Is A Dream Home A Worthy Goal?

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Is a dream home a worthy goal? Or is seeking financial freedom instead of a dream home going to make you happier?

Transcription:

Hey guys, Ryan here from on property and in today’s episode I want to talk about this idea of your dream home and whether or not it’s actually a worthy goal. Just going to go for a walk. This is my house right here. So you’re going to leave my house. Isn’t my dream home? No, it’s not. We’ll talk about that. We’ve also got my van here, which was my home for a couple of months, so me and the kitchen used to live in that for a couple of months. We’re going to go for a walk down to the beach. Okay, so live one street back from the beach. Beach is just there. So we’re going to head down to the beach and we’re going to talk about this concept of a dream home. So I had an email recently from a listener have on property and if you’re listening to this and you probably know who you are, but basically talking about how our two properties to financial freedom strategy, how that fits in with wanting to expand your principal place of residence and expand your home.

Talking about this person talks about how they had invested in a unit in a capital city that they live in as well as in an investment property with the goal in the future of eventually selling those two properties so they can upscale into a larger dream home in Melbourne to get a four bedroom house that was going to be, you know, one and a half million or around that sort of ballpark figure. So as you guys know, especially if you live in capital cities, super expensive to buy houses in capital cities and so it can be really difficult for people to think, okay, I want to get financial freedom, but hey, I also want my dream home. So how do I balance that out? Now? I used to live in Sydney. I used to live in a beach side suburb called crunella. So if anyone’s from Sydney, you know what I’m talking about.

I’m a shy boy. Born and bred in the Shire Granola, super expensive. All units now and basically if you want to buy a house in Granola, you’re talking to three mil sort of thing. In a previous life that would’ve been my dream home, a house in Granola near the beach, near the good coffee shops, all that sort of stuff. That would’ve been my dream home. But now not so much. Okay. So, so life has changed for me a lot significantly, especially in the last two years. So what’s happened in the last two years is that I achieved financial freedom through my businesses where I call it pseudo financial freedom because I don’t need to work much, but I do need to work a bit and over time those businesses won’t always pay me. So it’s kind of like short term financial freedom sort of thing if I don’t keep up doing a bit of work.

So I’m not completely financially free, but it got to the point where I don’t really need to work in order to make money just a little bit. Also location independent because my work is online obviously, so basically we can live anywhere. And so what happened during that period was now I no need to work. That really changed my life a lot. So it really made me open my eyes to how the goals that I had set for myself in terms of business, in terms of financial freedom, they were pushing me for though driving though my focus and I was pushing through life in order to achieve these goals. But when I achieved them, they didn’t make me happy. And what also happened was that when we achieve them, we then realized we weren’t happy. Okay. You just get so distracted by life. So distracted by work.

So distracted by trying to make money, trying to build wealth, all of that sort of stuff. You’ve got kids in school, it’s really busy and you get really distracted. Just doing that. Like you focus on that and show you got to do it. I remember I used to be a pharmaceutical rep and my wife went after we had our second kid, she had postnatal depression quite badly. Really struggled to get out of bed some mornings but I 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning and then I would need to drive onto territory as a pharmaceutical rep and go to my job. And if I didn’t go to that job, then you know we wouldn’t be able to afford to live and pay our bills and buy nappies and feeding our children. And so despite the fact that Chicago needed me home and she needed my help, I had to go to work.

And so for a lot of people out there that will kind of pull you through life and you just focused on it because you have to do it. But as soon as you don’t have to do it and you have financial freedom to everything changes because if you’re going to work, you’re choosing to go to work, which is really different and you don’t expect it to be so different. But it is. And I will get to the dream home idea. But here’s the thing, right? This person that emailed me, their dream home, four bedroom property, somewhere in Melbourne, close to work, close to the kid’s school. But the thing is, when you’re financially free and location independent, you now get to choose wherever you want to live in the world. You now get to choose. If you want to live a straight back from the beach and up near Noosa.

Okay. In a little beach side suburb that’s surrounded by national park, that’s where I live. We’ve got a super chilled life now. Me and my wife, we change things. Went in the van and needs change is what I’m trying to get to. So we used to want the house in Granola to be really close to family, to be really rich, to have the mansion sort of thing, but then it’s going to be super windy down here, so hopefully you’ll still be able to hear me. But yeah, once we achieve that financial freedom, our needs changed and we found an awesome Montessori school up here for the kids and so what would have been our dream home and what we could have spent years and years striving towards, changed over time. And then what happens when your kids move out of home and no longer need four bedrooms anymore? What happens if you want to move up to Queensland? Okay, so here’s the thing

that I want to challenge you with. If I had of just stayed in a job, let’s say I say it as a pharmaceutical rep or things like that, I actually wasn’t in Sydney at that time, but anyway, let’s just say I stayed in Sydney, worked up the corporate ladder or even started my own business and I worked my life in order to afford my dream home. I invested in properties in order to be able to eventually sell those properties to buy my dream home. Let’s say the end of the day I owned my dream home and Granola, some $4,000,000 house straight back from the beach in Cronulla, let’s say even get to the point where I pay it off. Okay, what? Then? Right. I’ve spent my entire life’s striving for this thing, trying to get this, trying to pay it off, probably overstretching myself because I know so many people who buy their houses and their mortgage just over stretches them and when business isn’t going well or when their job isn’t going well, they don’t have the flexibility to change that.

