For my wife and me, the dream of a house with a big, wonderful garden is deeply rooted and in fact, buying our first real estate object is an incredibly exciting goal we pursue.
But having been looking for our Dream House for two years now, it’s pretty obvious, that “finding the perfect real estate object” is not an easy project.
The hard, cold numbers show us, that it is a pretty daunting task to find a house here in central europe, suitable to our “needs” and not to overpay. Read more… »
Your savings rate is the the key factor if you want to shape your finances, gain financial flexibility in your life, being able to invest and build up an ever growing passive income stream in order to reach Financial Independence in a reasonable time frame.
Hi there. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you had a splendid start into the New Year and wish you all the best for 2017!
I want to share with you some achievements we made in 2016 in regard of our savings rate. Read more… »
Drawing by the blogauthor
We have a wonderful custom in our family. Every year at Christmastime we watch the film “Mary Poppins”.
It’s a lovely musical fantasy comedy, produced by Disney in 1964. The main character, Mary Poppins, is a magical woman who descends from the clouds after having received an advertisement from the family Banks searching for a nanny to look after the two children Jane and Michael.
The wonderful messages in the dialogues and songs of the film are timeless:
Yesterday evening I was reading financial reports of a company I am considering to invest in. While I was studiying the chart of that company showing the development of the stock price of the last months, my son came to me and asked what I was looking at.
“That’s a chart.” I said.
My son replied with a smile: “No dad. That’s a castle”.
That made me laugh. How cute! And indeed, I could immediately recognize the resemblance, just think of the castles shown in Disney films. Interstingly, all of a sudden I could see much more: a mountain range, a skyline, a fire, icicles, a cave with stalagmites and so on.
What I nice reminder that each thing and each experience in life can be looked at from various perspectives.
Education, worklife and daily routines over time let us unlearn our essential ability to look at things from different perspectives which leads to an extremely one-dimensional thinking. To a certain degree this makes us stuck.
Just take as an example the general concept and deeply rooted set of beliefs in our society “expecting” that someone has to
Where are the limitations when you look at the points above? They lie in the assumptions that someone
There is a high probability that these general assumptions are not applicable to all of us and yet they seem to set the framework for our lives.
I know people who earned a salary far below average and nevertheless were able to stop working at the age of 50 years to travel the world. Some of them were even much younger when they quit their job. How is this possible?
In fact it is quite simple: they aligned their spendings, led a down to earth lifestyle and invested wisely. They took a decision and chose a different pathway to become financially independent instead of “working in order to consume for decades”.
So the basic concept of working “9 to 5” for almost the entire life is just one way of life. There are uncountable other possibilities.
Looking at things from different perspectives is extremely refreshing and shows us plenty of options. Thinking outside the box is the base for creativity, the ability to address challenges with new ideas and solve complex problems. It’s a different learning process than through emulation and memorising facts.
We all have choices and can have an influence on many variables. We just have to relearn to see them. If you don’t want to work for decades and pursue something you are really passionate about, you can go for it. It is possible. It’s all a function of how much you need to live well, how much money you accumulated and how hard that stash is working for you. In a nutshell it boils down to the savings rate.
It is the right and duty of each of us to take control of our life, take care of our loved ones, to pursue our dreams, rise to the top of our capabilities and to find fulfillment.