Turning 50, Part 2: Rethinking The Years Ahead

When the pandemic upended our travel plans, I threw myself back into work so seamlessly that I figured that’s what I would do until normalcy resumed. However, as we are well into year two of the pandemic, and things seem to be getting worse, not better, I find myself rethinking my initial assumption. If travel isn’t on the horizon for years, not just months, will I simply double down on my consulting work or do something else?

Perhaps my introspection is part of the Great Resignation phenomenon, in which people are quitting their jobs at a much higher rate. Admittedly it’s a luxury problem to be second-guessing your ideal work because it means you have a choice in what to do. I am mindful and appreciative of having that choice. That’s the allure of pursuing FIRE. Moving to Florida moved us into stage 2 of FIRE, where we have enough passive income to cover most of our expenses, with the remainder easily earned through work we love.

Still, I find myself with a nagging thought, similar to what drove my career change after 40 – that there is something missing, that I should be doing something else.

Finding a new motivation than money

I was never driven by a need to earn a lot of money, but I was very driven to earn money as a form of security. I grew up solidly middle class, but we were a household that clipped coupons, shopped on sale and valued frugality. Even today I get emotional value from getting a good deal. I love thrift store shopping, not just for finding unique items, but also (maybe more so) for buying things below market.

Now that we have enough that I feel secure, I can look at a pipeline of projects through a different lens – do I really want to spend my time doing this? Financial Samurai captured this sentiment in a terrific post about how hard it is to motivate yourself to work when tending to your portfolio gives you a better return than working. I too find myself questioning whether I should shift my attention to investing over consulting since juicing up the returns on our assets would match or exceed my consulting revenue.

Then again, that’s a financial calculation, and didn’t I just say that money doesn’t need to be the main driver of decisions? Old habits die hard! Financial Mentor frequently points out that you have to know what phase you’re in – wealth accumulation or drawdown. I have been in wealth accumulation mode for decades, and if we wanted a more extravagant lifestyle, we would still be accumulating. But, thankfully Scott and I have very simple tastes, and based on my current version of the Perfect Day, we are done with wealth accumulation and should consider ourselves in the drawdown phase.

Abraham Hicks to the rescue

I am a very numbers-oriented, analytical person (which explains why money makes so much sense as a driving force in decisions!). So I was very surprised when a rock star coaching colleague (she coaches Navy SEAL candidates on mental toughness!) recommended I check out Abraham Hicks. If you’re not familiar with Abraham Hicks, they are one of the leading proponents of Law of Attraction, aka manifesting or you may have heard of The Secret (for the viral movie of the same name).

This stuff is the antithesis of the work hard, play hard culture that I was steeped in from decades in Type A, 24/7 New York City. Learning about a philosophy that embraces stillness, recommends waiting for an inspiration rather than trying to motivate yourself, and puts pursuing happiness well above any other goal has been a great counterbalance to my default of working for the sake of working.

I’m better (still not great, but better) about sitting still to mediate, journal or just appreciate the present moment. One of the impulses that occurred to me during these still times is how much I really do enjoy real estate over consulting. I like to have both activities in my pipeline, but when I look at the times when I lose track of time, it’s real estate-related activities over my consulting work.

Dialing back up the real estate

I am not yet sure how I’m going to incorporate more real estate activity in the years ahead. Sure, we sold a couple of properties recently, but otherwise haven’t made many big moves. I am not at all interested in starting an active real estate business, such as flipping, wholesaling or selling. I still want to be a passive investor, but I have stepped up looking for deals and looking for new lending partners. I even revisited the farm business in Panama (see alternative investments we considered earlier)!

Farming in general is something on my radar, and I’ll blog about what we’re looking at in a future post. In the meantime, I continue to watch the Abraham Hicks videos almost daily and wait for that impulse to dictate what’s next.

Have you made any big moves recently – career, real estate or otherwise? What’s next for you?