Chapter 11. Life Design—Building Something New

Why would I jump off such a big financial cliff right after spending two years getting us completely out of credit card debt, paying off student loans and car loans, and finally building up a good emergency fund? At first glance, one would think that this is a position to accumulate wealth and secure a strong financial future—after all, that’s the perspective constantly preached by other personal finance gurus.

My reason for turning my financial life around, though, was to live the life I wanted to live, free from the shackles of debt. I wanted a writing career that I could control. I wanted the flexibility to be able to spend many days with my children while they were young. I wanted a job that didn’t have to follow me with a load of stress everywhere I went. I wanted a job that would allow me to just get up and walk away from it for a while and follow whatever windmill I saw in the horizon.

In short, I wanted a very different life than the one I was leading.

In the film American Beauty, the central character, Lester Burnham, tells his wife something that has stuck in my mind for years: “This isn’t life, it’s just stuff. And it’s become more important to you than living.” The typical American lifestyle—buying an expensive home that pushes what you can afford, constantly striving to keep up with the affluence of others, working a job that you can’t even consider leaving because the pay is just too good—adds up to a broken American dream, one in which the joys of life are often pushed aside in a never-ending chase for something we cannot quite attain. Once we get the thing we want, we always find that there is something else to want.

I realized that the thing that was missing in my life wasn’t a material thing—it was a way of life. It was spending time with my family without the pressure of work hanging over my head. It was writing—perhaps creating that elusive Great American Novel, perhaps not, but always enjoying the chase of the written word. It was the ability to wake up in the morning and realize that I wanted to do all of the things on my checklist for the day.

My family’s financial efforts in the two years between hitting financial bottom and walking away from my job were intense and, at times, extreme. We lived very cheaply, learning new skills and new interests along the way. I launched a side business—TheSimpleDollar.com—that earned a small measure of income and also allowed me to dig into my passion for writing as well as my passion for self-improvement. We threw every extra penny into eliminating debt, which meant that we went without many material things that might have provided us with a burst of short-term enjoyment.

My reward for that effort was an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and create the kind of life I’d always dreamed of. You can do it, too.

Building a Solid Foundation

Consider the human hierarchy of needs as described by Abraham Maslow. To put it simply, once one’s basic needs are met—clothing, food, shelter, companionship—humans then tend to have higher aspirations, such as self-actualization and professional fulfillment.

This hierarchy is subverted in many ways—advertising, peer pressure, our own psychology—and it leaves us taking actions that undermine our basic needs while making futile attempts at grabbing at our higher needs.

Add into this mix the increasing unpredictability of modern life, and you’ve got a painful situation. It’s no wonder that many people see such radical life choices as effectively being “impossible.”

They’re not.

The first step to achieving the life you dream of is assembling a solid foundation that not only ensures your basic needs, but protects them over the long haul. Here are six essential pieces of that foundation:

1. Self-understanding. Why do you make the choices you do? Why do you choose to make impulse buys? What criteria do you use before making a purchase? Why do you choose to go into debt? Why do you choose to associate with certain people? The answers to such questions are a key part of understanding yourself and why you make the choices you do. The greater your understanding of your internal decision-making, the more likely you are to change how you make choices—usually for the better. Self-understanding leads directly to self-control, which is the key to personal and financial success.
   

   Begin by spending time contemplating every poor choice you make in a given day, from drinking one soda too many or hanging out with someone who is demeaning to you to spending extra money or choosing not to exercise. Keeping a daily journal is a good way to push this journey along.

2. Freedom from debt. Debt is a prison, as we so thoroughly discussed in Chapter 6, “With or Without You.” It foists unnecessary monthly payments on you, which in turn require you to have a high income just to maintain the status quo. Eliminating those debt payments eliminates the need for that income, vastly widening the scope of possible life and career choices you can make. Implementing a debt repayment plan, committing significant effort to it, and following through with it to the end will free you from the shackles of debt.
3. Frugal sensibilities. As discussed in Chapter 7, “Minding the Gap,” this doesn’t mean subsisting on ramen noodles and avoiding anything fun. Instead, it means cutting back hard on the things that matter less in your life so that you have the resources to reach your dreams in the areas you do care about.
4. A substantial emergency fund. As discussed in Chapter 2, “What’s Missing?,” and Chapter 3, “A Visit from the Black Swan,” life is incredibly chaotic. A large cash emergency fund greatly reduces the effect that this chaos can have on your day-to-day life, making it much easier for you to ride through the bad events and take advantage of the opportunities.
5. Retirement planning. Note that I did not necessarily say retirement saving. What’s important is that you think ahead to what your needs will be in your later years and take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that future. It never hurts to save more now so that you can put away less later on.
6. Insurance. Insurance is a final protection against uncertainty. Term life insurance (because you just want the insurance, not any sort of investment product), health insurance independent of employer, and long-term disability insurance are all strongly worth considering if you have dependents who rely on your livelihood. I won’t go into the specifics of each type of insurance, as insurers are constantly changing policy standards and numerous products are currently in the market. Use the Internet to research your options in each area and choose the plan that fits your needs.

