As A Gen Xer It Finally Hit Me: There’s Nothing Better Than Doing Life Backwards

I watched too many friends take the standard path to boring lives

I do everything backwards.

I “budget” my money backwards. I save for relative old age — what everybody else calls retirement — backwards. And I’m gonna buy the house — actually an apartment — backwards.

As we spend time exploring how to live out the second act of your life, turns out there’s nothing better than doing it backwards. It’s a conclusion I think an increasing number of Gen Xers are coming to. At least based on my experience and the response I receive to writing about it.

By the end of this article, you’ll know what I mean by doing stuff backwards. And it should make sense why it’s the best way to live — if it suits your personality — as you steamroll towards 100. Assuming you have the stated goal to hit that number.

I write primarily about money. Personal finance. Geared towards people who, because they’ll never traditionally retire, live some version of a semi-retired life.

I write what I write and do what I do not as some expert or millionaire. I don’t have a lot of money. I probably never will. But I have needs, wants, dreams and desires that — unlike in the first 35, 40 years of my life — now reside alongside a true vision for what I want, why I want it and how I’m going to get there.

As a not-so-unimportant aside: People often refer to the first X number years of their lives. I just did.

Cut your infant and elementary school self a break.

For me, I started having what I thought was a vision for life earlier than most. At age 10 or so. While that vision helped provide rewards and experiences throughout my teens, twenties and thirties, it’s pretty much the complete opposite of how I view my future — today — as a 48-year old man.

During that core 25 or 30 years of my life, I focused almost solely on getting rich. Especially early on when I worked in radio. I wanted to be a star with houses, cars and a fat traditional retirement.

I didn’t achieve any of that.

Thank goodness I didn’t. Because, if I did, I’m willing to bet I’d be sitting here, in mid-life, wondering what’s next.

I have seen too many friends take the linear path — budget like a bean counter, contribute to the 401(k) or IRA, buy the house as soon as they could, maybe end up with a six or seven figure nest egg — and wind up overworked, under-nourished, miserable and without curiosity, let alone vibrancy, whether or not they’re willing to admit it.

When you wake up in your 40s and realize you’re not all set, you have a choice to make. Wallow in the muck, mire and uncertainty of it all. Or realize how lucky you are to actually have big and exciting life decisions to make — and execute — headed into and during the second half of your gig on Earth.

So —

When I realized I was never going to save $1 million — or anything close to it — for a traditional retirement, I started budgeting backwards.

Instead of starting with my income and committing a percentage of it to categories such as housing and transportation, I rejected this commonly-accepted form of personal money management, known as pie chart budgeting.

Instead, I focus on cost of living.

The problem with pie chart budgeting is it speaks for your income before your income has a chance to speak for itself. If you butt your expenses right up against your income — a potential pitfall of pie chart budgeting — you’re left with very little, if any wiggle room at the end of the month.

It can also encourage you to live beyond your means.

You make $120,000 a year. That’s $10,000 a month. Most pie charts — or the so-called experts who create them — say you can spend up to 30% of your income on housing and up to 15% of your income on transportation. That’s $3,000 and $1,500 out the door before the month even starts. We’re talking $4,500, which, in this hypothetical, represents more than half of your after-tax money each month.

I italicize up to because — certainly — the most responsible among us don’t go right up to the limits. However, for every responsible type, there’s a person or 45 spinning on the personal financial hamster wheel because they’re like — I make six figures so I deserve an apartment and car that someone making six figures should live in and drive.

I budget without consideration of how much I make. I keep my largest expenses — housing, transportation — as low as possible. And aim to bring them lower, when the opportunity presents, over time. This gives me a surplus most months that allows me to spend and save with greater flexibility.

When I woke up at age 45 or so and realized I’d be stuck with a rent payment for the rest of my life, I was like, oh crap, I don’t like this. So I applied the backwardsness to housing.

Long story short — my partner and I plan to move to Spain and buy a small apartment, hopefully making the move as soon as next year. We’re saving to make a large down payment or, who knows, pay all cash for a property there. This will give us a low or no housing payment — outside of taxes, insurance and maintenance — setting us up to have a super low cost of living as we approach and pass 50 years of age.

This low cost of living should — if all goes as planned — allow us to go backwards on saving for retirement. Or, more accurately, some form of semi-retirement.

By lowering our cost of living by moving to Spain first and drastically lowering our housing payment second, we can commit more and more cash to savings. By the time we pass 60, we’ll have more than enough money saved — plus Social Security and whatever else we fall into — to live out our second act on savings and a little bit of work we probably wouldn’t stop doing even if we were millionaires.

That’s my backwards approach to personal finance. And life.

The beauty of it doesn’t lie as much in the specifics as it does the real life, psychological impact.

We’re setting off on an adventure. In fact, we’re already on it.

Instead of winding things down on the road to (relative) old age, we’re cranking them up. Not just with the intended apartment purchase, but by embarking on the process of assimilating into a new and exciting culture, adopting an even healthier way of eating and getting around and seeing countless new places from one of the best travel perches in the whole wide world.

This is what floats our boat. Find what keeps you better than above water. Not treading, but strongly and confidently swimming.

Create, craft and curate it into experiences between 50 and 100 you never even dreamed of having between zero and 49.

If you’d like to know more about the journey I’m on, follow me on Medium.

You can also subscribe to my Never Retire: Living The Semi-Retired Life newsletter where I chronicle my big decisions on lifestyle, housing and cost of living, which includes moving to Spain sooner rather than later.