Hey Mbini
I just stumbled upon your blog while doing some research on emergency funds, and I must say I found a Gem. I am very interested in early retirement and property investing and this is the first South African blog I have found on both subjects, most blogs I follow are either from the USA or Europe and sometimes it’s difficult for me to follow some of their advice as it doesn’t pertain to South Africa. So thanks for the blog it will help immensely in my own early retirement and property investing journey.
Kind Regards
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| Early Retirement and Property Investing |
Like most, I am a product of a "go to school; get good grades; get a job; work hard; retire comfortably at 65" generation. In case you haven't noticed "Living" is not part of that equation. I did follow that common “wisdom” by going to school and getting good grades. I was quite a competitive learner. I was never fond of books but I had a way to make it. And so I found myself being a graduate and moving towards the next goal of getting a job so I can work hard and retire just before death.
This is where I had a problem. I needed life before retirement. I doubt if anyone wants to work hard just to retire and die. Yet, everyone seemed to expect a successful life to follow this "logical" sequence. I was desperate to add “live” before and after the job in my own life equation. I needed to live because having a business as a student meant less living. Working hard until retirement was never an option. And so my own formula became:
[go to school; get good grades; live; get a job; live; retire; live]50 percent of my life was to be more about living than anything else. Living requires some level of preparedness. It is about working towards doing what you want to do. Living is about searching for your passion and pursuing it wholeheartedly. Working until 65 sounded... very wrong to me. I am neither a careerist nor a specialist. Throughout my life I have invested in a lot of unrelated studies and businesses. I have to be constantly excited about something new.
And so in my 20s, just after investing in my first apartment, I stumbled upon a book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. And like the Buddhist Proverb states, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”; that was what I needed. At that point I had gone from selling candy in primary school to paying my way through university selling soft furnishings manufactured by myself and trying my luck at MLM after graduating to supplement my low income. I was more than determined to fit in the "live" variable in my life equation and do so in my own terms. That is how a property investor within me was born.
I immersed myself in investment related reading material until I understood the basics well enough to start implementing. After getting married to a like-minded guy, we joined forces to pursue the “early retirement and property investing” dream. This does not feel anything like work. I am enjoying every single minute of it, including sharing it here in this post right now. It has become part of me that I get irritable when I am not inhaling dust doing quality control in a construction site.
We initially bought tiny homes to let and slowly changed our investment strategy to bigger homes in high demand upmarket suburbs and are gradually getting into commercial property. Whats more exciting is that I get invites to talk to small groups of young professionals and couples on living debt free, savings, growing wealth, early retirement and property investing. And, yeah, I write here too. And guess what… I am living. This passion keeps me alive.
Just remember that this is a business. And like any other business one needs a proper strategy and a good plan to execute it. For a very long time I heavily relied on my property manager to keep everything together. Building systems helps any business to run itself. One will always need people who know and do just about anything that needs to be done. And that enables one to “live”.
I am glad that I chose to “live”.
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Thank you ,A truly insightful and informative piece you never lean such things at school of university we are just indoctrinated to societies’ game plan of, get good grade, go to college get a job work for someone else put money in a retirement fund.
ReplyDeletePleasure Palesa. Thanks to you for the compliment.
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