Where do you imagine yourself in retirement?
Not all of us dream of living a lavish lifestyle full of endless holidays and more money than we know what to do with. But I bet not a single one of you dreams of being broke! Am I right?
However, with the average life span increasing, more of us are likely to outlive our pension pots, so planning for the future has never been more important.
In this episode I am going to teach you how to plant the seeds for a wealthy future, so you can retire whenever and however you want.
Links & Resources:
Esala Perahera aka The Festival of the Tooth
Highlights from this episode:
(02:23) Be careful what you wish for
(06:34) Stop work whenever you want
(10:53) How do you want to live when you’re 100?
(15:31) Plant the seeds for your future now
(19:47) Focus
(22:04) I love a spreadsheet!
Has this podcast started you thinking about what A Wealthy Life might look and feel like for you? Why not spend another 3 minutes and take my online audit called Readiness to Retire Wealthy based on the five principles discussed in The Wealthy Retirement Plan book and episodes of this podcast? The assessment provides you with a personal score and report to help you take back control of your financial future – something business owners and employees both forget – but for different reasons.
Https://VickiWusche.com/Scorecard/
Connect with Vicki:
Visit my website to learn more
Booking calendar – https://calendly.com/vickiwusche
Browse Books by Vicki:
Using Other People’s Money: How to invest in property 4th edition
Make More Money from Property: From investor thinking to a business mindset 2nd Edition
Property for the Next Generation: Securing your future in uncertain times 2nd Edition
The New Estate: Insights from the 22nd century
The Wealthy Retirement Plan: A revolutionary guide to living the rest of your in style
Or read the following Ebooks on VickiWusche.com:
9 Critical Property Principles
The De-Job Yourself Manual: Break your reliance on a monthly wage
The Values Manual: Understand what your values are and how they can be key to a successful business
The Goal Setting Manual: Create meaningful and practical goals then achieve them
Episode 008 Transcript – Property Helped Me Retire at 48
Welcome. In this episode, I’m going to explain to you how you can plant seeds now, and those seeds may grow into giant money trees that provide for your every need, or just simply a bed of weeds that are no use to anyone. Although, as a gardener, I will say to you that weeds are just flowers in the wrong place and that’s okay. We won’t go down that trip. Stay on topic Vicki.
You’re going to understand in this episode, why focusing on your future now, whatever age you are, is absolutely the perfect time to be thinking about your future. And how that focus is going to crispen. Is crispen a word? I’m not sure if crispen is a word. If it is, it’s a good word. Sharpen, sharpen will be a better word. So, how your focus will sharpen. Although I still like crispen.
With this sharper focus is going to come choice, and with choice is going to come a Wealthy Life. Let me give you an example. When I first got married years and years and years ago, I did it because I thought I loved the person I was marrying. I very definitely imagined that I was going to stay married to them forever and that we would create a family.
Little did I know that 40 years later I would be doing it all over again with the lovely Bob. And while I knew that what I wanted in my future was to live with someone I loved, to have a happy family with them, to be able to grow with them, to learn from them; for us to be a team, friends, life partners. And, of course, now I’ve actually got that; I’m a dive buddy with Bob as well.
I didn’t know that I could want what felt like a very clear future, but actually in my picture, as the focus sharpened, the wrong person was standing by my side. And that’s the thing about goals. You don’t always get what you want, when you want it, or in the form that you want it.
And there is a saying that is “you’ve got to be careful what you wish for.” And I don’t like that saying, it implies that wishing generates a bad outcome and I don’t believe that’s true. But what I do want for you is that you are careful–full of care–about what you wish for? Know, and believe me, that you could improve on that wish or focus and you’ll get better at wishing and focusing the more you do it.
I don’t believe we’re born with a set of binoculars on our eyes and you can look out into the future and that’s it, in that precise moment, exactly see everything that you want. Because maybe if you did have that level of vision, you’d already be on that path. You probably wouldn’t be listening to this podcast.
Or if you are, you’re just nodding along because you’ve got everything that you want, and everything in your world is absolutely rosy. And I’m delighted for you. For the majority of people, you can see something in your future. It may be hazy. It may be sharper, a crisper image.
And as you travel towards it, you’re going to learn skills. You’re going to learn new words, a broader language. You’re going to mix with people. And you’re going to gain knowledge and understanding that you didn’t have at the start of your journey so that then, when you look forward, what you see is crisper, is sharper, and maybe you can see something slightly beyond it, which you want more than the first thing that you saw. And that then becomes the focus of your journey and you pull yourself forward.
And the proof of this is, just imagine back as you as a child; what was it you wanted to be when you grew up in? Is that still the same thing? That train driver? I was going to be an underwater photographer like Jacques Cousteau. It’s not always in the way that we imagined it. My dream is my lifestyle, it’s not my job. So be careful–full of care–about what you wish for.
