Early Retirement – Page 2

How Much Money Do I Need to Retire Early

As my articles about Early Retirement sparked unexpected response from readers, I am being repeatedly asked the same question: “How Much Money Do I Need to Retire Early?” People seem inspired which I am happy to hear. You should be the only ruler of your own time. The more people do what they enjoy doing, instead of what they have to do in order to keep up with debt repayment for material things they were tricked by advertisements to purchase, the happier the society and the world as a whole will become. I will get to answering the “How Much Money Do I Need to Retire Early” question shortly, but first let me remind you that some of what seems as the most pressing question may not be the right question to ask.

Many people think that it was easy for me to quit work and start traveling, because I had lots of money in my bank account. This could not be further from the truth. The jobs I had never paid much, but what’s worse, I was financially destroyed when Walmart made me shut down the business I was running. I borrowed a lot of money in order to start the photography business and when Walmart opened next to me, the business stopped generating any form of revenue so I wasn’t able to keep up with monthly payments to my creditor. I abandoned the business which was supposed to be making money to pay off the loan I took to start the business. The thing is – even though I shut the business down, I still had the debt I took to start it. The business was gone – yes, but debt stayed with me.

It was making no sense to stick around given that the business was not generating any revenue and trying to fight against Walmart with my limited resources would not have yielded any results. I have simply picked up some of business’ merchandise and left to look for a job. I took a break from paying off my debt, which grew exponentially due to compounded interest but a few months later I resumed the payments. At the time of my spiritual awakening, when I was leaving my job to retire early and travel the world, I was still almost $30,000 in debt. So to answer your question directly: “How Much Money Do I Need to Retire Early?” I don’t know about you, but when I retired early, I had a grand total of $2,000 in my bank account and $30,000 plus interest in debt. That means that the amount of money I had when I retired early was negative $28,000 if I leave out the interest.

Bold you say? Perhaps, but I cared less. Instead of how much money I needed in order to retire early, do you know what I was concerning myself about? What to do to stop wasting any more time – my most precious commodity before I run out of it. I wanted to stop spending my days doing what I had to do in order to keep up with debt payments (aka enslaving myself by spending the best days of my life going to work) and start doing what I wanted to do. Yes, I admit I jumped straight down the well without any ropes to keep me from hitting the ground hard, but this is what risk-taking is all about. If I didn’t jump, I wouldn’t be writing this post from Cambodia after Apsara dancing session. I’d still be back home in cold Edmonton doing the same thing I have been doing for the past 7 years – alarm rings in the morning, I put on my clothes and walk out to catch a bus to work where I spend 8 hours being pushed around before catching a bus back home where I wouldn’t get until it’s already dark outside. This is not what my idea of the best day of my life looked like but while I continue going to work, the clock ticks away. I would have just spent one more day of the limited number of days I have to live on this Earth.

Now let me get to the point and address the speculation I have raised at the beginning of this article. Why would I connect “How Much Money Do I Need to Retire Early” question with the premise of asking the wrong questions? To be blunt – it’s because “How Much Money Do I Need to Retire Early” IS the wrong question. It implies that you may need certain amount in your bank account before you can consider early retirement and that makes it the wrong question. Don’t worry about how much money you need or whether you have enough at this moment in time. Early Retirement is just a convenient term that I occasionally use to refer to life after quitting work, but it’s not the goal. The goal is to have enjoyable and abundant life. You don’t have to call it Early Retirement. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to retire at all? It is up to you to decide what your idea of time well spent is. I will continue using the “Early Retirement” term because of sheer convenience, but the real meaning of the term should be understood in broader sense than implied. It is the way of life where you as a person spend your days engaging in activities that bring excitement to your life. It’s about you doing things that make you happy, things that make you feel like you are living a fulfilling life.

When asking the “How Much Money Do I Need to Retire Early” question, think about financial independence, rather than financial riches. That’s what makes this question irrelevant. Financial freedom is not about how much money you have in your bank account, it’s about having sufficient cashflow to sustain the lifestyle you desire. What good is a million dollars in your bank account, if you are a grumpy old man who has seemingly achieved success in his life, drives a nice car and lives in a posh house, but you are miserable whole day because the business you have worked so hard to built into this successful enterprise drains you mentally and stresses you out. The bank account is full, you can afford anything your heart desires, yet you are still grumpy and look like crap as you drive around in your brand new Lexus convertible. This is not an exciting, fulfilling life. Regardless of how many zeroes there are on your bank account statement, if you are laying down to sleep at the end of the day, and you are not excited to tell your partner about how amazing a day it was and what new adventures you have experienced today, you are not living the type of life you want. You are merely living to do what you must do to satisfy your business’ needs. You are a slave of your own enterprise.

