Yes, I know nobody HAS to work for “the man” but I’m grateful for what we have that makes it a lot easier. Because @sift666 and I are just not the type of people who could live in a tiny house, or be off grid. Sorry, but we’re just not.
We’ve been largely self employed since 1991. It hasn’t always been easy and sometimes we’ve been on the bones of our arses, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, seriously, can any of you imagine @sift666 being an employee? I can play the game for a time, if I have to, though I’d rather not. But it’s not in his nature at all.
Let’s go back in time to the early 80’s, no, even before that… When I was in my teens and witnessing a marriage breakdown, I swore that I would never rely on a man, but would some day have my own home. I never knew how it would happen, but forces in the background were working for me.
Fast forward back to the early 80’s, when I still did work for a large corporation. One of my workmates somehow got a sharemarket tip, and gave a couple of us the nod. I didn’t have much money, but it all went into my first portfolio, and as soon as the promised sky rocketing had taken place, took my profits.
Then my brother said to me one day, I’ve seen a really good investment property that I think we could make some money on. We each had a small nest egg, but no bank would give two youngsters like us a mortgage. So we went to a solicitor and took out a top interest mortgage. It wasn’t easy to persuade them we were good for it, but they took a chance.
Over the next year or so, property prices doubled, and we sold it for a handsome profit, which enabled me to put down a deposit on a place of my own. The solicitors were this time happy to take a chance on me.
The third piece of the puzzle was being made redundant from the corporation I’d worked for, for 15 years. The redundancies happened in stages and we were the last to go, so got the balance of the superannuation fund, enough to pay off my mortgage.
Awesome! Huge big thank you to the Universe right there!
At about the same time, the bike shop where @sift666 and his friend worked closed down. So the three of us opened our own sifty little purple and green bike shop at the alternative end of Cuba St in February 1991. Since then we have had a variety of different enterprises, leading to our current online business and my health practice.
Any of you who are self employed know that the downside is that you work your arse off, sometimes for not a lot of dosh. But having a freehold house, even one that required a shit ton of work, gave us the freedom to take those chances and make those decisions.
And this post is about the upsides, so here’s what I appreciated today. It was hot today, very hot for Wellington, and I didn’t sleep well. But not having to go somewhere else and be presentable meant that:
I could sleep in
I could sit around all day in a scruffy tank top and old pair of shorts and nobody cared
We could faff about looking at our portfolio, admiring the Steem chart, and deciding whether it was time to ditch a bit more BCH and replace the ETH we used to buy Cardano yesterday, without anyone breathing down our necks
Yes, then we had to do some work and send out some parcels, at rather a breakneck speed, cos we faffed about for too long. But that’s a good thing – it means money in the bank, good for the cash flow.
After that @sift666 went off to the chiro without having to ask permission, and I went for a nice lie down and a bit of a snooze
Then about 5pm, when I felt a bit more up to it, I did some more work when it suited me
So hell yes, I’m grateful for the circumstances that mean we have a level of freedom in our daily lives that many others don’t have.
PS. I could also have wandered down to the beach at any time after the parcels were done, but it was too darn hot! But we’re grateful for that too, after not having any summer last year. Take it away, Ann Miller!
Thanks to you all for reading. Peace.
Photos by myself, @sift666 or from Pixabay, unless otherwise stated. Video from Youtube.
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