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Interview with Promod Sharma -Four Hour Work Week part 2
Monty Loree: The question I've got for you - you're sort of in the insurance industry. I'm just wondering, you probably have heard stories where people have worked all their lives and then died pretty quickly after retiring.
Promod Sharma: I tend not to hear so much about people dying because I'm more involved in helping advisers sell the cases in the beginning. But you do come across statistics that people who will only have work as their focus tend to pass away pretty quickly once they stop working, which is very unfortunate.
Monty Loree: So that just confirms what we're talking about here, about the mini retirement. An example that I've got and I'll never forget it. A close friend of mine, this was a few years ago, his dad was a fire fighter. So the dad worked his way up to the ranks, worked really hard, was making good money. Then he retired and he said, "As soon as I retire we're going to go travel Europe and do all the things that we've always wanted to do." After a month of being retired, he passed away. So yes, that was very dramatic to me that made a statement in my life. I said that I will never do that. I'll always do the things that I want to do but I'll never look to that 20 or 30 years down the road for my retirement. I'll do it now.
Promod Sharma: Yes. Another point that Tim Ferriss made is, what is retirement anyway? We are living very long these days. We're living longer and longer. So if you retire at say at 65 or whenever and you're going to live in another 20, 30 or maybe even longer number of years then the retirement becomes like a job. So you want to be doing things that you can continue during that traditional retirement phase so that you have some interesting things going on in your life. That makes the idea of a mini retirement even more appealing, because then you're basically you're retiring for limited periods of time during what would otherwise be your normal work life.
Monty Loree: Yes, that's right. It's a whole mindset shift. Basically I've been a workaholic for many years - probably the closest 25 years, working seven days a week, many many hours and all to generate wealth and all of the American or Canadian dream type things. For the last couple of years I've said I'm going to work for four hours a day and that's it. While the first year was not bad because I needed the rest, after that I was like, "What am I going to do now?" So it became a little bit stressful because I was just sitting there thinking and it's actually taking me a few years to learn how to be retired. So I can relate to that.
Promod Sharma: Now why do you work for seven days a week rather than five?
Monty Loree: Well because I'm self-employed, there's always something to do. Quite frankly, four hours a day is never enough, so I just try to make do with it. But there's always something to do and I find that - I wake up at five or six in the morning, you're up anyway. So you go downstairs and into the office and do something until the kids wake up and then you can go and visit the kids and the wife. Then you can spend some time with them, but from the 5 am 'till 9 when they're sleeping on the weekends. It's either that or you sit and watch TV or read a book or something like that, but I'd just rather get some stuff done. I guess I've been doing this for so many years that it's just kind of normal for me.
Promod Sharma: Okay, that's a great way of doing things.
Monty Loree: It's not for everybody that's for sure but it works for me. I kind of like it. My job is my hobby so I'm doing my hobby 7 days a week.
Promod Sharma: Yes, you can't really beat that.
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