Whether you have a lot of money, or just barely making it from month to month, or even if you are like me – up to your nose in debt – if you want to retire early, quit asking yourself how much money you need. All you need is a healthy cashflow. As for me personally, I quit working and started travelling when I had a cashflow of $300 net a month. Overtime I was able to increase it to $1,000 a month and it’s enough to give me the type of lifestyle I desire. I put a few hours a week towards retention of the income and it keeps my cashflow going, securing my financial freedom, allowing me to have the best day of my life every day. It’s not about how much money you need to retire early, it’s about how much cashflow will secure you with the lifestyle you desire. Start asking the right questions (in general, this statement is not related to asking me questions). It’s the most essential part of getting the right answer.

The Best Day of Your Life

I came to realize that the key to abundant life is to have the best day of your life every day. The best day of your life is the day you will never forget. If it instantly pops in your mind, then you know that truly was the best day of your life, if it doesn’t, if you have to think about it, then perhaps you have yet to have the best day of your life. If that’s the case, ask yourself this instead: “What was the best day of my life so far?”

I noticed that when I shared my intentions to quit work so I can travel with my friends, they mostly nodded in agreement and wished me the best of luck in my future endeavours, but the way they said it implied that they thought I must have gone insane. I was so excited about my future and so adamant about leaving work to travel that they have collectively showed support but their body language suggested otherwise. Their doubts were put to an end when I made a point by asking them to tell me what the best day of their life was.

Not surprisingly, the answers to the “the best day of your life” question usually revolve around particular experiences not related to workplace or possessions. It could have been when you went swimming with sharks, it could have been when you got a chance to hang out with your favorite band back stage, it could have been when you had your first parachute jump from a plane, it could have been… fill in the blank. People have the best days of their lives – days they will never forget when they are on a vacation or in their time off work engaging in their hobbies or spending time with the loved ones. This formula could be looked at from the opposite angle and we’d come to conclusion that safest way to ensure that today will NOT be the best day of your life is by going to work.

Life is supposed to be enjoyable and one should strive to gear towards enjoyment if it isn’t. Even if your past experiences make it seem as though the Lucky Fairy took a day off when you were born, you have all it takes to set yourself free from the shackles of employment. You only have so many days to live on this planet – doesn’t it make perfect sense that if at the end of the day you don’t feel like this was one phenomenal day with exiting new experiences and unforgettable adventures, that you have just wasted one of the limited number of days available to you doing something that doesn’t bring you enjoyment?

It matters not whether you are employed or your own boss. If you have to go to work because some potentially important client is expecting something or something otherwise essential requires your attention, then you are enslaved by your own work and your life is dictated by it. You don’t do what you want to do, you do what you must do. What would you rather be doing right now? Ask yourself that. If there is absolutely nothing you can think of that would bring you any more excitement that going to your workplace to deal with today’s workload and clients, then perhaps you are one of those cases who find spending their days at work more fulfilling than anything else.

Today should be a best day of your life, because you are getting ready to do something that you can’t wait to engage in. You are so excited you can hardly contain yourself, your adrenaline is through the roof and every cell of your body is in ecstasy. If you do not feel this way, then ask yourself what you would rather be doing right now. Think over the fact that your journey on this planet will come to an end whether you like it or not. You don’t know when, but it’s as clear as the sky that you only have so many days before it’s over. Every day at the end of which you don’t feel like this was the best day of your life should be a signal that the path you are currently following in life may not be the best for you. All of the unaccomplished things that will pass before your eyes as your life comes to an end will have been unaccomplished because you spend the time, time you have only limited supply of, chasing false dreams.

