scratched a million off my checklist 3 years ago lyrics

I'm 35 and self-employed, so I don't have a pension or company 401(k) to rely on.'

Now I'm extremely motivated to put as much as possible into other investments, such as the stock market, my own business and rental property. 'It's almost as if we need that monkey on our backs to keep us moving forward.'Īnd then there are some who feel the opposite.Ī reader on Financial Samurai commented: 'I just paid off my house after eight years and four months. 'I've definitely noticed that the closer I get to financial freedom, the less motivation I have to go above and beyond at my job,' one person told me.

I've talked to several people, including readers of my personal finance blog, Financial Samurai, who had similar experiences after paying off large amounts of debt early. If I could go back, I would have spent less time vacationing, and more time buying rental properties and investing in dividend stocks. The plan was to grow our money so we could feel financially secure by the time we had a baby. It was a lot of time off - so much, in fact, that I was behind by $50,000 on my goal to reach $200,000 in annual passive income. We spent more than $10,000 on the entire trip. After that, we flew to New York for two weeks to watch the U.S. We visited friends overseas and saw the Ruins of Angkor in Cambodia, then spent weeks camping in Yosemite. To reward ourselves for paying off the mortgage, my wife and I also took a month-long trip to Asia. At around $10,000 per contract, I was losing out on $20,000 of monthly income. So instead of working 60 hours, I was only working 20 hours. I went from taking on three contracts per month to just one. I stopped aggressively looking for new freelance consulting work. After being mortgage-free, my and wife and I lived comfortably off the severance checks that we negotiated when we quit our six-figure jobs in finance (by that time, we had amassed a net worth of $3 million), and the $150,000 in annual passive income - mostly from real estate, dividend stocks and bonds.īut my entire attitude slowly changed once I sent that final mortgage check.

Scratched a million off my checklist 3 years ago lyrics