I could never have imagined that I would be marrying Bob 40 years later, after my first wedding. Nor could I imagine the life that we’ve had for the last 22 years, when I first started to take control and to focus on the life that I wanted to live.
This isn’t a selfish activity. This is a self-preservation activity. We were born to live, why not live according to our values? Why not live according to our wishes? And over the next 30 minutes, I really want to inspire you, motivate you, empower you even, to create the life you want. I’m so passionate about this. I’m going to make it my mission to help you in any way that I can.
Let’s get back to the real title of this episode, and a few points I want to clear up, and why I want you to listen to this episode as a feeder for the episodes that are coming. I’m not going to sell you a property course as part of this little program here that are going on, of episodes. I’m not even going to offer to create your own cashflow in property portfolio business for you like I have, because it might not be right for you. This isn’t about sales. This series of the next seven videos is about inspiring you to plant your own seeds. I’m not boasting that I’m financially able to stop working by the time I was 48, nor am I suggesting that you have to.
But if you want to, know that you can stop work whenever you want and still maintain the lifestyle that you want. I’m going to share the steps that I took so that you can see which of those steps are right for you, where you have strengths, where there are gaps in your journey, holes in your path, that you can fill in so that you too can get to the stage where you can choose to retire or stop work, whenever you want.
And I’m certainly not saying that you have to stop work. You may love what you do. You may also be, as I first described in the first episodes, someone who is bound to the job title and the status, and don’t feel able to stop work because of the changes that will bring. That’s fine.
But if you love what you do, I want to ask you the question: is it that you work, still, to pay the bills or are you only working out of passion and choice? And if you truly work out of passion and choice, and you don’t need the income you have from your job or your business, the next question to you is: are you financially resilient enough to cope with whatever life offers you?
So, do you have those buffers in place? Do you have that flexibility in your income that you can cope with what’s coming for you? And I mentioned that there are another five, six episodes, and I’m going to be taking you through the Five Principles of a Wealthy Life. And I mentioned these in my book, A Wealthy Retirement Plan.
And what I’m going to do is share with you these principles that I’ve unpacked, and if you like, distilled from my journey. And share them with you in a way that you can use them, that you can adapt them, that you can maybe just go “okay, yeah, I’m listening. I’ve got this. I’ve got that. I don’t want to do those yet, but I’m aware of them.”
And one of the main reasons is, the negative consequences if you don’t pay attention to your finances are quite simply that you could end up retiring–when the government actually allows you to–broke. And I don’t know that anybody’s looking into their future going “oh, I tell you what I want Vicki, I really want to be broke in my future. I don’t want to have any money. I want to worry about money all the time, and I want to have to sit in a cold house and eat cold baked beans.”
The fact is that even with all the scare stories and the doom, that’s around, you are going to live longer than you think. And more importantly, you’re going to live longer than you can afford.
And while the average age for men and for women 79 and 83 respectively, and this is higher than it is in the States. And, you know, we’re doing, we’re doing quite well in this country to get to around about 80, before we have to step off this mortal coil. I want you to know that there are over 15,000–I can never say this word, hundred-year-olds, I’ll use that word–centenarians.
There’s over 15,000 people in this country that are over a hundred years old. And that number is growing almost 5% a year. You know, the Queen sends out birthday cards on your hundredth birthday. She’s had to take on new staff. And I think the last time I Googled this fact, when I was writing my book back in 2018, she’d had to take on a team of seven to cope with the number of people that are having their hundredth birthday. And, hundred and five birthdays, hundred and fifth birthdays!
I think that’s incredible. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. Why are so many people living longer? Why am I so convinced that you will, whatever age you are now, unless you do happen to be in your seventies, you’ve got 10, 20, 30, 40 years for you get to 80.
And in that time, you are having better nutrition, better health care than ever before. There are medical lifesaving techniques. We’ve become so clever at prolonging life. And that’s what I was saying to you earlier, but this is one of the crucial times when quality of life is more important than quantity of life.
Yes, the doctors can keep you alive, but how do you want to live when you’re 80? When you’re 90? When you’re a hundred? I watched some of the programs on the television about ambulances and 9-9-9, because we’re fascinated with that stuff. Sometimes you hear it in the news and you’ll see this inspirational older person well into their nineties–look at the queen herself, well into her nineties. And, all right, maybe the Queen’s not a good example, but some of the people I’ve watched on the TV. They live alone. They’re independent. They’ve still got their faculties. Yes, they might walk with a stick because they are getting frail. You will get frail, but what if you could live well into your nineties?