A false dream could be that house that’s in a good neighborhood and is currently for a good price. You put yourself in lifelong debt that will keep you enslaved at work, but you believe it’s a step up on your path through life. House, just as anything material is a possession. Just as it is with all material possessions, there will always be a chance to have a replacement. But you will never be able to get the time you have wasted chasing it back. Every second is there only once in your life. Once spent, it will never ever be back. The best days of your life will not be associated with possessions your have acquired. Just as employment or entrepreneurship will not make your day the best day of your life, acquisition of possessions provides false sense of achievement that’s supposed to enhance your life, but it just distracts you from what you really want .

Human psyche is an astounding thing and sellers of things know that. Advertisements are specifically crafted to mess with your mind and make you buy it. They make you believe you need that latest DVD player with Blue Ray technology because that’s the way of the world right now. I used to fall for it myself and ended up with so much stuff it was sickening. My life was about spending the best days of my life at work so I can buy these things and with each new purchase, I felt like I was moving further with my life. Was I in for rude awakening!

I quit chasing false dreams and instead of doing what I have to do today, I do what I want to do today. I understand that it’s not all about money. What would be the use of being a millionaire if the business that is making me rich requires me to attend to it every day to a point that I don’t even have time to unwind and enjoy myself. Think about the best day of your life. Think about what you should do tomorrow to make tomorrow another best day of your life. Make every day count. It’s your life and you only have so much time.

Asking the Right Questions

Being able to ask yourself the right questions is a skill. Unless right questions are asked, choosing the right course for the future can be tricky. I’ve realized that questions such as What Do You Really Want in Life? are wrong questions to ask because the “Want” part in it suggests ownership. That’s why so many people respond to it with wrong answers without even realizing it. It’s very common to get “Lots of Money” as answers to questions starting with “What do you want?” yet money is nothing more than what they see as a vehicle to what they truly want. Let’s forget the “What do you want?” and start asking the right questions:

What excites you?
What makes you happy?
What makes you feel alive?
What should happen in your day to consider it the best day of your life?

When you start asking yourself questions like the ones above, then you are asking the right questions. And unless you start asking yourself the right questions, you’re not gonna get the right answers and without right answers, how are you supposed to decide what’s really good for you? There are different things that make different people feel like their lives are fulfilling. For me it’s travel, the ability to explore beautiful places around the world, meeting new people of different ethnic backgrounds – when I get my breath taken away by being exposed to the beauty of a place I haven’t been to before, that’s when I feel alive. Find out what makes you feel alive and then you can start re-arranging your life to achieve your goals. It all starts with you asking the right questions. Afterall, what’s the point of running if you’re facing the wrong way?

It’s your decisions that determine your destiny, not your goals. Goals are nothing without action. But without right course of action, wrong goals could be achieved. Ask yourself the right questions, so you can make the right decisions and believe in your ability to achieve it. As a response to your will and beliefs, the universe will conspire to make it happen. You don’t get to choose when you’re going to die, or how. But you can decide how you’re going to live. Now!

“If you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, one moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip…”
— Eminem

What Do You Really Want in Life?

When faced with the “what do you really want in life” question, I’ve come to realize that our minds are so affected by mass-media controlled society, that we provide ourselves with wrong answers. Oftentimes where you are faced with the same question, the answer you come up with does not reflect what you really want in life, it reflects what you think will lead you to what you really want in life. Let me give you an example:

I was at my cousin’s wedding and got engaged in meaningful conversation with young gentleman whose outlooks on life were remarkably sophisticated for someone in their early twenties. I’ve asked him what his goals were in life and the answer was ambiguously plain. He said he wanted to be rich so he can comfortably provide for himself. So I asked him how much money he would like to make to feel comfortable. His answer was $100,000 a year. I asked him what he would do with the money if he was making $100k a year? He said if he was making at least $100,000 a year, he would be rich enough to travel abroad and explore three new countries each year.

Once he said that, my brain instantly scanned through the records of my life during the past 6 months and I have been faced with an astonishing revelation. I responded with: “Wait a second. Did you know that in the last 6 months, I travelled to three foreign countries myself? One of them was Iceland, one of the most expensive countries in the world, another one was Cuba where everything is government controlled and prices for tourists are hardly negotiable making it one of the most expensive destinations in the Caribbean and last one was the Dominican Republic where I went through insane adventures every day, including the whale watching, climbing of 27 waterfalls, performing live on stage with local celebrity called Luiggy Luiggy – plain and simple living it up to the fullest every day. On top of these three foreign destinations, within the same period I visited the Canadian Rocky Mountains 3 times, each time at a different location and I made an unforgettable trip to Toronto. Does this sound like the type of lifestyle you would like to be able to have but need $100,000 a year to afford?”

