Retirement is a Plant in the Garden of Life. 

What is your financial goal?  Is it to own a bigger house, fill your closet with nicer things, be able to not worry about each months bills, or to fully fund your retirement accounts?  Whatever your financial goals are, the way you think about your expenses can make a huge difference on your success.

Think of your life as a 4×6 foot patch of dirt.  It starts off bare, but as we get older, we start to add plants to it until one day we look up and we’ve made an entire garden.

Each plant in your garden represents an expense

The larger the expense, the larger the plant, the more water it takes.  It’s your choice how you water each of those plants.  Some people choose to use most of their water on their home plant. Others water the vacation plant.  Still others prefer to water the car plant and some people throw water wildly at their garden and have no idea where it ends up.

Think of your job as earning water

Each day you get out of bed before you want to so you can get ready to go to a job you don’t really enjoy.  Even before you get to work you start worrying about the problems of the day ahead.  Eventually you get to the office and start earning your bucket of water.  The bucket fills slowly, drip by drip.

By late afternoon the bucket is full and you’re allowed to go home to water your garden.  You take that hard earned water home and watch it disappear into the garden of expenses you’ve created for yourself.

WHAT PLANT DO YOU WATER FIRST?

One massive plant is taxes.  Another huge plant is your home.  You’ve got a grocery plant that takes up a lot of space and that entertainment plant is bigger than expected.  Water just seems to disappear into your garden and you’re not really sure where it all goes.

Inside you hate the fact that everyday you come home and your garden soaks up all the water you earned that day.  Some days you don’t even have enough water for every plant.  You feel trapped.  You look around and see your neighbor watering his plants and it makes you feel better.  He doesn’t have enough water either.

There’s never enough water

You don’t have enough water to go around and worst of all you find some of these plants don’t even bring you happiness anymore.  Instead, they feel more like a burden.  Your house plant is huge but you never get to admire it because you’re always at the office getting enough water for it.  Your kids don’t see you and you tell yourself you’re staying late for them.  You want them to have a bigger house plant than you had growing up.  As if they care how big the family house plant is.

The retirement plant 

There’s one plant in the corner that you’ve never paid much attention to.  Some days when you have a little extra water you sprinkle some on it.  This plant won’t be ready to harvest for years though so you feel like you’re wasting your time watering it.

In the back of your mind you know once your retirement plant reaches a certain size, you no longer have to go collect more water.  Your retirement plant will actually start to produce it’s own water.  It produces it now, just such a little amount you don’t even notice.

Inside you know the key to your future is in that silly little retirement plant.  You know you should water it but you just have so many other more important plants.  You feel stuck, but you’re doing what all your neighbors are doing. If everyone is doing it, it must be right.  Their retirement plants are small and their vacation plants are huge.  You fit in with the norm, but you’re miserable.

What if there was a better way?

What if you stopped watering that entertainment plant as much and started putting that extra water towards your retirement plant?  Maybe you get wild and rip out your house plant and replace it with a house plant that doesn’t require nearly as much water.  What if you traded one of your vehicle plants for a smaller one and got rid of your other vehicle plant altogether?

Think of the possibilities.  Think of what you could do with all that extra water.

Take Action

Stop caring about what your neighbors garden looks like because you can see it in his face, he’s miserable too.  Start tracking where your water is going and start to prioritize what plants you actually want to water.  Seek out people who are happier and ask them what plants THEY water.

Some of the plants are sucking the life out of you.  You hate watering them because you get no joy in return from them.  Identify those plants and cut them out.  No plant is too small.  If it only requires a few drops of water but it gives you no joy in return you pull it out like a weed.

Now pour all that extra water into the plants that make you happy.  Maybe the plant that makes you happy is that retirement plant.  Maybe you really do love that house plant and it’s worth it to you to keep going back to the office everyday because that house plant brings you that much joy.

For me, I want to water my retirement plant. I want to water that sucker like I’m trying to drown it.  You may be different.  Water the plant that brings you happiness.  Just be intentional about where your water is going.

Most people Give no thought to where their water is going

They have no idea why they put the amount of water into each plant they do.  It’s just what they’ve always done.  Don’t be most people.  Most people are wasting their lives collecting water all day in a job they don’t like and then wasting it on plants they don’t even want.  Be intentional with your water. Water the plant that makes you happy.

Related:

Life is Short- Spend for Today vs. Save for Tomorrow

Be Like Mrs. Wealthy Pants, Don’t Buy a Bunch of Dumb Sh*t