How to Create a “Work Optional” Lifestyle

• Having a work optional lifestyle is when you’ve aligned your money so you can decide how much you want to work, where you want to work, when you want to work and who you work with, AND your quality of life isn’t compromised.
• What do you enjoy doing?  Who do you enjoy doing it with?  If you could live anywhere, where would you live? Are you working because you have to work or are you working because you want to work?

• Think of money as a tool that helps you meet your basic needs and helps you enjoy your quality of life. A miserable work environment can make retirement seem very appealing. What would you do if you weren’t working? Would you have enough income to meet ends meet now and in the future?
  
• There’s some research involved.  Create a “what-if” budget that would support your work-optional life.
• How much income do you need to support the lifestyle you want? Where will that income come from?
• Be creative. 2020 has made each one of us pivot and think outside the box.  It’s a lesson we can benefit from into the future.
• Consider ways to create more income and less expenses. What expenses can be eliminated, reduced or redirected? How can you make more money?  What assets can be shifted to provide you with income?
• Ask yourself good questions like, “Why does this matter to me?” and “What am I willing to do to make work an option?”
• You’ve succeeded at creating a work-optional lifestyle when you don’t have to work but choose to work.

Interview: Melissa Myers.

Melissa Myers, CFP® is a heart-centered financial planner and typically works with women who are solely responsible for their own financial future. She helps them align their money with their values so they can live their ideal lives and be a blessing to others.  Myers is a business owner, co-founder of Kar-Mel Financial Planners, creator of Sunkissed and Blessed lifestyle brand, and has been a featured guest on podcasts: Diary of a Small Town Girl and Casa DeConfidence.

Melissa is passionate about empowering women with money and is also the bestselling author of Going Rogue! Unconventional Financial Strategies for Women.