Most people believe that the question that is most important to an early retirement is “Do I have enough money to retire early?” However, that conventional thinking is very wrong. The most important question that you need to answer is “Why do I want to retire early?”
No matter what it is you want to do in your life, once you understand your WHY your chance of achieving your goals gets much higher. This is one of the first rules of any self-development program.
Let’s look at two different approaches and see which one you think would motivate you more. 1) “I want to retire early.” 2) “I want to retire early because I am still able to travel extensively and enjoy places like Machu Picchu, the cloud forest walks and living in the Andes.”
Your why may be very different from ours, but if it motivates you to take action and real planning, then it is right for you. You want it to be positive, simple worded and resonate with you.
A very good exercise is to sit down with paper and pen. Say that question out loud: “Why do I want to retire early?” Then write down each and every reason that comes to mind. Then post this list somewhere you will see it several times a day, especially early in the morning.
Revise this list often by adding to it any new thoughts you have or rewriting the ones that do not still resonate with you. You should also look for pictures that express those ideas in magazines, online, etc. My promise to my wife of our early retirement was a picture of Machu Picchu on the back of my first self-development CD case.
Also, an important aspect is to share your why’s with at least one other person. I am sure a lot of people got tired of listening to what and why we were doing what we are doing. But it made the efforts more worthwhile as we worked through getting ready to go.