How to live your dream chic life

The view from my dad's terrace.  It's soothing.

Happy new year, dear chic friends!

I was going for a walk around midday the other day, on a weekday.  People around me were on their lunchbreak and here was me, walking along soaking up the sun, with no work to go back to in the afternoon.  Now that we have sold our business and finished up training the new owners, this is my new life.

Writing will be my job from now on, but still, I could hardly call it a job because I love it so much.  Plus, my commute is just down the hall and the cats can come too.  I’ve always wanted a ‘bring your cat to work day’; I just had to invent my own :)

I am also in this fortunate position because we have a low-cost lifestyle.  We don’t waste money and we love to keep things simple.  Because of this we have paid our house off early and have no debt.

That is the biggest thing I would say to anyone – get rid of your debt as fast as you can.  You have so much more freedom with no debt.  To me, a newer house, better/second car, more vacations and fancier clothes all come a distant second to ridding myself of debt (including ‘good’ debt, such as a house payment or student loans).

I am also not kidding myself because I know it might not be so easy when you have kids to pay for.  We don’t have children, and I know it makes a huge difference to household spending.  They’re expensive!  But I do think you can live a simple, low-cost life with children; you have to be intentional about it and it might feel uncomfortable going against what your friends and family are doing, but it’s worth it.

So here I am, the 46-year old who gets to create at home, enjoying her favourite place to be, reading often and enjoying her own company.  We don’t really change that much do we?  I love the quote which I think is attributed to Gertrude Stein that talks about us not changing as we get older, but only becoming more of who we already are.

Now, I don’t say all of this to brag, but I want to show you that it is possible to do what you really want in life.

If you had no money worries or any other considerations, how would you spend your day?  When I think about it, all I ever wanted to do was be at home, and be creating.  Imagining your dream day is a great thing to think about.

If you don’t want to share in the comments, make some notes for yourself.  Then you will see how big the gap is between your current days and what you would actually like them to look like.  It may be closer than you think, and it may be poles apart.

And now that you have an idea of how you would love to live, you can work and plan towards it.  What better time than the new year to begin to dream?  It was about this time two years ago that my husband and I started saying to each other ‘what if…’ and ‘imagine if we could…’ and started breathing life into our dream lifestyle.

If your other half is not so keen to talk like this, slip it sideways into a conversation when you are on vacation, watching a movie or even simply sipping a coffee together at a nice café.  Not so much ‘we need to talk’, but ‘imagine if we could live like this every day’.

Don’t let another year slip by where you are middling along with your life just because everyone around you is too, but underneath wondering ‘is this all there is’?  I love to inspire myself by reading about people who have done amazing things, because then my little aspirations don’t seem so outrageous by comparison.

I encourage you to begin today to explore your dream chic life.

fiona

PS.  If you would like to read more from me on the topic of living an abundant and prosperous life, check out my book Financially Chic, available on Amazon Kindle and in paperback.

Weirdly enough I picked up my own copy at home last week and started flicking through it.  I ended up reading a chapter and forgot it was my book.  I was thinking to myself ‘this is so good, I feel really motivated’ and then clicked back into reality that I had written it.  So, if it’s not a biased opinion for the author to say so, it’s an excellent book.  Take that as you will :)