"
- Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
It is all well and good to say that you want to build a business to finance your ideal lifestyle. But where do you begin when all you have is that dream?
This is one of the biggest traps most would-be dreamers fall into, and there is a very good reason for it.
If you spend too long thinking about all of the things you want your life to have, constantly adding more and more onto your list, you will inevitably reach a limit in practicality because enjoying your dream will become expensive and unattainable. Likewise, spending too much time on mental planning means you are wasting time that you could otherwise be acting on your ideas.
This is a hard balance and is a process all those looking to build a business to finance their lifestyle must go through. As we are on a quest to do the same, it should be no surprise to find out that took us about six months to figure out everything we wanted, and after countless arguments, insightful discussions, and brainstorming on the practicalities of it all, we came up with our target
A Look Into A Dream Travel Lifestyle
When thinking about our ideal lifestyle, we had to balance two conflicting goals. My ideal goal was traveling as much as possible while Angie's ideal goal was having a home base with an amazing kitchen to work on fun cooking projects.
Needless to say, arguments ensued.
When putting these two opposing sides out there, it is worth mentioning that neither of us were ever against the other's opinion. I'd love to have a house and an amazing kitchen to work on food projects, and Angie still loves to travel as much as I do. Rather than fight about this over and over again, we split the difference and gave each other what they wanted, the main ideas being:
- A home base in the US.
- Numerous but shorter vacations each year.
There were ideas about moving abroad for a while, but those got shot down because moving every so often is not fun and we ultimately would like to be in the USA unless an incredible opportunity came our way. There were talks about future long-term trips, but those did not clash with our desire to get a dog (which we now have). We went through a lot of alternative options that may fit with each of our desires, but in the end we took a centrist approach that made everyone happy. (Our full plan will outline more in future articles.)
This is only one-half of the battle, because figuring out how much all of that costs is another challenge altogether. And as Napoleon Hill correctly stated at the beginning of this article, knowing how much it all costs is one of the biggest drivers in making it all happen- and we couldn't agree more.
How Much Does It Cost?
If we had chosen the easy route and moved to Thailand, Bali, or a number of other stunning-yet-thrifty destinations, our financial goal would have been achieved already. Not being ones to make it easy on ourselves, we came up with a rather expensive goal that we have to work even harder to achieve (and I don't really see us fitting in well with the dozens upon dozens of bloggers who are perpetually stuck in Chiang Mai).
How much does our dream lifestyle cost? We put together the following figures to give us our idealized goal to dream about each and every day ( thanks Napoleon).
- Home base in the USA
- A large upfront cost to purchase a house or condo.
- Retirement Savings: $10,000/year
- Emergency Savings: $5,000/year
- Living Costs: $24,000/year
- Health Insurance: $10,000/year
- Multiple vacations: $46,000/year
- Taxes: $30,000+/year
- Investment income: Any Extra
Ouch. $125,000 per year is not the kind of income we have coming in right now. But on the other end of the spectrum it is not too unreasonable of a goal when you really start to think about it (even if the actual figure of what we need will be higher).
This will not be achieved in one year, likely not even in three. But with five years and a focused effort? Well, now we may be getting somewhere.
Starting Out Ahead
The one nice thing we have going for us is that we have been writing on Living the Dream for seven years and already have an established platform for many of our business goals. This puts us ahead of the game compared to others who are starting out, and we are also just over 10% of the way to the income goal as it is (roughly $15,000 per year).
For those who are just starting out, do not be discouraged. You do not need to be going at it for six years to start earning an income, and we're going to cover all of the topics to get you up to speed as fast as possible between this and our Blog Your Trip and Lifestyle Design series located in the menu of our site!
While we are not planning on reaching this figure in one year or even two, we have given ourselves a five year goal as a good starting point and over the course of the upcoming months and years we'll be taking you on a journey to see if we make it and, if successful, what we did to get there.
Who is ready to come on a new adventure with us? Do you have an online business that earns money, or have a goal to do so in the future? Tell us about it by commenting below!
