If I had a Million Dollars…

Last week, Sarah and Scott over at Couple of Sense wrote a post titled “What Would You Do With A Million Dollars?”  Their post went down the rabbit hole of how a million dollars isn’t really that much these days…  and then discussed what they would want as their cash number to be able to quit work and buy a house…  But you can go read that post and see what they discussed…

Anyway, it got the wheels turning in my head about what I would do with a million dollars and what a random million would do to my finances… So I decided to play a little game…

Let’s say that I was somehow given $1,000,000.  Straight up, no tax implications or whatever (it keeps my game simple).  What would I do with it and how would it help me retire?  I have once done a post where I basically discovered that at my current rate I will basically never retire… But maybe a $1,000,000 boost will help me?

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My Definition of Financial Freedom and Early Retirement…

After I posted about my ability (or lack thereof) to retire early, I got to talking with a coworker about financial freedom and what you would do if you have enough money right now so you didn’t have to work… (He doesn’t know about my blog… but we were just chatting in the lunch room…)

My coworker told me that he would probably still work… (we both find our jobs quite interesting and rewarding) but would be able to choose which days he had to come in to the office, and which days he could work from home.  (Our work currently doesn’t really approve of the work from home thing…)

I decided that I liked his version of financial freedom… and might adopt it for myself… but it got me wondering… if right now, money wasn’t an issue and I could “retire”, what would I want to do?  Where would I want to live?  What would my life look like?  I decided to brainstorm on this, as maybe it would give me the added motivation to get my living costs down and work on getting my savings rate up… and speed up that retirement date…

Where would I want to live?

Can I Retire Early?

After reviewing my goals and my budget, I was trying to figure out a way to get myself more motivated to get our spending down and increase our savings.

I read a lot about early retirement on blogs like the Frugalwoods and Mixing Maroons, and of course, most people reading any sort of personal finance blog know of Mr. Money Mustache… I know I have a long way to go before I can count myself anywhere near their frugality and financial awareness and responsibility, but I thought it might be a fun experiment to see what the calculations would tell me, and maybe it would be enough to get me motivated to increase the contributions to our RRSPs and TFSAs.