Work With an End Game In Mind

You will never hear me discouraging nor disparaging work. In fact, work is a necessary evil in life. We all have to do it...until we don't of course. But not having to do it is by means of our own design. It is achieved through doing the hard work first, having a solid plan, and a strong sense of financial planning and management that gets us to that conclusion.

That does not mean that work has to be liked. Not entirely. I mean, don't get me wrong, in the early days I actually enjoyed work to an extent. In fact, I chose work over most things because what it meant was that I could make more money and build my wealth. I was young and able and ambitious.

In fact, I started working when I was 14. I'd have started earlier but it wasn't something I could do. Although I always had something in mind to make money even before I punched my first time clock.

My first article here on read actually talked about this in great length.

In all of my working life, though, the end goal was never to have to do it forever. I had ideas very early on about early retirement, having riches, and just being able to one day do whatever I wanted to. In my own time and on my own terms.

Not that long ago I wrote about how not everyone can be rich, and how in the world we live in we need to have people who need money. Someone still has to do the work to provide us with all of the things we need and want that money can buy when we eventually have plenty of it.

We Can't All Be Rich: People Need to Need Money (read.cash)

This is sort of the flip-side post of that post. We can also live in a world where we can all work toward riches to the point that we don't need the work anymore. There will still be someone new coming into the world who will need to start from scratch like we all had to do, and so we can all cycle in and cycle out of the work world.

The world still works, no pun intended.

Do I like working now? The simple answer is no. I actually don't. I am old enough to have sowed my oats, so to speak, and young enough to still be able to enjoy the fruits of my labors, and the investments those labors have offered me the ability to make over the years.

I simply do not want to do it anymore. And of course, what I am left with now is a choice that is afforded to me based on what I have been able to accomplish when I was working, and the decisions I made about my money, as I continue to work now...for the moment.

I have things I still want to do. I want to travel and do my own thing, and pursue my own personal interests, unhindered by the massive time constraints that a job requires in order to do that.

Never was there a single day in my life when I said, "I want to work until I can't." Instead what I always said was, "I want to work until I no longer have to."

There are still things that I need to do. Or perhaps better put, things that I want to wrap up before I finally decide to pull the plug. A final number I want to achieve. A few loose ends I want to tie-up before calling it quits for good.

But there is a time-line I have also placed on that. 1-2 years from today.

Still, I have initiated what I am calling a semi semi-retirement phase. That is, I will take more liberties during my regular workdays, such as simply taking off a bit earlier from my workday when it is practical to do so. And, for 2022 I have decided to take a day off every other month and create three day weekends more often. No reason. Just to do whatever I want to do.

I have also ramped up certain investments that offer me income outside of my job, as I will be looking to some of that to replace my income when I do finally decide to pull the plug.

The thing is, there is a key thing for me to consider when I decide enough is enough, and that is that I don't want to have to compromise or make sacrifices without a job to fill in the gaps. I want to maintain my lifestyle. Otherwise, what's the point, right?

Retirement should be about tit for tat. Not this or that.

At the end of the day I think I have done my part. I have made my contribution. I have done the work. It helps to make the whole prospect of retirement that much more rewarding, even if I could still work another 10-15 years easily.

My message is a simple one. Just like I said in the beginning, I never discourage or disparage work. Nor should you. A lot of younger people I have met do this. They see work as a bad thing. They see work as a waste of time and energy. They see it as a fool's path. It is only that if one's plan is to simply work to get by rather than work to get ahead.

And retirement, or just stopping working is not rewarding if you have not done the work, and busted your butt, and made the contribution to earn it.

There is a huge difference between laziness and rewards as I see it. Laziness is just about not wanting to do the work before you can enjoy a reward you did not earn. Like I said, I have worked my butt off to be able to even consider retirement as a possibility, and to be able to consider early retirement as one.

As I entertain the next phase of my life, it is only a product of what I have done to get here. It was never about getting lucky. It was never about finding an easy way out. It was never about taking the short path. It was never about bucking the system.

It was always about doing the right thing, having the right mindset, making the right decisions, understanding the end goal and taking the steps necessary to realize it, and working very hard to make it all come together.

Meanwhile, along the way, people got what they needed and what they wanted through the efforts I made in that process. The world was made slightly more whole by the contributions to it that I made in the process.

The United States Navy got a sailor to help get the work done for the fleet and to help defend the nation. People enjoyed their magazines from the work I did to get them to market at Quad Graphics. People enjoyed eating a quick frozen pizza from Tombstone, DiGiorno, and Jack's when I worked the production line at Kraft Foods. An ice cold Coca-Cola was enjoyed on a hot summer day when I put in my time at the bottling company that brought it to the store shelves. Corrugated boxes were provided by my efforts for companies to package their goods during my time at Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. People enjoyed chocolate goodies when I worked at Nestlé. Pests and varmints were kept under control when I worked in the pest control industry for a company based in New Berlin, Wisconsin. And concrete mixer truck companies and concrete batch plants got much needed parts to pour concrete for their projects from my efforts at my current job.

Work is never to be discouraged nor disparaged. But neither is the desire to simply live and enjoy life. So long as it is earned. So long as one has done the work to get there.

No short cuts. No leaving someone behind to get there. No taking from the system and from other hard workers to not have to work. Not laziness.

Do I like to work? Like I said, I don't mind it. But my interest in it has simply changed. And so what I look to now is not what I can do tomorrow for my employer. What I look to now is what I can do for myself.

But what I also said is that I could never be here, arriving to this conclusion, considering this future, had I not done the work to get here first.

When I finally decide to pull the plug and go my own way, I can do it knowing full well, and being wholly satisfied that I did it not on the back of anyone else, and not to the detriment of someone else. I did it on my own. And no one suffered along the way. No one had to carry me along the way. The world did not lack something I could have offered.

I was able to offer my time, my energy, and my effort. And the reward I get from doing that is being able to now have it—society and the world—offer me a bit of thanks for doing it.

It is my turn to live and enjoy, and make room for someone else who still needs to make that contribution I no longer need to make.

Lead image courtesy of Pixabay, user jwvein. Work Closeup Spark - Free photo on Pixabay