The Rules of Your Life

One of the biggest challenges that many people have when they begin to think outside the box in terms of their overall life choices is the sense that things simply aren’t done this way. It’s not how everyone else does it, so there must be something inherently wrong with it.

This impression is a reasonable one. As we discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, our minds deal with all the random events in our life by creating the impression that our lives are incredibly orderly. We remember the general pattern we’ve established, but we forget the countless unexpected good and bad events that disrupt that pattern all the time.

In short, all of us have a set of “rules” for how we expect our lives to go—and how we expect the lives of our friends and associates to go. Most of us go to work. Most of us earn a paycheck. Most of us do similar things on weekdays and on weekends. When we actually think of our lives significantly changing from that pattern, it can seem really uncomfortable because it involves breaking that pattern that we’ve established in our minds.

Here’s a perfect example. Every single morning, like clockwork, I wake up, spend an hour or two uninterrupted with my children, and eat breakfast with them. Whenever that pattern of quality time in the morning with my children is interrupted, I get uncomfortable. I don’t like it. It breaks a rule—and it happens to be a rule that I cherish.

Household chores follow much the same logic. I usually spend about an hour each day on household chores—doing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning the carpet, and so on. If I don’t do it, there are negative consequences. Dishes pile up, Sarah gets upset, and I don’t have adequate clean clothes. I don’t like it. It breaks a rule for how I live my life.

Our days are all filled with tons of these little patterns and rules. We treat others with courtesy. We mow the yard. We go to work following a certain route. We stop at the coffee shop and say hello to the barista. We give our mother a call on the way home from work. We plan a dinner party and invite our usual group of friends over. We get our hair cut at the salon. We can’t possibly miss NBC’s Thursday night lineup. We pick up our kids from daycare. We surf the Web for an hour or so every evening. It often feels unnatural to choose to disrupt these simple patterns, even though the chaotic nature of our lives often does disrupt them.

Rules Are Made to Be Broken

Yet, if we allow ourselves to be governed solely by these rules, we find ourselves missing out on countless opportunities for a better life.

I puzzled over the decision to leave my career behind for more than a year. I felt like I was breaking countless rules—leaving a high-paying job with children in the home, leaving a job where my skill set was valued, and not working a nine-to-five job like everyone else in my family and my immediate circle of friends. I’d also be throwing away my entire daily routine—the morning chat with my coworkers, the inside jokes, the lunch routines, the relative peace of the daily commute, and the regular stops at the library and my other regular haunts after work. All of those rules and safety nets and routines would be going out the door—and the thought of it held me back from making the leap.

Yet, the moment I finally walked out the door—breaking countless “rules” in the process—I felt nothing but relief and joy. It was the single best decision I made in my adult life. It reaffirmed my relationship with my kids. It gave me the time and space to engage in work I am deeply passionate about. It left me with a renewed energy and zest for life.

Yes, I faced the scorn and misunderstanding of many of the most important people in my life. I was breaking their rules as well. I confounded expectations and challenged their definitions of what it means to be an adult and a parent. That, too, is a cloud with an enormous silver lining, because they also began to see that the rules in their lives are made to be broken.

Your rules are made to be broken, too.

Shoot the Moon

Fourteen months after setting that ridiculously audacious goal, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and saw a stack of copies of my first book, 365 Ways to Live Cheap, sitting on the featured table. In fourteen months, I raised my profile high enough to get the attention of a book publisher, signed a deal, wrote the entire manuscript, ushered it through the editing process, and watched as my finished work went to press and appeared on bookstore shelves all across the country.

What I found was that by setting an enormous, life-changing goal—and, yes, getting that book published was a life-changer, as it’s much more impressive to be introduced as “best-selling author Trent Hamm”—my enthusiasm for the project was substantially higher. I was much more likely to take big steps to make it happen, like contacting well-known people out of the blue and asking for help or editing my manuscript while cooking supper and rocking my infant daughter with my foot.

A truly audacious goal offers many advantages over an ordinary one.

