I was reading Jason's post on post-financial independence (Link here) and was intrigued by the prospect of thinking about life after financial independence. In the post, there's a couple of financial bloggers who have span out their thoughts on pre & post financial independence weekly schedule which I thought was interesting to ponder around.
Whenever I spoke about to anyone relating to financial independence, there's a misconception that financial independence equate to retiring from the corporate world and to lazy or sit around doing nothing. Look, there's a vast difference between financial independence and early retirement, though the same can be said to be congruent with one another. Whilst early retirement isn't for everyone, financial independence is something every individual should think about attaining as early as possible according to what the circumstances may be for you. Unless you are born from a silver spoon, this does require a vast amount of time and effort to make that happens and by no means that this is an easy task. Just ask around those who've done it before us if you are not convinced.
I have written this post to make more of a fun exercise to think about what you can do pre and post financial independence. Remember that whilst you may like working for your employer and continue to do so post financial independence, the ball is in your court and you can tweak to find your own preferred schedule. That is the biggest advantage of reaching early financial independence ahead of time.
Without further ado, let's see how I would have fared differently (guestimate) pre and post financial independence weekly schedule.
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| B's Full Time Work Schedule |
Full Time Work Schedule
Work - I do not particularly dislike anything about my work in general but one look at the weekly schedule and you can see that work takes up the majority of the time ahead of all other activities. For anyone with a full time job, the schedule should look pretty much similar to what I have above. The thing is it would have been great to compromise between the two by having lesser amount of time spent on work while increasing the other activities so that you would have a more complete life as a whole. Unfortunately, it is almost entirely impossible to work lesser or even considered part-time for my role as the nature of the work doesn't allow to.
Physical - I would have loved to get involved more in exercise activities as we all know the importance of doing so but circumstances of the amount spent on work and families make it as such that there are only time to do any physical activities during the weekends.
Fun - Plenty of the fun activities, especially spending time with the kid, blogging, watching tv and surfing internet are done mostly at night after I had my dinner at home. Even so, you can see how these activities are being squeezed very tight because they are mostly the best time available to do these things without much interruption. I often take spending time with the kid precedence over other "fun" activities including blogging, so it depends very much on what time my kid goes to bed.
Social - I am hardly able to squeeze in any social activities these days with friends or colleagues because of family commitments. Things were quite different when I was still single and I have more time on my side to do other social activities with friends. These days, it's usually just about the Friday night and/or weekend gathering.
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| B's Guestimate Post FI Work Schedule |
Post FI Work Schedule
Physical - I'd love to increase the physical activities by way miles more than the current state. I think having a regular exercise does wonder to one's mind and body and I would love to spend more of my time beefing up my health more than wealth.
Fun - I can already see how I''ll be integrating fun a lot with social and physical activities with my son and learning some skills ready to made activities along the way. At the end of the day, it's about doing whatever you want to do with your life, so this "fun" factor can ranges from anything you find it interesting in your life that you have dreamt to be doing all the while.
Social - I will have some time on catching up with old friends over coffee or simply just remisce the old days when we were still in school. Given the arrangement of time, social activities can fit in almost any days I want it to be, again at my discretion.
Final Thoughts
My weekly schedule will vary differently from each and everyone of you.
You may like to travel, so you might plan to take some long sabbatical out of the country. Some may also like to do more volunteer, so the time could be spent more on doing meaningful social work. Regardless what it is, your schedule will be on your discretion and you have more flexibility to play it around the way it suits your needs and style.
Although this is just a fun exercise, but I'll encourage everyone to try and think on your schedule now and into the future. You may have thought about it at some point in the past on your head, but to draw and plant them out is an entirely different think altogether. Try them, it's just a fun way of thinking about financial independence.
Anyone who are interested to do the same exercise can get the template from where I've saved mine:
I've drawn mine. How are your schedule looking like?