His affirmative stare made me continue with the same breath: “You know what the funniest thing about this is? I did all this and I make one third of what you believe you need to make in order to be able to afford this. And even funnier thing is that it didn’t cost that much either. I was able to finance each of those trips from the leftover money after I had paid for my rent, commuting, day to day expenses and whatever else my body desired during that time.”

This is it. When faced with “what do you really want in life” question, people often respond with wishes of being rich, because they believe that’s the key to the lifestyle they desire. So they basically offer wrong answer because while the answer is “money”, it’s not actually money they want. It’s certain lifestyle they want, but they believe money is the key to that lifestyle so they answer with “money”.

That’s what I used to think too. I always wanted to travel around the world and had a whole list of “must visit before I die” places which seemed so distant because I believed it was impossible to visit them unless I had money. I was telling this lie to myself for near a decade until I eventually decided to take action and once I did, I visited some of my favorite destinations, some of them known as world’s most expensive places and I did it on the cheap without a sweat.

Here are the facts:

You believe it is money you want but it’s not. It may be a really nice car you want to be driving, it may be a sail on a yacht across the Pacific you want to take, or maybe you want to learn Muay Thai under direction of a martial arts master in Thailand. These are things what you REALLY want. You only answer “money”, because you believe money will give you the opportunity to engage in your dream activities.
You may be surprised that with just a little bit of thoughtful planning, most of the activities which you believe take a lot of money, can actually be done on the cheap. I wanted to visit Iceland my whole life but was putting it off because I realized that it’s a very expensive country and I’d need a lot of money in order to be able to survive there. Yet I spend unforgettable 10 days in the country, rented a car to drive around the island, climbed glaciers, walked behind a waterfall, swam in a cave, visited bubbling mud fields and even had a great night out with local girls in Husavik on Friday night whom I met 5 minutes prior. We partied whole night and went dolphin watching the following day. All this for less that I would be willing to admit.

You have probably asked yourself the “what do you want in life” question several times throughout your life and have probably seen the answer in money as well. Now ask yourself: “What do you REALLY want in life?” and focus on final wishes, not on what could lead you to it. As you explore further, you will find out that you don’t have to be rich to have the lifestyle you desire. I am not rich, nowhere near. Yet I’ve been travelling all over the world and have many more places to go to – and it costs me less than $1000 a month. You don’t need to be rich, you only need enough to get the lifestyle you desire. And this will set you free from slavery of work and put you in the way of life where every day is an adventure you will never forget.

If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done…

I realize that grasping the concept of leaving work so one can travel (or otherwise engage in whatever your dream activity is) is not easy. There is always that little bit of doubt at the back of your head. That little bit of uncertainty that pokes you like a splinter underneath the skin. Work is this only thing that provides some hope for the future, right? One should be glad if they still have work to go to. Yet I’m preaching here about early retirement and quitting work to travel. How can this possibly work for an average person?

The very first and very important thing to realize is that I do not say one should quit work. Quitting work is simply what I did and the reasons behind my thinking are described in this journal/blog. One should live their life to the fullest and should do things they want to do. When your life is fulfilling, enjoyable and exciting, when you lay in bed at the end of the day and feel like saying: “What an awesome day it was today, I truly had hell of a time…” then you are likely doing it right. Remember, you only have limited time to spend on this Earth. Sooner or later, your time will be up and your journey on this planet will end. It is possible to have virtually unlimited supply of everything else, but never of time. You will not be here for unlimited length of time and you will not be able-bodied during all of your time here. It only makes sense that you use as much of it for things you enjoy as possible.

You know the ages old saying that “If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you always got“. And you will always feel what you always felt. You yourself have to be the change you want to see in your own life. It starts with you, because it’s your life. Sometimes the change may seem intimidating, because it requires one to step away from the safety of their homes, or take a step to the side from well established path that goes straight ahead and everyone walks on it. Change bears risks with it, because it can go either way, but hey… If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you always got.