Enhanced enthusiasm

Engagement in something wild and exciting gets our adrenaline flowing as we push our boundaries and personal expectations. Choosing something far beyond what’s expected offers the thrill of adventure and naturally piques our enthusiasm.

In my own experience, I found that setting an enormous, life-changing goal—and, yes, getting that book published was a life-changer, as it’s much more impressive to be introduced as “best-selling author Trent Hamm”—my enthusiasm for the project was substantially higher. I was much more likely to take big steps to make it happen, like contacting well-known people out of the blue and asking for help or editing my manuscript while cooking supper and rocking my infant daughter with my foot.

Support from others

A daring goal is much more likely to attract the positive attention—and support—of people outside your inner circle, the very people who are likely to be able to help you make that goal into a reality. People are always inspired by a story of an individual bucking the odds and seeking to make their dream a reality, and it is the most incredible of goals that get their attention.

By wearing my large goals on my sleeve publicly at TheSimpleDollar.com (and, at the same time, committing to helping others in my peer community, as described in Chapter 9, “Cultivating People and Opportunities”), I was able to solicit help from many, many people in reaching my goals. If my goals were ordinary—just simply to make a few dollars—people would not have become engaged in what I was doing. Instead, my goal was to remake my life, share my successes and failures openly along the way, and become a published author in the process—and that sort of gumption attracted a great deal of support from many, many wonderful readers and supporters.

Unexpected rewards

If you shoot for something truly audacious, you’re going to have to pass through some unexplored territory along the way, and there is often hidden treasure to be found here. New skills, new relationships, and new opportunities abound when you go beyond where your limits are and explore uncharted space.

When I sat at home poring over personal finance books at the lowest point of our financial meltdown, I would have never expected that I would wind up meeting, engaging with, and in some cases, building a friendship with most of the authors of those books. I would have never expected that producers would contact me soliciting my help on pilots and proposals for television series. I would have never believed that I would have the phone numbers of CEOs, chairmen, and other leaders within the financial industry. These rewards all came in the wake of setting enormous goals and moving toward them with passion and earnestness.

Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week, has been intimately involved in life design for more than a decade. He also advocates for enormous, audacious goals. “Small goals are paradoxically harder to achieve than big goals. If the potential payoff is small, your enthusiasm won’t be sufficient to get through the inevitable obstacles. Aim for the home run when everyone else is aiming for base hits. It improves your odds.”¹

¹ Personal interview.

If you’re going to even bother stepping up to the plate to chase a dream, you might as well swing for the fences. Win or lose, it will bring out the best in you. Dreams don’t come true if you settle for something less, and even in failure, you can still succeed beyond your wildest imagination. After all, Flynn and Blake may have been the ones to actually get on base, but the poem is called “Casey at the Bat.”

Think big. Envision that secret dream you’ve always wanted. Write it down, make it real, and throw all of your energy toward achieving it.

Five Steps to Designing a New Life

For many people—myself included, not too long ago—thinking of such massive life-changing goals seems overwhelming and out of reach. In truth, those big goals are often much more reachable than the smaller goals we often set for ourselves. It’s much easier to get our own dream job than to get someone else’s dream job, after all.

Here are five simple steps to get you started on your journey:

1. Get your foundation in order. Understand why you make the decisions you make—and get control over those decisions. Live with a more frugal mindset. Eliminate your debt and build up a healthy emergency fund. Even if you never accomplish your big goal, getting this kind of foundation in place will make any life you choose to lead substantially easier and more fulfilling.
2. Know what you want. It is you—and you alone—who is always there when you close your eyes at night and when you open them in the morning. It is you who will be the driving force behind achieving your dreams. Chase the dreams that you have. The positive people around you will be on board with you and support you. As for the negative people, they’re doing nothing more than holding you back.
3. Envision the worst-case scenario. Often, the worst-case scenario for a truly transformative goal is much less painful than the worst-case scenario for a much lesser goal. Case in point: Making a film out of your own script, even if it’s a failure, is still a far more impressive result than never bothering at all, as it’s likely to build you connections and resources that you would have never otherwise had.
4. Look at the personal rules you use to govern your life—there are many of them. How many of them can be broken to your net benefit, without harming your reputation or harming those around you? There are countless seemingly “unbreakable” rules in our lives that are, in fact, just tired habits. Picking through these, evaluating them, and eliminating the ones that don’t actually benefit us can not only refresh our lives, but strongly weaken the barriers to an audacious goal.
5. Associate with people who are attempting audacious goals in their own life. You can use them for inspiration, foster a new relationship by helping them toward their goal, and perhaps find a foothold for you to make your own leap of faith.