The 2nd Secret to Living the Good Life

It's Time to Live the Good Life

Dear Friend,

Now its time to go to school.  Creative Family Lifestyle Design school, to be exact.

What is Creative Family Lifestyle Design?  It is you taking charge of the direction of your life.  It means making your life work for you.

The 2nd Secret to Living the Good Life is to re-prioritize your life.  You will now focus on doing those things that you love, while avoiding those things that you do not enjoy.

A big part of this process will be your discovery of a new technique for earning and storing wealth.  And you will utilize this technique to live the good life, free from today’s constant threats of losing everything to forces out of your control.

Most folks drift through life, living from paycheck to paycheck.  These people give up on their childhood dreams because the demands of adult life make achieving those dreams seem impossible.

Yet, you can achieve your dreams if you start living your life intentionally.  And you can start today.

If you have followed Secret #1 to Achieving the Good Life, then you already know who you truly are.  You are now able to take stock of how you are living your life, and compare that to how you really want to live.

I like to say that your life is properly prioritized when the amount of time that you spend doing a thing is directly proportional to the priority that thing has in your life.

You will be surprised at just how much of your life that you spend doing things that you really don’t enjoy, like working to make money.  You will also notice how little of your time that you spend doing things that you love, like spending time with your family and friends.

Of course, for most of us, we put off doing what we love so that we can stay one step ahead of the bill collectors.  Money is critically important to living the good life.  The “good stuff” can be pretty expensive.  Summers in the south of France don’t come cheap.  And I do not propose that you live like a pauper.

However, there are many ways to make money.  And there are many ways to live life richly without spending so much of your time in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

I like to say that time is the stuff that life is made of.  So I never sell my time.  Well, not if I can absolutely help it.  This means that I do not work at jobs where I get paid by the hour.  And I do not work at jobs that require me to be at some particular place, such an office, with any frequency.  I like to spend time with my kids, so I make sure that I can be home pretty much whenever I want.

I also like to travel, so I make sure that the way that I make money can be done from just about anywhere.

Another important issue regarding money is the relationship between when you earn it and when you spend it.

Most people spend large swaths of their life, particularly between their 20s and their 60s, focused on making money.  They don’t do this because they love making money.  They do this so that they can save up for “retirement.”  But there are a lot of problems with this approach.

For one, you essentially waste the best years of your life, waiting until you are old and weak to enjoy the fruit of your labor.

Second, life has a lot of ups and downs.  Money that is earned can easily be lost, and usually is.  I like to say that it is ten times more difficult to hold onto money than it is to make it.

Also, most people do not get the best value for their dollar.  They do not shop around enough.  I’m not talking about spending hours at yard sales to save a few pennies (unless you enjoy that sort of thing).  What I am talking about is much bigger.  You can increase the power of your wealth to bring you the life that you enjoy when you spend your money wherever it buys you the best return on your investment.

Years ago, people bought everything from their local market.  They knew the proprietor, and he was close by.  However, by failing to shop around, these folks were paying much more than they needed to.  Today, the world is your oyster.  By taking advantage of great deals on international travel, and utilizing your flexible schedule to travel in non-peak seasons, you can live the good life for much, much less.  You can buy incredible goods in out-of-the-way places.  You can live a healthier life in exotic and safe locales, being waited on hand and foot by appreciative maids, chefs and butlers, for much less expense than you pay today for your fast-food, heart burn dominated life.

You can do much better.  And as you can see, it’s not about working harder, or about making more.  It is about working and living smarter, and earning just enough money when you need it.

Are you starting to get the picture?

This is a lot to digest at one sitting, and later I can supply you with a list of resources that will help you to understand the Creative Family Lifestyle Design approach better.  But for now, I just want you to understand that living the good life really is achievable.  You just have to make this a priority, develop the right skills, and take action.

My next post will go into detail about how you can develop your own system of wealth creation that will pay for the lifestyle that you really want.

Until then,

All the best,

Hugh