I applied the “If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done…” principle to myself. I had a good job that’s pretty hard to get and is a clear keeper. I was making enough money to get by and occasionally go for a few with my buddies. I was able to buy myself latest fashion, go see latest movies or indulge in a massage. It seemed like a fairly steady life yet deep inside I felt that there must be more to life than this. However, this feeling did not surface until I resumed traveling. I was faced with the ultimate challenge:

Continue going to work. I have a steady and secure job that pays all my bills and leaves me some extra. If there is better life than this, I will never experience it, because all I will have known is work. There will be no surprises in my life as I know exactly what tomorrow brings – yet another day at work. But at the same time I know I am taken care of and don’t have much to worry about.

Take the risk and quit work. I don’t know where this path leads, as it could go both up and down. My life will be one daring adventure and every day will be different. I don’t know the odds, but I will do what I believe in my heart I was meant to do.

I was content where I was at the moment, but I still believed that there was more to life and that I deserved it. I knew that in order to personally mature and feel better about my life as a whole, I’d need to change the way I do things, change the way I make decisions, change the way I live life. It’s pretty simple – If you keep your foot on first base, you will never steal second. And if you always do what you’ve always done, you will always have what you always got. What I got was just enough to get me by. I was a ship in safe harbor. But as John A. Shedd said – this is not what ships are for.

A risk of failure accompanies every change. But if you look at all the great achievers this world has known, you will notice similar pattern in their lives – they have all achieved great things by taking risks. By trying something different. By deviating from predetermined path followed my majority. You can either be safe and good, or you can take a chance and be great. It’s the way to knowing the world and knowing yourself. One does not discover new oceans without losing sight of the shore as one does not find out how far they can go unless they risk going too far.

Wayne Gretzky once said: “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Yes, change requires risk-taking and risk-taking is ultimately prone to failure. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t call it risk-taking, would they? However, even if you ultimately fail but you do it pursuing your dreams, you will have lived a much more fulfilling life than those who have put their dreams on a shelf for fear of failure.

Time – Your Most Precious Commodity

Throughout my life so far it’s always seemed as though I’ve never had enough time to do the things I am supposed to do, let alone things I want to do? The dreaded “wasting my life away” quote was at the back of my head as I was sitting in my cubicle browsing through pictures of people photographing themselves having the time of their lives at places I’ve never been to. All I could do at the time was say “maybe one of these days” to myself. After all, I have to go to work every day which leaves me with little time for traveling and money is tight so I’ll just have to bite the bullet and hope something comes my way. It didn’t.

Actually, it did but in a whole different form than I would have imagined. As part of my spiritual awakening I started to see things differently and realized how precious a commodity time is. It was already clear to me that spending the best years of my life working so one day when I retire I can enjoy myself made no sense, but when I realized the value of time, things took whole new turn. “Maybe” must be replaced with “May Be”.

I had tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff sitting in my livingroom and I’ve dumped it all in the bin. I have primarily done it to liberate myself from chains these possessions kept me in, but as I was done, a realization of one far more important aspect of this act came to me. By dumping all these in the bin, I have also saved myself a lot of time. The other option was to list all these items for sale on classified ads sites. Had I followed this option, I may have added few nice bucks in my pocket but at what cost?

I’d have to take each item, take picture of it, get pictures ready for use on the net, write up a reasonable description of the item otherwise it may not attract attention of potential buyers and go through steps of publishing it on the websites. Subsequently, I’d have to deal with potential buyers who would be hitting me up with supplemental questions about each item and requests to drop the price (aka negotiations). I’d be spending my evenings responding to emails, bouncing them back and forth in hopes that someone will bite.

If I got lucky and found a buyer willing to shell out for these second hand things with expired warranty previously owned by a person they don’t know, I’d have to let it go for a price that’s way below reasonable value, because that’s how it goes with classified ad sales. So yes, in theory, I’d eventually make some money on it, but amount of time I’d have to invest into it could grow exponentially. Postings and repostings of ads that didn’t attract any bites, continuous questions from enquiring minds who’ll be trying to lowball me ad nauseum… would time invested really be worth it?

