F What Treadmill and Who Am I?

Depending on your perspective, a treadmill may be one of the greatest or most ridiculous inventions in the history of mankind. On one hand, here is this device that allows folks to remain reasonably fit in the privacy of their own home or a gym while shielded from inclement weather and other potential dangers. On the other hand, it’s mind-numbing and absurd to run on a motorized conveyor belt, running and running while wasting energy and going nowhere at all. The sanity of using an exercise treadmill may be open for debate, but there is a treadmill that many of us willingly jump on every single day, that frankly makes no sense whatsoever; the financial treadmill.

How many folks talk about the day they’ll retire, and when pressed for a time-frame, they’ll blindly blurt out 62, 65, 67, or maybe as late as 70, with no thought or plan at all behind the number in their mind? If you ask someone “Why not retire earlier?”, they’ll recite the laundry list of debt like a mortgage, credit card debt, child expenses, student loans, medical unknowns, and so on. This list of expenses is partially where their money goes, but the other part is entertainment and doo-dads and trinkets. Fancy dinners, concerts, sporting events, summer camps, new cars and furniture every few years, extravagant vacations, outrageous cable TV bills, the latest technology like $1000 cellphones and OLED TVs; again, the list goes on and on. While my initial retirement plans began about 15 years ago, until about 5 years ago, this is where a lot of my money went also. Along with a desire to keep up with the Jones’, buying on credit is pretty easy, and the dopamine hit we get from buying something new feels good. We buy stuff we can’t afford to buy with cash, agree to pay even more money than it costs by adding interest, and postpone the opportunity to pay off existing debt and invest for wealth-building; all while pretending that we’re upper class, that we’ve somehow ‘made it’, and that we can afford to live like the rich do… but it’s all bullshit. If you have to get up every day to work and are working to “pay the bills”, no matter how fancy your existence may look, you haven’t made anything except a huge pile of bills and a guarantee of more working days to pay off your borrowed money. But, it’s never too late to change and free yourself (unless you’re dead, in which case you’re likely not reading this blog).

Most of us don’t have money from real wealth or from passive income of our investments. For most, the money comes from the treadmill of a job/career, where we sell our time and freedom, WILLINGLY! Often we give away much more time than we signed up for during traffic jams and extended hours to meet project deadlines and the demands of bosses and/or clients. We get up on Monday, go to work until Friday or Saturday, collect a check, pay the bills and buy food that hopefully add up to less than a paycheck, and do it all again the following week. Sometimes we might save $50 or $100 from a check, but the next time the car needs repairs or a water heater goes or a medical bill pops up, there go the savings. After working for a whole year, if you have a good enough paying job and were actually able to save money, maybe you’re able to take a vacation to recharge and get your mind right after a year of not having control of your life or schedule and being burnt-out. And while we’re getting up every day to go run on the treadmill again, we know retirement is out there somewhere in the future, and we attach a date far away to it so we don’t drown in the misery of never getting there. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll still have our health before we start collecting Social Security benefits needed to help finance a retirement. Well, I said “F THAT TREADMILL”!

For most, this isn’t easy. It requires a new lens, some sacrifices, and will lead to some difficult passes when invited to do things that sound fun with great people that you care about and would love to spend time with. The greater good is that you will gain freedom and most importantly get back time to do what you want. Remember, you can never buy any more time. You have a finite amount in this life, like it or not, and you never know how much is left. Since retiring, the one thing I do know is that the remainder of my time will be on my terms, doing what I want to do, and with those that I want to do it with.

I’m Christopher Munson, and I retired at 50. Remarkably, I was laid off with a negative net worth and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt about 15 years ago, and had I made better choices, I would have been retired even earlier. Enough friends and former colleagues convinced me I have a story to tell, so here is my blog. I hope my story and adventures inspire you to do what’s needed to create enough wealth that you can choose when you want to retire, have the freedom to choose if and when you want to work, and most importantly, to put you back in charge to pursue your best life. Financial independence isn’t some crystal ball voodoo shit; it’s a simple formula that says if your passive income is greater than your expenses, poof, you get to retire! Okay, maybe that is some voodoo shit now, but keep reading, and it won’t be.