And so what happens when you. Let’s say you do all of that, you strive for your dream home. This is going to take you time, right? Let’s say you even build financial freedom on the side, so you’ve got your dream home. You become financially free. You no longer have to work anymore. How important is that dream home going to be when you don’t need to work anymore where you don’t need to live in that spot to be close to work where you can live wherever you want. Maybe you want to be completely location independent like the van I showed you previously and you want to travel Australia in a van. Then you got a $4,000,000 dream home that’s just sitting there that you spent 10 or 20 years trying to buy and you’re not even living in anymore. But my auntie and uncle have their house in Sydney as well.

Um, great little house that they’ve got there now traveling the world because they’re retired. They’re doing a lot of travel around Australia and therefore drive. They got a cat at home and they have to have people how sit in their house because of their cat. But that dream home, they’re not living in it anymore, they’re not even there anymore. And so it’s Kinda like, yeah, I just want to challenge you today because so many people are striving from the dream home. And I actually spoke to someone recently who has gone through this whole process, so they have invested in property, they have worked really hard. Them and their partner have worked really hard. They’ve recently bought a dream home. Well I think it’s their dream home. I’m not even sure up here. Actually quite close to my house. Sold their investment properties in order to pay it off.

So they have now got their dream home, they’ve got a height off so they got no mortgage on that home and I was talking to this person and they’re just like, what now? Like this was the big goal that I had for myself, a big financial goal and I figured when I achieved this goal I’d be really happy as well. I would want to then set another goal that was a big financial goal. And so I get to this goal, I own the dream home outright, and it’s like, well, what now? So, and I think we don’t realize that we’re going to have that experience in the future. I definitely didn’t realize I would have that experience, that whole like what now experience. And so I just don’t want you to strive for 20, 30 years working in a job. You hate to buy this elusive dream home that you think is the ticket to happiness when really it’s just a fraction of what’s gonna make you happy in your life.

And so when you’re thinking about, okay, should I invest in order to buy my dream home or should I invest for financial freedom? You can do both of those things together. You can choose to just do one. It might take you longer to achieve financial freedom if you’re also going after the dream home, but just kind of try and think about your life holistically and say, okay, holistically what is going to bring me more happiness in my life is owning my dream home outright? Is that what level of happiness is that going to bring me? Because it will bring a level of happiness. I’m not saying it won’t. What level of happiness is that going to bring me? And then it’s like, okay, what level of happiness is financial freedom going to bring me? If he can do what you want with your day, if you can live any way you want, if you can hang out with people during the day, if I can go for coffee with my wife in the morning after we drop the kids off at school, I can walk down the beach like I am right now talking to you guys.

What level of happiness is that going to bring you? Okay, this is really great. Saying that I’ll just close off this video with you can have anything you want but you can’t have everything you want. So we have this idea of the dream home, but there’s other things in life that might make you happier. Being financially free, having awesome relationships, having great friends, sending your kids to an alternative school, but whatever it may be, there’s so many different things that will make you happy. So I think for some people that are listening to this, they need to let go of the dream of the dream home and they need to think about what’s actually going to make them happier in life. Because just because your friends bought a house doesn’t mean you have to. You need to follow your own path, you need to do your own thing, whatever is true to you.

And so some people might need to let go of that dream home idea and to be like me. Like I live a straight back from the beach. The House is pretty good that we live in. I rent it, I don’t own it. It’s pretty good though. I’m just going to turn it around now. So pretty good house and I’m really happy. I love where I live, but I don’t have my dream home. I don’t own it. I’m renting in it. And then if I was kicked out of it because we rent in it, then I moved down the street somewhere in the same suburb. It wouldn’t be that big a deal, but I’m happy in my life. The things that I get to explore because I’m financially free, the things I get to do is really exciting. And so yeah, some people might need to give up that idea of the dream home.

Some people might want to double down on that idea of the dream home. I Know Ben from pumped on property disagrees with me. He thinks that the dream has really important. Um, but yeah, everyone has their own thing that they want to go for and I just don’t want to see you blindly going after a goal without actually assessing whether or not that’s going to make you happy. And also assessing the other options that are out there. So yes, a dream home will add to your happiness, but how much we would add and how long will it take and how much will it take in terms of sacrifice in order to get it. And there’s other things that might not take as long, might have less sacrifice. And our overall gonna make you happier. And so have a little think about that today. I’m just gonna. Keep walking along the beach. Go home for some lunch soon. And until next time, guys stay positive.