Maybe if you’re in your forties, fifties, now you could live to your a hundred or beyond a hundred? How are you going to live there? How are you going to fund then if what normally happens is that we stop working in our mid-sixties? If we stop working in our mid-sixties, you’ve got at least 20 years with no income that you need to think about.
When I wrote my fifth book back in 2018, A Wealthy Retirement Plan, it was before we’d had any other thoughts of the pandemic, other than one in a Hollywood movie. We thought that we were invincible. And yet I knew through family experiences of a great aunt going into a home. And later on, my mum going into a home, that the future held a competing image, or a competing metaphor.
Are we going to live the life of the stinky chair, or are we going to live the life of the deck chair? And which do you want? Which do I want? I know what I want. I very definitely want a deck chair. Do you want a life where you have more than enough money to maybe take a sunshine break, to have choices about the fun you have and who you have it with, whether it’s with your family or with friends?
Do you want to create a new friendship group? Do you want to move to a community of active elders? What do you want? Or, are you going to just not do anything and eventually ended up in that stinky chair? And I think you get my drift about the stinky chair. The stinky chair is in a council-run care home, probably, full of people with dementia. The underpaid, understaffed, frankly, borderline saints are doing the best they can. But there’s a certain waft when you walk in.
And I absolutely speak from experience when my mother first needed more care than we could provide for her at home; she’d taken a turn for the worst and she’d gone into hospital. She’d come back, and that was marvellous. We had more years with her. But, we were unable to lift her and give her the 24-hour care that she needed.
We’d had a carer before that. The carer would come in and help her three visits a day, have meals with her, do some cleaning, chat with her. That wasn’t enough, and that was still costing us 60 pounds a day. But when we had that first emergency hospitalization, and then the first emergency trip to a care home to give her some respite before she came back to the house, that was where I met the stinky chair.
And we knew that that was not where my mum was going to end up living. So, we found another local private mid-priced–I want you to know this–mid-priced care home, not an expensive care home. And that still cost us 1,500 a week. And so, what I’m saying to you is, could you afford that?
Where do you want to end up living? And more importantly, depending on what your family makeup is, is this a decision that’s still in your future that you’re going to have to make for your parents? And I want you to make a plan now so that your children aren’t left with the burden of making a plan to care for you.
And of course, I wish you a long, good and healthy life, and that you pass away in your sleep when you’re ready and never need a care home. But it’s not up to me, is it? And the upside of planting the seeds that I’ve mentioned right now will make a difference to the quality of your later. But what’s even more exciting is that planting the seeds now make a difference to your now as well.
When I lost my job back in 2006, I knew that I was never going to let a boss or anyone ever decide on the quality of my life because they controlled the financial strings. I set out to find a way to live a life that I wanted. And I told you before, I imagined that I’m Jacques Cousteau’s undiscovered granddaughter.
And, if I had my wish, I would dive every warm water, ocean and sea in the world, exploring the ways of below, just as the mermaid I am. I like to think that I’m a mermaid. Because I knew that, I planted a seed. And let’s just keep with that seed metaphor and sea metaphor, and say that what I did was I planted a grain of sand in an oyster, and I created the pearls that have allowed Bob and I to travel ever since. We’ve been so blessed, we’ve explored and experienced countries, met people from all over the world, experienced the seascapes.
I love so much manta rays and woebegone sharks in Papua New Guinea to the Barrier Reef and the mountains of Australia. We’ve seen the wild elephants in South Africa in Kenya and in Sri Lanka. And we even had the most incredible–and this gives me goosebumps–we were visiting Sri Lanka and went to a town called Kandy, which was just something on the list that we should go and see because of the Buddhist temples. And we happened to be visiting in July, which is the time of the Festival of the Tooth [Kandy Esala Perahera]. I’m not going to try and pronounce it, and we’ll put a link in the notes for you to check it out.
It was just incredible. We were, we were ushered into this temple. And we saw the moment that they brought the Buddha’s tooth out from behind the sacred place where it’s kept, behind the curtain. And the monks brought it forward and showed it to the people. And in that small enclosure where all the mothers with the new babies looking to be blessed.
And even though that wasn’t our religion, you could feel how much it meant to these people. And what a privilege and an honour it was to be present to witness this love, this adoration, this, I don’t know, community amongst these people. And I’m not telling you the list of places I’ve been, because I want to impress you, but I want you to see that there’s a direct correlation between deciding on what you want and getting it.
I planted those seeds. I didn’t have the full vision of what my life would be. I planted the seeds that I wanted a certain future and the closer I got to it, the crisper the focus became, the more knowledge I gained, the better my language became, the better the people that surrounded me became, the more supportive for the goal that I was on they became.
And yes, I have left a few people behind, but I think we do, even if you don’t make a goal; things change. So, I want to show you how I went from a position where I knew that I wanted my future to be about time flexibility, because I wanted to have holidays. I wanted whatever I did to be financially productive in the time that I put into focusing on the financial.
