You know when I first came to the United Kingdom it was the first time that I’ve seen how people retired i.e. by buying houses and renting them out. Well, this is one way of retiring.
I rented a room in the year 2000 from a really nice family man who had more than a dozen houses rented out. The man made a lot of money and was so nice. The home I lived in was somewhat sentimental to him. He hoped he found neat and clean people that looked after his home. He knew a lot about DIY and usually will be the one to fix anything that broke down over time. I was lucky that it was the first place where I really got to start my life off as a foreigner in the UK. That home felt homely and made it easy as a first-time traveller. Saying that in 2014 I settled in the same town and the first thing I’ve done was go and knock on the door and find out my ex-landlord’s whereabouts. I used to send them postcards for roughly 5/6 years until one day I got robbed in Spain. All the addresses I wrote to was in my bag. I lost contact with them and I found out that the house was sold to a family and was no longer being rented out by my ex-landlord.
Okay, back to the topic “chasing early retirement but it never seems to happen! Is this you?” Okay, this is my theory after watching and hearing so much about this topic in the last 18 years.
Embrace yourself!
Okay, so I know someone in particular who kept being concerned for my life and my retirement as I kept bouncing from one country to the next. Because they were concerned, I became concerned and this became another pressure to handle or one more thing that I needed to control. I’ve come to terms with this after living an intense life. The question I pose to you is “Is anything in life guaranteed?” Lucky, I asked myself this question in life sooner than most after I found that the goals I chased, the plans I had made to reach them and what came in the way of me not reaching them was simply “life”. Something beyond my control. Life happens people, and that is why it’s called life. I heard that people who were close to 55 years of age had lost their savings for retirement after some unexpected events. There is no safe way…
I looked at my father and other people in my community during apartheid and post-apartheid. My immediate influence was Indian people because I lived in a segregated area. I was 20 years of age when an armed robber held a gun to my head at my job, locked me and my colleague in a room and threw the key away. The robber and his partner in crime disappeared on foot with a 100 000 rands. After that event, I had a lot of questions that no one but me had and needed to find the answers to by myself.
One of the questions I had was, “There must be a way for me to travel the world and earn money rather than waiting until I retire.” Wow! I was surprised by the majority of people who believed that travelling was reserved for later in life. Being held at gunpoint made me think clearly and what was clear to me was an illusion for the next. I realised that there was a life to live and not the petty life I was living. I had it clear, “Stop wasting time, life is short and if others can’t see your value go and get yourself the life you deserve,” was what came up for me. Let me tell you, this was not easy the forces outside of myself was strong and one voice (mine) against so many. I took the first step and the rest unfolded as I kept following my intuition. I just had to shut out the noise and boy did the noise shake my intuition, but it didn’t cut through. It is hard when people make you feel like a sheep when you’re actually a lion … I’m grateful that later in life I got to be a lion, some people never find out.
Today I can say I am a billion-pound woman still growing in billions with the experiences I’ve had and continue having. You just can’t buy these experiences, you really can’t! You wouldn’t have had the opportunity to see my book The South African: True Colours if my life went as planned. Retirement plan or not every word written in my novel and the life experience I had thus far has given me a greater reward. I get to help people through this that every time I was affected by certain news in the world or things that happened to me personally, I’d come home and write with intensity.
Some people make it to early retirement and then they’re bored and believe me when I tell you there are retired people who start doing what they’re passionate about when they’re retired. If you’re chasing early retirement … then you’re chasing it away…
I’ve noticed the following…
When you chase something, it runs away from you even further. I’m not saying don’t try but know when it’s dominating your life and when to stop the chase. There’s enough to be grateful for.
I don’t think we’re just meant to sit and enjoy life or have a trouble-free life. There was a time in my life where I only wanted the “nice life” and never thought about making a difference in the world. I guess I never had the wakeup call then.
Lucky I was forced to truly identify my purpose and skill and realised that one day I will have a meeting with karma. It was time to do things for the right reasons. Once you get that, start putting the wheels in motion, the rest will just follow and happen better than you envisioned it.
You can have many jobs in one lifetime, yet you have one life and sometimes one chance. Make it good and make it count!
If you hit a brick wall in your plan once then take a detour but if you keep hitting a brick wall it’s because life is telling you something. A lot of people try to recreate a past success, it’s passed and it’s time to take a new road, new perspective, new angle if things aren’t working out. Create something that lasts which is aligned with you. Your talents are unique to you because no one lived in your shoes. If there’s something that keeps coming up throughout your life which you’ve been ignoring or have been telling yourself, “Aaaah, I don’t think it’s going to work out even though I love to do it,” then do revisit it, especially if the same thought keeps coming up. It’s there for a reason.
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by either purchasing one of my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to reevaluate them.
