3 Steps to Live Life Without a Job

The economy is on shaky ground. All you have to do is glance at a newspaper or magazine or listen to a news report to see just how bad things are for everyone from Wall Street to Main Street. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to live an enjoyable life without relying on the market or a regular paycheck. It just takes planning, budgeting and plenty of creativity.

1. Planning for the adventure – before you jump out of a secure employment into a life without a regular paycheck, you need to understand what you are getting into. Some people prefer the comfort of a paycheck to the freedom of self-employment. You will want to map out a plan for your spending, your working opportunities and even calculate a way to pay off (or at least pay down) all of your debt – including rotating credit, mortgages and automobile loans.

2. Creating a budget – the next step you need to take is determining just how much money is required for you to survive. You also need to create a budget for living beyond survival (that allows for vacations, evenings out and other extravagant spending). Having a financial plan set up before you set out on your adventure will help you create memories that you enjoy and not that you dread.

3. Think outside the traditional box when it comes to making money – one man use to take on heavy shifts during seasonal employment so that he would not have to work the rest of the year (if he was frugal). Another family raised flowers that they sold to make money for a vacation each year. The best thing that you can do is to figure out what you are truly passionate about and then find a way to get someone else to pay you for that gift, talent or passion.

Living without a job is not about living without an income. It is about finding creative ways to generate that income and then utilizing that income to the greatest extent.