Investment goals vs lifestyle goals

Interested in hearing others views on this one, specifically young investors.

Anyone got to a point were they decided to drop some investment/retirement goals in order to live more comfortably or just have more financial freedom?

Something on the lines of having a good investment property or two, having a good paying job and a small mortgage and having good cashflow to just travel more or spend more time with family and so on instead of just piling up money into investments in the hope that when they retire 30 years from now, they retire rich.

Cheers

 

my way from day one, live well, time with family, stacked away a bit each pay cheque for investment on top of super, no interest in retire early just enjoy life each day and take on jobs I enjoy doing, slow and steady

I now has good cash flow from the stock market, pretty much debt free, not rich or anything like that but have enough to buy what I want, travel where I want without worry about money and if kids need a helping hand with housing I can give them reasonable deposit.

No interest in getting super rich at expenses of family, relationship and every day enjoyment

 

Love it!

Finding happiness in your day to day life is key. Think about what makes you happy and try and do as much as possible now while still looking after your future.

As cliche as it is, you might reach your goal of $x'millions and realise you are no happier than before and sacrificed years of enjoyment.

 

i see a problem if you are a winner in investing over a period a time,

if you look at share as an example
if you bought at $10 its now $30, and 4% dividend.. your initial goal maybe to sell when it hits a target prize to "do that thing you wanted" but now that investment is doing so well kinda hard to let go.

personally this has been an issue with me.

got to learn to "enjoy it"

 

Great comments @PandS and @The Y-man , thanks for that.

@KinG3o0o , i get what you mean as i have been pretty lucky with my investments so far ... And i can jump on to the next one but at the same time will need to sacrifice a fair bit financially/socially and hence the thread.

 

I think finding balance is the key, what you really enjoy doing and what makes you happy
for me it is my family and my children that bring me the most joy, I know I will be very unhappy if my children don't turn out well and I don't have a happy marriage.

we been doing good for 20+ years, we haven't change much from the day we got not much money to the day we have some money, still stick to the core principles more time with kids, enjoy simple things in life, we don't need to compete with anyone, we work our own pace with our own principles. This is mainly my ways but it took a while for my wife to come around and side on that.

The hottest topic would be public vs private school many years back, seeing all her friends send their kids to private school, family sibling, she wants to do the same. I said why are you following other people?, this is a bad habit and it lead to no where.

what do you really want to achieve? because of my extensive reading I know private school play small role in your child success so I go about and convince her this is what you need to do and stick to your principles and you ignore other people.

Fair to say my argument is convincing and all our children goes to public school one is finishing up and got a scholarship and a guarantee job. The others when their time arrive we will know but I am reasonable confident they will turn out ok.

My biggest complement now that are my children said that they never missed out on anything, they love how we have so much time for them in everything and they turn out to be a well rounded kids and that would be our biggest achievement and our happiness, not how much money we make.

 

We divide our income up, a set amount goes to set expenses, investing and holidays. After that the rest is free game to spend as wanted on whatever, sometimes we might tip a more from left over cash into one area to allow a better holiday or something else. Although we earn different amounts our after set expenses incomes are equal as we keep our spending separate to an extent. My wife hates budgeting and isn't great at planning for the future investment wise but direct debits a set amount to investing which makes me feel she has some attachment to the investment side of things. My wife tends to spend extra on life style things which keeps us comfortable and ensures we enjoy the now, I tend to tip a bit more into investments as possible.

Generally the rule is once in a bucket it stays there, ie investment money stays invested (until it reaches the required size to fund lifestyle) holiday money MUST be spent on holidays.

Having said that we sold an IP and a portion of the profits will be used to extend/renovate our home when technically the money should have been invested again. This was a trade off to bring forward lifestyle goals.

 

We all end up in the same box, and there's no joy in leaving this world so poor that all you have is money.

Invest in both your current self and your future self. Long-term buy-and-hold portfolio for the later years is important, but you have to ask yourself "what would I do right now if money were no object" and then find a financially sound way to do it.

e.g. trackdays and all the associated expenses cost me $780/mth. I built up a trackday portfolio that aims to offset this amount. Rinse and repeat for all other hobbies/interests to ensure you don't take steps backward.

 

comfortable is the key, which is different for people.

choose to be comfortable.

 

I find myself doing the things I really want to do now. Me and a mate buy old houses that are basically unrentable and do all the work ourselves (except licensed trades) because we like doing the work. I enjoy demo, rebuilding and making things.

The other thing is that I have wanted to build a house for more than 20 years. I have finally almost finished my first build. It's been frustrating and rewarding. It's a great house but more important than that is the people I have met and worked with along the way, keeping up friendships and spending time with friends and family.

Next step for me is to have a break and really focus for the next 12 months on becoming fitter, stronger and healthier.