Retiring on a beach in Thailand

First a little backstory.

The school system as it stands now is designed to prepare you for office work. It stems from the industrial revolution in England where with rapidly expanding industry they found themselves short of people who could run operations, procurement and accounting. Sure there were always people who were educated in a similar way to which we are now, but these were the minority, usually from wealthy and aristocratic families. They were destined for positions of power by virtue of the families they were born into, and trained as such.

The large majority of people were peasants (farmers) or artisans working in trades, and therefore uneducated. So education that was once the privilege of a select group of people, was broadened out to enable a transition in the economy.

Nowadays when you apply for a job employers are interested in which school and university you went to, and what your grades were like. Why? Because there’s a direct link between your academic performance and how well you’ll do in a corporate/office job. That’s by design, not by chance.

I struggled in school. I hated sitting there for hour after hour on those little desks, for me it was boring as hell. I didn’t much like being told what to do, or when to show up. And probably I had difficulty at being in such close quarters with others all the time. Academically I was decent across all subjects, and if something took my interest I had the ability to excel.

In hindsight it was perhaps no surprise that once I got into an office job, I hated it even more. I liked being around my colleagues, but the work itself was torture. Sitting there, doing the same thing over and over and over. It was my idea of a nightmare. I didn’t last long in that first job, perhaps 8 months. From that point on I knew without any doubt that this style of work wasn’t for me. There was just no way that I could chip away at it for 40 years or my life. To me it was death. (Sorry to be so dramatic, but I really thought in those terms.) Every moment that I sat in those early office jobs was time that I could have spent on doing something more important. I didn’t know specifically what that something was at the time, I just had a vague notion that my mission was to learn the important things in life, and that these jobs were getting in the way of it.

It is because of those early experiences that I had the aim of liberating myself. Finally I found my way to investing, and was very fortunate to find myself with some capital to invest too. It turned out that intellectual work like investing was just fine, so long as I had control over my time. In fact these days I probably still spend 8 hours or so a day reading and working. The difference is that I’m able to follow my curiosity and I don’t have to dance to anybody else’s tune.

All that leads up to the main point of this post, what did I choose to do with the freedom that I had struggled for so long to achieve? I went off to Thailand to ‘retire’. You might think that I was living the dream, I certainly did at the time. I had a beautiful apartment overlooking trees in one of the best streets in the best areas of Bangkok. I was generating enough income from my investments to live there indefinitely without ever having to work. And I was free to enjoy myself in what is probably one of the most outgoing and fun loving cities in the world.

It’s pretty hilarious really, with all my reading and reflection I couldn’t see the flaw in this plan. But you know sometimes in life we just have to learn the hard way. In some ways I made the archetypal mistake of someone that suddenly comes into financial freedom. I retired somewhere on a beach to sip a martini.

But clearly once you’ve done this for a while you start to encounter some problems. Firstly it gets boring. Perhaps more importantly you begin to lack meaning and fulfilment in your life. I’m writing this to let you know, don’t aim for money. It’s good obviously, it makes your life more comfortable. But actually we need a lot more than that. Here are some of the things I realised I was missing in Thailand:

-A connection to the society in which I was living.

-Making a contribution to that society.

-Deeper level of involvement and engagement.

-A broader mission or sense of purpose.

So while the typical office job isn’t perfect, it does to some extent provide those things. And if you’re ever to move beyond regular work, you really need to think about how you’re going to tick those boxes.

There’s a deeper point too. We often think in terms of attainment. I want to make this much money. Or achieve some such thing. In reality if we just exist on an island with our achievements, it's a pretty lonely and unfulfilling place. The antidote is to become useful to others. To engage and see how you can contribute.

So this is my key takeaway from my early ‘retirement’. For those of you doing it tough in regular jobs, just remember it’s not all sunshine and rainbows on the other side either. And remember to enjoy the positive aspects like the engagement and meaning that comes with your work, ready made. If you do aspire to have greater freedom, just remember that it’s important to stay engaged too.

If you have decided that you want out then aside from building up an alternative income you might want to run this thought experiment, what would I do if I had financial freedom? Think in particular about what your occupation would be, and how that would contribute to others. Once you’ve come up with something decent, then start working on it during your spare time. That way once you transition out of your regular job, ideally you’ll have an income but also an occupation that is meaningful to you.

This might all seem like an incredible luxury right now if you’re struggling to meet your monthly expenses, but everything starts as an idea. Once you decide you want something, it just becomes a matter of time and focus. If like a dog you stay stuck on that bone and don’t let anyone take it away from you, just wait and see what happens. You can change your life, no matter where you are right now.

Start small, but start.

A final point, when we achieve some milestone in life we often think its happy days from there and we’ve made it. The reality is that every stage of life and every attainment comes with it’s own set of challenges. When you expect challenges and view them as an opportunity for growth, it puts you in the drivers seat and out of the victims seat.