And I wanted it to allow me to travel the world, because that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to explore and learn this amazing planet. And I want to show you that I worked out the steps to do that. Yes, in my case, the overt mechanism was property investment. And that is often the route that my clients choose.
But the real turning point comes long before that. So, let’s go back to that word, focus. And in it, I want to ask you what you want your life to be like now and in the future. And I want you to think on that question. I want you to think: what would you be doing now if you didn’t have to work just to pay the bills?
And that’s such a key question, and I use it all the time in my work with clients. Because it’s a question that gets you to step out of your current life to imagine a future, and to say to yourself “all right, well, if I didn’t have to pay the bills, what would I want to be doing?” And I’d like you to really think on that question.
And the question might confirm that you love your job, which is perfectly okay, but it will be even more exciting. If you sat with a question for a day or two, or maybe a week or two, and then turned to me and say: “you know what? I’ve always been passionate about X, and if I didn’t have to work, then what I really want to do is this. And I am actually reminded of how passionate I am about it. So, what I want to do is pursue a goal that’s going to enable me to fit that passion into my life in a way that it isn’t visible now.”
I’m actually getting goosebumps for you. That’s how excited I am that moment, when someone tells me what excites them, what they’re passionate about, what their energy is about.
As John Travolta would say in the Grease movie is “electrifying,” it literally raises the bumps on my arm. So, let’s imagine, now, that you have that seed of an idea. And remember that you can change seeds along the way, you can plant different seeds, but let’s go with what you’ve got at the moment.
So, you’ve got this seed of an idea and what we need to do now is to support that idea. And if you’ve listened to the past podcasts, you realize I will give you a prize if you shout out the answer to this. Now, what is going to support your idea going forward? What am I about to say? Drum roll please! And the answer is Da-Duh! A spreadsheet. Of course.
I’d like you to check out Episode Five again, because when you get to the end of this episode, you can go back to Episode Five, which is about loving your spreadsheet, and see why that episode is so important here.
In a spreadsheet, you can work out how much you need to cover the basics. How much is enough money to cover your bills? You could work out and project and think about how much money you might need for this new, passionate life of yours. And once you do that, we can start to work out how you can create more than enough money without taking all your time so that you’re in a position where you don’t have the time to do the thing that you’re passionate about.
We want to find a way that you can create an income in your life and still have plenty of time so that you can live the life you want. I love this topic so much, and I’m sure you guessed, I’m running out of time. I’ve got to stay focused.
I want to tell you a couple of things. So first off, there is a Fan Club now for the podcast, and if you’d like to join the group, then I’ll be able to send you reminders of key episodes, and I’ll even be able to share with you some additional resources that I might think useful. If you’re interested and you want to really create A Wealthy Life for yourself, then join using the simple link that I’ve stuck down in the show notes. But it’s basically https://bit.ly/wealthy-life. So, “wealthy-life” is the link that you can use and you’ll find it in the show notes.
And the other thing that I’m going to stick in the show notes is about the scorecard. In fact, you know what, I’m going to tease you with the fact that I’m going to put a link to the scorecard in show notes, but I’m going to hide it in one of the episodes that’s coming up. So, you’re going to have to watch the next episodes and listen to the next episodes to find the link. Because I’ve created an online audit that will take you through the Five Principles that I’m going to be sharing. And will help you to understand where potential weaknesses or gaps or dips in your path may lay.
So that right now you can start to fill those gaps and potholes and make your journey to the Wealthy Life that you want even smoother.
So, the purpose of this episode, even before we’ve planted our seeds really, was to spread a little compost around and fertilize the ideas that are coming. You’re going to live longer than you think and longer than you can afford. Do you want that stinky chair or maybe a deck chair? Do you want a ski lift? Maybe you want an umpire’s chair or maybe even a box at the theatre. The choice could be yours. If you just choose to focus on your future now, focus and find that passion, and then work out how you want to live that life right now. Why wait?
Make sure, please, that you subscribe to the podcast so that you don’t miss out on the next episodes. And in the next episode, specifically, I’m going to start introducing the Five Principles of a Wealthy Life. Thank you as always for your precious time, listening to A Wealthy Life Podcast. My name is Vicki Wusche, and I hope that this episode has brought some much needed “Whoosh” into your life.
You’ve been listening to Vicki Wusche – wealth strategist, author, and property investor. With a name like Wusche, spelt W U S C H E, I’m easy to find on all the usual social media channels. Do come and connect. Been loving the podcast? Then join the listener Fan Club where I will share extra insights and host webinars. Links to this and more of my story are both in the show notes and on my website, vickiwusche.com. See you on the next episode.