Do you ever feel too focused on your finances and retirement account? When thinking about finances and retirement, your thoughts may turn to how pursuit of your passions involved trying to work outside the safety of the traditional 9-5 system.
Maybe you wanted to have your own unique business, product or brand and be your own boss and that passion involved sacrificing financial security, from which you are now recovering.
I love all things about the American Southwest and in the mid-2000s I bought a foreclosed motel in rural New Mexico. I believed in my gut that not all gay people (including myself) would have money to retire in fancy places or be able to afford the standard of living they were used to during their working years. The motel would be a solution for some people and for me as well.
My ten-unit motel had four units with kitchenettes and six regular motel rooms. It also had a double-wide mobile home on the property in which I lived. On the back of the property was an old storage building, a ruin (I love ruins!) which I was going to fix up one day and move into. I saw potential to have a built-in income stream from those seniors that would rent out the kitchenette units and mobile home.
I was incredibly passionate about my venture, but ultimately I learned that this passion wasn’t what was best for me or what I wanted. Living in a small town turned out to not be my cup-of-tea and the endless repairs the property needed (and lack of guests) felt like I’d never get ahead. I ended up feeling financially and geographically trapped. I spent years getting out from under it.
In “getting out from under it” we’ve learned a thing or two about ourselves and passion.
With respect to our finances and retirement, pursuit of our passions can have lasting effects especially when risking present and future financial security doesn’t pay off. These lessons serve as reminders and guard rails to help us navigate our next passion.
Perhaps on our next pursuit of a passion we won’t risk our savings and retirement because we’ve learned to temper the resounding enthusiasm and gung-ho spirit of our convictions with the reality that for our passions to be sustainable, we need to be sustainable. We need to move slower and take a long-view the next time passion’s impulse ignites us.
I still love the Southwest and the romantic notion of owning a property there. And despite my defeat, given what I know now, if I had the chance to do it over again, I probably would. But I’d do things differently and maybe you would too. For me, one of the main things I would not do is leverage my financial future on one passion.
Those of us with an entrepreneurial spirit are called to follow our passions which often includes financial risk. Sometimes following our passion leads us to start over rebuilding our finances. This isn’t easy but we can begin again.
We may have earned skills, tools and wisdom instead of money as payment and reward. Want can still “go for it” but now we know how to more creatively manage our finances as we navigate our way on our next venture.