Bingo – that was the million dollar question. If it’s money you want, perhaps one would be better off spending this time focusing on something that could bring more in. As I was digging deeper into it, I came to realize the real value of time. Yes, time is your most precious commodity, because there is no money in the world that could buy it. Those things I had dumped – if such need arises, I can buy any of those back. But time – that’s one thing you can never buy back. Nothing in this world is more precious than time.

Time is so precious, everything revolves around it. Every regret you have is directly or indirectly affiliated with time. If you lose someone you love, you will be devastated. It’s after they are gone that you realize that so many things were left unsaid, so many undone. And now they will remain unsaid and undone forever. And it’s all because you have not spent as much time as you should have with that person. Perhaps it’s because you spent your days going to work and after work you were too tired. Perhaps it’s because you spent last two weeks re-visiting that car dealership and spent every evening there trying to get that new SUV for $10,000 less than advertised. To make or save money, you spent your time – the most precious commodity you have – by doing everything, except from what truly matters to you.

You are not the only one who makes this very mistake. I spent near a decade of my life – the best years of my life – going to work every day, working for money so I can exchange it for things that I then had to store in boxes and haul them around each time I moved. I did not do things I wanted to do and it went on for near 10 years. I will never be able to get those 10 years back. I can get back any of the items I threw in garbage as described above, but my years I spent going to work are irrevocably gone. During those years I haven’t done anything I really want to do. I simply went to work every day with a vision, that one day, sometime in the future I will retire and then I will be able to do what I want to do. As this premise became clearly ridiculous, I realized the value of time and started acting accordingly.

Keep this in mind – time is your most precious commodity. This day, this particular day on which you are reading this post will be there only once in your lifetime. Seize it. Seize the day! Wise people have been telling us that for millennia and I can’t believe it took me this long to realize it. There is a world of infinite possibilities out there. Live your dreams now, not in 20 or 30 years. Time does not discriminate. There are 1,440 minutes in a week and every single person out there gets this exact amount. It’s how you choose to use those minutes that makes the difference between those who live life to the fullest and those who don’t.

Working Until Retirement Make No Sense – Here is Why

The idea of spending the best years of your life going to work makes no sense. Work is a form of slavery with the only difference being that slaves were provided for, whereas workers must provide for themselves. If you are at work as you are reading this, ask yourself: “What would you rather be doing right now?” When I asked myself this very question sitting in the cubicle of my fine government job, I imagined myself climbing on top of the Kaieteur Falls in Guyana to feel the power of this mass of water plunging into the abyss below my feet as I look over the edge of the crevasse. The obvious question that followed was: “So why are you not there? Why are you sitting in the cubicle? What are you waiting for? If you keep waiting, soon you won’t be well enough to make it up there.”

The thing is, as I resumed traveling, the days while I was on the road felt so fulfilling, it gave me the sense of purpose. After I have returned to my cubicle, that purpose was gone, but desire to come back to it was red hot. To keep the spark alive, I travelled and travelled and travelled, visiting three foreign countries and two exciting places in my homeland within a span of a few months. I spent my evenings exploring the world from my computer chair putting a list of next places to visit together in my head. And the more I was digging into it, the more I felt like each day I spent at work is a day wasted. I felt like I should be doing something exciting because that’s what makes my life feel fulfilling but spending the best part of each day at work wasn’t it.

The scenario of enslaving yourself by going to work during the best years of your life in order to save money so overtime, once you have reached retirement you can take it and fulfill your lifetime wishes makes no sense. There is simply something terribly wrong with that equation: first of all, you may not even live long enough to reach retirement. If that happens to be the case, then all you will have known your whole life is work. You will not have gotten a chance to enjoy yourself because your life has ended before you reached retirement. Secondly, even if you are one of few who live long enough to reach retirement, by the time you get there, you will not be physically or otherwise fit to do all the exciting thing this life has to offer.

It’s a long way to retirement. Anything can happen during those endless years. You could get involved in an accident that will negatively affect your mobility. Or you could develop bad disease that will in some way limit your ability to enjoy life to the fullest. Taking all that into account – don’t you feel the same way I feel? I mean, what sense does it make to spend the best years of your life, years while you are still able bodied – going to work, wearing yourself out performing your job duties – so one day, in the future, when you retire you could start enjoying yourself?

You don’t know what tomorrow brings. The time to enjoy yourself is now. Seize the day as it will never come back.