If you have recently changed your Number, why did it go up/down or stay the same?

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Permalink Reply by Debbie on November 15, 2008 at 3:27pm

I started out with $5 million as my number. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to that, it just seemed like a ton of money and I figured it’d be more than enough for anything I’d ever want to do. I’m only a little embarrassed to say I just sort of picked it out of thin air for the most part.

As I started thinking more about the big picture - my “life’s purpose”. I ended up revising my number to reflect how much I thought necessary to live that purpose and I discovered $5 million wouldn’t quite be enough to sustain some of those things.

Finally, I worked out the fine details of living my life’s purpose by the date I selected and exactly what kind of cash would be required to be able to stop working (if I want).

I’m glad I went through with this process. If I had just gone with my first guess of $5 million, I’d fall short and not be able to fulfill my life’s purpose as I intend to. I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t go through a detailed, thought-provoking exercise to come up with my number and date. I also wouldn’t feel particularly passionate about what I’m doing in this experiment if I didn’t have such an attachment to my number and date. It’s not good enough to say “I need a lot of money to do stuff” or “I need money to do stuff and give to charity” - it’s the specifics that allow you to create actual plans that can deliver. Without a plan and end goal - how would you know if you “made it” there?

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Permalink Reply by Scott on November 18, 2008 at 9:18pm

I actually have to admit that i’ve had 4 numbers along the way. My 1st number before meeting Adrian online was 5 million. How did I get that number? Most of the books I was reading at the time such as Masterson, showed what a 250k per year lifestyle was like and most suggested that you really weren’t “Rich” until you could at least afford to live a 250k lifestyle(assuming a 5% withdrawal rate per year on that 5 mil). Also at that time, my wife and I had not purchased our new home and land outside of town which is basically a 100 year old estate or ‘horse farm’ if you will on 8 acres.

Before that purchase, every home we looked at with the amenities that this home had (8-20 acres, barn, horse run-ins, accessory storage or work shop buildings, complete fencing in mostly 4 board wooden style, above 3,000 sq ft of living space etc…) cost in the range of 600k to basically whatever you wanted to pay. We thought we would need to buy a house for a million or more at least to be honest. We lucked up and found one that needed a few final touch renovations for only 325k, probably because of a change in market conditions and the average consumer’s illusion that a “newly built” house is better, even though all studies show newer homes are built with softer woods instead of hard woods and seem to degrade at a faster rate than the old tanks that use to be built (plus my wife and I like the true artisan qualities, architectural styling, interior woodwork, etc… of older Victorian homes,etc.. that you just can’t quite find newer built homes today)

Shortly after purchasing this home, things really got going with the 7 millionaires in training program here and I realized that a 5% withdrawal rate of your ‘number’ may not always cut it, especially in bad markets like the present and I started thinking that in order to have to 250k/year withdrawal while still preserving my number to keep up with inflation, I would need to withdraw more like 2.5% per year, hence this took me to 10million.

Howerver, later on, after figuring out what I really NEED in life (personal, physical, emotional, spiritual and financial freedom from ‘working’ for money, so that I can help people out of abundance, without chasing down payments from insurance companies, dealing with paperwork and any of the other negatives to my practice that feel like will shorten my lifespan, as well as being able to travel abroad a few times per year to help those in need and less fortunate in other countries), I realized I didn’t NEED as much money as I thought I would in order to do that.

Sure I would WANT more money. I could find it EASY to spend millions of dollar per year or more, but that would simply be what I WANTED for FUN, and not truly what I NEED in order to live my life’s purpose.

I realized that it wouldn’t cost that much to finish the renovations on my home to make it an incredibly beautiful horse estate, do the traveling that I needed to do to help others, have my freedom, reduce stress, live longer, help people out of abundance in my practice and not because I have to make a payment to something or someone, etc.. And incredibly, I found that it cost less than HALF of what I previously thought it would to live that life.

So my number ended up at just a shade over 4 million to accomplish in 10 years. Still quite a high mountain, but not quite as STEEP as previously estimated.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Martin on November 22, 2008 at 2:34pm

My "Number" reminds me of one of those old time PinBall machines where the silver ball gets launched forward by this huge spring and then bounched back and forth and from side to side until it finally goes through a final gate. The good news is you always get "points for the journey".

My Number has bounched from $10,000,000 to $4,190,000 to a final $3,000,000. AND THAT'S MY FINAL ANSWER.

