Here are some fun activities you can do for free so you can use your extra money to save a deposit or grow your investment portfolio faster.
Hi, welcome to the 30 Day Property Journey. Over the next 30 days I’m giving you a bunch of different activities that you can do to become a more confident and successful investor.
Today’s activity is a little bit different. We are talking about some fun things that you can do for free so that you can save your money, put it towards your deposit or pay off your mortgage.
I am going to share with you 7 different fun activities that you can do completely for free.
I am also going to link up to an awesome article that I found on the simple dollar and that’s 100 free things that you can do in a weekend. That article is epic and will give me more ideas than want I’m going to give you.
Why Do We Want To Do Free Things?
We want to do free things because if we are always spending money chances are we’re going to spend more than we earn.
If you are spending more than you earn then you’re not going to be able to save your first deposit, you are not going to be able to save the second deposit, pay off your mortgage faster or have more money to reinvest.
Therefore if you have your goal of saving your deposit (or whatever your goal may be) finding free things to do will increase your quality of life and make you happier but then will also give you the money you need in order to invest moving forward.
If you guys have already listened day #4 when we talked about creating a deposit savings plan, the goal there was to save the money as soon as you get paid, just like you have to pay rent every week no matter what.
Save that money every single week or every single month no matter what and then strive to live off the rest.
You don’t want to “just eat beans” and be miserable at home for the rest of your life (or for a year or two while you save your deposit) you want to live a full and happy life at the same time.
Getting creative and finding things that you can do for free is a very good idea.
1. Go To The Beach
If you live near the beach then you can go to the beach.
This is actually my favourite thing to do for free which is why I included it.
Obviously if you live in Melbourne or Tasmania and its freezing cold, maybe it’s not the perfect idea for you but you can go the beach without swimming
If you’re on the Gold Coast more than half of the year it’s warm enough to go swimming at the beach.
My kids also love the beach. I love swimming at the beach. My wife loves sunbaking at the beach and I find that the less you take to the beach the more fun you have.
Take your towels and your clothes and that’s it. No toys for the kids at the beach, no buckets and spades (they will just fight over them). We go to the beach and dig with our hands. My son always find sticks, my daughter always find shells and we have a great time.
2. Do Some Exercise
This can be going for something like a run or a swim or it can be something a bit more fun like playing soccer with your friends or playing with your kids and doing different activities like that.
Exercise is obviously going to keep you healthy but it’s generally a free thing that you can do at the same time.
3. Listen To A Podcast
I love listening to podcasts and audio book. This is one my favorite things to do when I get a minute or often when I’m working and I’m just doing boring monotonous things so I listen to a podcast. I work for myself so I have this luxury…you boss may not be as impressed.
It is something to do for free that can entertain you and that can fill up your mind with useful information. If you are listening to podcasts like this one or if you are listening to one that actually is going to educate you then it is likely to move you forward towards a life that you desire.
Listening to podcasts is therefore a great thing to do that doesn’t cost you any money as long as you have a phone or something you can put podcast on and then access the internet as well.
4. Attend A Local Meet Up
There are loads of meet ups going going on in cities and towns all over Australia. The easiest way that I found to find meet ups is to go to meetup.com and you can see meet-ups based on location and based on the different activities.
I love online business and all things business so I attend a lot business meet ups. There’s one that I go to for startup companies and it’s almost always a sponsored event so I get free food, free beer and I get to meet new people, hang out and have a good time.
Every now and then I get to listen an interesting talk as well. The talks are usually pretty boring but every now and then it can be interesting.
There’s also meet ups for single moms. There are meet ups for people who are writers. There are different exercise meet ups. Based on what you like to do there is probably a meet up for you and if there isn’t one then you can always think of creating one and then meet up with people who like minded.
I found this really useful especially because I just moved to the Gold Coast about a year ago. It’s a great way to meet new people and to make friends as well. So, if you need some new friends or some old friends and meet up is definitely a great idea just got to meetup.com.
5. Learn A New Skill
Learning new skills is now so easy with the Internet and with YouTube. All you have to do is go to youtube.com and type in the skill that you want to learn – how to juggle, for example; how to change the oil in my car; how to do any different activity that you want to do – hop on one foot while tapping your head, how to do that.
Okay, I don’t know if there’s going to be a video for that but you can learn new skills through the internet easier now than ever before.
Actually here is New Direction doing it:
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You don’t need to attend a class. You need to pay for someone to teach you. Almost anything you can learn how to do online absolutely free.
That might be something that you want to do, learning a skill like juggling might come in handy at parties or might definitely comes in handy when I’m making a fruit salad with my kids. They love it when I juggle.
Learning a new skill is something that you could do that could improve your life at the same time.
6. Sit Down and Write
Obviously you have to have some paper to write on or actually you could just do it on your computer which would be free but just sitting down and writing.
You could write in a journal. You could to write short stories. You could start a novel or you could do what I do which is generally writing from my blog.
I have got this blog I have another one on public speaking. I have got a couple of other smaller ones as well and I just love writing.
Sitting down and writing can be something that you can do for a free activity that is relaxing and fun. If you don’t like writing then maybe you can read a book or something like that.
There are secondhand book stores where you can trade in old books and get credits for new books so if writing is not your style maybe reading is your style and you can go and get a book for free by trading in some old books.
7. Go Out And Take Photos
We’ve all got high quality cameras now inside our phones. Obviously they’re not going to be as good as some other super expensive cameras that cost $5,000 but they’re pretty good cameras.
You can take them out and you can take some photos, maybe just some landscape shots.
I used to go down to the beach super early in the morning. I’d and get up at 5 a.m. before the sun was up and go and take some landscape shots with the beautiful sunrise and stuff like that.
I didn’t have an awesome camera at the time, in fact my phone now has a better camera than the camera I had back then. It is a fun activity that you can do and obviously again that comes to learning a new skill.
There are your seven things. They may apply to you. They may not apply to you.
Whether they do or not it doesn’t matter but the idea of going out and finding some things that you can do absolutely free that’s not going to cost you anything is a really great idea because it can help you save money, help you live below your means but more importantly it can help you to be happy.
Because that’s what we want with life and that’s what we want with investing. Enough money that we can go out and be happy.
Something that I learned the other day from a podcast that I was listening to was this mantra of “happiness now”
Rather than waiting to be happy, until we have achieved financial freedom or bought a property or done this or done that, we can achieve happiness now.
I think a great way to do that is to find these fun activities that we can do for free, decide that we’re going to be happy despite our financial circumstances. Obviously we continue to work towards financial freedom but we decide that we are going to be happy within our circumstances and we find ways to make yourself happy.
For me that might mean a 6 a.m. swim at the beach. For you that might mean doing something completely different.
Until tomorrow, stay positive.