When I started thinking about how to “retire” early, I really had no idea how to begin. I just finished reading the 4 hour week week by Tim Ferris and The Compound Effect by Darron Hardy. The 4 hour work week inspired me to try to figure out a way to escape from the rat race, but it didn’t give me anything concrete I could do to start. The compound effect introduced me to tracking as a way to measure where you are today as compared to yesterday and it was a concept I could easily get behind. I admit I went a little overboard after reading The Compound Effect and I bought 10 little notebooks to keep track of my daily activities when I really only needed one. The one area in my life which I figured would make the most difference if I got it under control was my spending. I was spending way too much eating out, buying video games, clothes (I used to reserve $1000 a year for clothes for myself!), Shapes gym membership and even going out with friends for drinks or movies. I cut all those expenses way down, probably more than 50% in some cases. I also looked at things outside of my own personal spending to try to cut down. We weren’t watching TV that often so we had the cable disconnected. We also signed up as a new customer to Shaw so our cable bill was much cut in half for the first year (now it’s the second year it’s back to full cost but we had a year of savings). Other things we did was install a new high efficiency furnace which started saving us $50 per month on our electricity bill. After cutting all those costs, I was able to save an extra 16.2% of my monthly cheque. Here’s a graphic representation of how much I saved after all these extra expenses were reduced or cut out completely.

Moneys' in the bank. Now what?

Now with all those savings, I had to figure what to do with this money I had saved up. I heard a quote from someone smarter than me who said “you will never get ahead in life working for someone else.” And at the time, it made sense. I’ve read stories like the janitor who saved till he was 72 and had over a million dollars in the bank. It was a good story, but I don’t want to work in my job till I am 72. In order to speed up this process, I needed to create something! Building a business was always at the forefront of my thoughts, and it was the topic that fateful day my partner/brother-in-law and I were chatting about while our kids played at his house. That's all I have time for! I’ll continue the story with our business idea in my next post. Thanks for stopping by!