Deciding on that number came about as a result of determining what I really wanted to do with my life. To do some teaching, writing and assisting police deparments with stress management training and police chaplains programs. The biggest goal is to develop a "Retreat Center" for police and fire personnel and their families.

Another reason for the change is I began ligically thinking about my age. I'm a little old to be projecting too far down the road. Time is important not because I want to retire early (I'm already there) but because if I am to reach my Number I need to get busy "now".

The changes came about because of logical thinking and rethinking and to be honest, from time to time even a little bit of fear. But regardless of what financial goal I ended up with, my purpose is to "Glorify God Through It All".

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Permalink Reply by Diane on November 24, 2008 at 7:15pm

My number is $8.5M in 6 years, and tho I initially thought I would need $3M, and then later went to this number (and another exercise put $5.5 as the least I could manage my Life's Purpose on), I am not sure that is the hardest part of the problem, just the one we've focused on the most.

Maybe if one is in one's 20s or 30s, it doesn't really matter, you can choose "40" or some number that represents a change to "midlife" or something. If you're already past that, what do you choose? As Lee pointed out, the date is a bit more of a problem to lay-in as a driver.

For me, it's not the number that's so hard to come up with - it's driven by one's Life's Purpose. What is difficult is determining what the driving force for the date is.

I know what's pushing my date - someone else's retirement date. I want to be ready to live my Life's Purpose by the time that happens. Beyond that moment in time, my expectation is that I will outlive him and should that happen, I would not want to go back to work, may not be able to go "back to work" in the traditional sense. So that gives me another impetus to do it while he's still working.

For myself, I think our dates are more "plucked from thin air" than our numbers are. And if I remember correctly, that is one of the key drivers to how much "push" we are going to have to provide to the process.

How did the rest of you (younger - and I'm not including Adrian at this point, but when he too set out on HIS journey that ended in $7M7Y) arrive at your dates?

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Permalink Reply by Michael on December 3, 2008 at 10:44am

Diane said:

For myself, I think our dates are more "plucked from thin air" than our numbers are. And if I remember correctly, that is one of the key drivers to how much "push" we are going to have to provide to the process.

How did the rest of you (younger - and I'm not including Adrian at this point, but when he too set out on HIS journey that ended in $7M7Y) arrive at your dates?

I chose my date based on two factors. First, I want to be able to spend my middle aged years doing the things that help me meet my life's purpose, which includes helping my wife and children maintain close relationships with the rest of our extended family. That means I not only need to have the time and money to travel across the country several times a year, but must do it when my children are still young enough to develop relationships with their cousins. My oldest child will be 10 years old in 2015; I will be 35.

Secondly, for a long time, I have had it fixed in my mind that I would one day be able to decide whether to continue to work or not. Right now, if I don't work, I go hungry. "Not working" isn't really a viable option. I always figured that it would be when I am somewhere between 30 and 40 years old. 35 is right in the middle. Not really a good reason, but it did come into play when deciding my date.

My number came from taking the amount needed to support my desired lifestyle ($250k annually), factoring it for inflation for seven years (38%), and multiplying it by 20. That came to $6.9 million, which I rounded to $7 million.

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Permalink Reply by Michael on August 15, 2009 at 11:17pm

I've just started with $1 million within the next 5 years, cause I figured with a conservative 5% to 10% return it should yield roughly between $5k to $10k of passive income per month - which will take care of all bills and enough left over to spend. What this does for me is to buy myself the freedom to travel and pursue investment opportunities.\

As a 'displaced' citizen, my goal is to become an international citizen and a perpetual traveler. I don't see boundaries (although I do observe each countries' law and regulations) and hope to be able to conduct businesses and investments on an international level one day.

Ideally, I would like to become a multi-millionaire with at least $100 million in net assets, which would ultimately provide me the means to help others in the way I envision it, but that is such a huge number for me to imagine and grasp. So my mindset is not ready for that yet. I have a long way to go in terms of self development and finance. Most billionaires never realised they'll achieve the billionaire status, they just started out wanting to make that first million dollars in mind, and they just keep re-adjusting their goal posts as they went along.

So for now, I just want to start 'small', and look at making the first $100k, and then $250k, and then $500k. And $1 million is a more achievable figure to start with. That's what I'm sticking with for now.

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