I realized something very important recently.
I am a time traveller.
I love any book or movie on the theme of time travelling: The Time Machine; The Time Traveller's Wife; Back to the Future; Looper – to name a few.
Maybe this is because we all watched Dr Who from the dinner table every night while I was growing up.
What does this have to do with money?
Well – when I was about 8 I was already thinking about my future and what it would look like. I saw the future version of me being able to do and have whatever I wanted, without the dreaded phrase "we can't afford it" hovering around nearby somewhere.
Jumping into my mental time machine and "travelling" to the year 2000 often, I would see with my mind how I was living then. (I'd be married to a wonderful fella and have two lovely children, and life would be rosy.)
Doing this time travel affected what I did in the present. It made me plot and plan about how I was going to get to that future.
Roll forward about twenty years (I had my wonderful fella, and was getting ready for the children) and I realized how tiny the pension was, and I began plotting and planning about how to have a high enough net worth to retire comfortably, and never even have to walk into a Centrelink office (or whatever it was called back then).
At that stage I jumped in my time machine and set the controls for the year when I would be 55 years old, which was 2016. One press of the button and whoooooosh! I was there. I lived in a nice spacious house, ate out at restaurants most evenings, and had lots of fun with friends.
My days were relaxed with various fun activities including playing cards, and being involved in some kind of contributary capacity. My children were independent and good citizens, and making their own success in the world.
Yes all was rosy again, and while I was there, I figured out how much that was going to cost me each year. I wrote that figure down and said farewell and closed my time machine door and returned to the present (the late 80's).
I then kicked the left side of my brain into gear and ran the calculations. That gave me a figure of how much net worth I would need to accumulate, by 2016, to generate the annual cash required for my future life.
And the right side of my brain – well it just laughed. It laughed and laughed. "Good one Glenda! How's that ever going to happen?" *more giggles*
In about 2005 I realized I'd miscalculated. Well not on the amount, but the time required to get there. I had already reached that net worth target that I'd set about 17 years earlier.
Without my time machine, I never would have seen the future, and travelled back to the present and set the target.
Once a target is firmly set, it is incredible what can unfold to allow us to hit it!
So here's what time travel has to do with money: The first tool of trade, if we want to build wealth for a fabulous life in the future – is our time machine! We need to visit the future first, to plant how it looks into our consciousness – and subconsciousness, in order to drive us to it's reality in the present later on.
So my number one starter money tip? Find yourself a time machine! And use it!
May success be yours,
Glenda
