You are who you were going to be when you grew up.

Back in 3rd-grade recess, we all talked about whom we were going to be when we grew up. Of course, I remember hearing firefighter, police officer, baseball player - you know, the kind of jobs you base movies around. I’ve never seen a feature film centred around a mid-level user interface designer, for example.

Let me ask you: when you were 10 or 20 years old and dreamed of what you wanted to do for your career, have you followed through? 

News flash: For most of us, that answer is a definite no. At some point, we found a job, which turned into another job, and then another. And now here we are. Salaried, uninspired and uninspiring.

What if we can go back in time and have a chat with ourselves? I know I’d tell myself to pursue the things that interest you. Do what engages you, don’t worry about the money. When you find happiness in what you do, you’ll be better at your job because the truth is when you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life. You’ll just have to trust that it will all work out. Chase happiness and you’ll find happiness.

The problem is - for the moment - we can’t time travel. We’re in the here and now. You have become who you were going to be when you grew up. At least for the time being. 

We all sold out. Salary is the bribe they gave us to forget our dreams. They didn’t do it intentionally because they don’t really care about us that much. You did it intentionally, though. We all did. We may not have understood it, though we definitely agreed to it.

Looking forward then, do we want to feel this same way 10 years from now? Absolutely not. 10 years from now, I can see you sitting under a palm tree in the shade sipping a cold drink and reading a book. Heck, I can even see you writing your own book in that pose! 

I know when I close my eyes, I see myself and my wife doing just that (I even hear the music)! We’re on that path because we solved our money problems first. We took away the bribe of a salary so we can be more purposeful and actually stop hating Mondays. We invested, a lot. We used real estate to help us strategically build equity and then we used that to turn that money into regular paycheques. 

In 2022 we killed her dependence on her paycheque. At 41, my wife retired. We replaced her salary by using our money to make more money. That actually happened. I wanted to work even more because I was doing what I loved.

How? We took stock of what we had financially and how we felt professionally. You keep hearing that work is supposed to energize you, not suck the energy from you. Well, we had some gaps in that department. We needed to change. Individually and collectively. The hardest part was getting to that realization.

We are both doing what we want to be doing for the next 10 years. At that time, we’ll be proud to look back and see that we’ve become exactly who we wanted to be.

I imagine you, too, want to feel that way 10 years from now. I am very passionate about doing this for myself and creating independence for others. If it’s time for you to replace your salary, start here: www.replaceyoursalary.ca.