Welcome to instalment #5 of SavingNinja‘s thought experiments. This time around he asks:

 

Life is good. You finally did it! You pulled the plug on your day job after reaching financial independence. You never have to work for money ever again. But, you’re bored. You need something to do… You need a project! You grab a piece of paper and a pen and start thinking. Now that you’re financially free, what projects do you want to complete? However ambitious, however small, you now have the time to pursue anything that you like, what will you accomplish?

 

I am going to guess there are quite a lot of lists that involve writing a book, learning to play an instrument, and so on (both of which would be on my list, btw) so rather than just trotting out another list like that, I thought it might be fun to republish and revisit part of a really old post I wrote called “My Perfect Work Day”  which kind of answers this question in terms of the minute by minute details of what I would have liked to be doing once I’m FI.

I thought it would be interesting to see after 5 years if this has changed all that much. So back in 2013 I thought this would make up a pretty good day once “FI”, bearing in mind my version of FI has always been to continue doing some sort of work for myself:

07:30 to 08:00 – Get up (slowly) and have a cup of tea
08:30 – Go for a run or do some other sort of exercise
09:00 – Shower and dress
09:30 – Make a decent breakfast and eat it
10:00 – Start the commute to the office
10:01 – Arrive at the office, check some emails etc
10:30 – Read up on some of my favourite blogs, post some comments, etc.
11:00 – Do some jobs around the house
12:00 – Social/Recreation time: See who’s around and go and see some friends and family, maybe for lunch or even a round of golf. If no one is around then have some lunch at home and read a book or research some stuff that interests me online
16:00 – Come back and do a couple of hours of “actual” work
18:00 – Prepare and eat dinner
19:00 – Either entertain guests if we have people over or do some more reading or a bit of TV.
21:00 – Do some more “actual” work
00:00 – Go to bed
The glaringly obvious updates needed to this are due the fact we are now with child, but in all honesty it would not really be much different to this. Chuck in a bit of time to either play, bathe, clothe and feed the little one at the corresponding points of the day, and/or drop her off and pick from nursery (and school when the time comes). The other thing that would probably change would be the clear weighting of work towards the evening in the plan above. It is true that I used to like working on things in the quieter hours of the late evening, but I think now it is best to knock out all of the “mind work” as early as possible, so I would weight all of the stuff I really wanted to work on in the morning, and leave other things such as jobs around the house and exercise for the afternoon/evening. OK so let’s have another stab at this:
06:30 to 07:00 – Get up, have a cup of (decaf) tea, either check emails or immediately spend time with TFS Jr if she woke up early (normally sleeps till about 7:30)
07:30 – Have breakfast with family, play time, getting ready/dressed time
09:00 – Nursery drop off (if necessary) and then “commute” to “work”
09:30 – Bang out 2-3 hours of coding, writing, or some other project I want to be working on, interspersed with 5 minutes of each way betting every so often
12:00 – Lunch with family they are at home, if not go for a run or play squash or some sort of exercise, then have lunch afterwards
13:30 – Either more each way betting, along with emails, blog/article reading and commenting, plus other more menial online admin tasks, or do some jobs around the house.
15:00 – Pick up from nursery (if necessary). Play time/family time
17:00 – Dinner time for TFS Jr
18:30 – Bath time for TFS Jr
19:00 – Bedtime for TFS Jr
19:30 – Dinner time with Mrs T
20:00 – TV + more laptop time (whatever I feel like doing in all honesty) or another evening activity such as going for a run if haven’t had any exercise earlier, or socialising with friends and family
23:00 – Go to bed
In terms of time spent “working” you can see there really is a lot less here, and it has mainly been replace with child rearing duties. So I’ll most definitely be less productive than I would have been 5 years ago. Of course, then there is Parkinson’s Law, which states “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.  So maybe my work in the shorter time slots will be more intense and focused, so maybe it would be a wash. Either way it’s all good, the time table above seems more balanced with family and fun stuff than the original one so I am more than happy with it.
What would your ideal day post FI look like, and what burning projects have you got in the locker waiting to burst out once you get there?

 


If you would like to read more answers to the thought experiment, here is a list of those who have done so at time of writing: