So, who am I? I am a person who always has to have a plan B. I sometimes have a plan B to my plan B. I suppose I’m like most people in that I’m a product of my time. I think any generation that has the privilege of living around the turn or a millennium has grown up and matured hearing ‘the end is nigh’. I was lucky enough to have been born well ahead of the year 2000, so I have a sence of what life was like before computers and ‘the end is nigh’ rhetoric. I was born in 1963. Yep that makes me 50. I never thought I’d live to be as old as 50, but now that I’m here it isn’t so bad.
I have learned much over my time kicking around, and ‘yes’ I do wish I knew then what I know now. But such is life, we get the joy and the pain of learning as we go.
Youshouldknowthisblog 
We live in a time when the world is undergoing great change. Considering the economic down turn of the past several years, the changes brought on by global warming, and world turmoil, we are living in very interesting times. Where are we headed? What is to become of us? These are questions that have no immediate answer. Do we sift along hoping for the best, or do we develop a plan to live the best life we can? For every life that is out there, there is an individualized answer. I am of the opinion that life, my life, is what I choose to make of it. Yes, there is a lot of turmoil and economic uncertainty in the world, but life is about more than those things. It doesn’t matter where you live in this world, you will have to carve out a life for yourself or die. We in North America, for the most part we have life relatively easy. By that I mean we don’t have war in our back door, we haven’t gone through a typhoon that has just wiped out our country, or some other society crushing event. That’s not to say that life here doesn’t have it’s challenges, just ask the people who lost everything in the flood waters of Calgary, Highriver, and many other communities in Alberta, Canada this past summer. Life does have a way of throwing those curve balls and hitting the mark with great accuracy – life altering happenstances.
So, do we lay down and cry uncle? No, we develop a life strategy that gives us the emotional flexibility to roll with the punches and stay standing when everyone else is wondering what to do next. I believe that having a plan A,B, and C is the only way to be flexible. I don’t mean the kind of plan B we develop after everything has gone wrong. I mean a purposeful set of alternative plans that can be put into action at a moments notice. What will you do if you loose your job tomorrow? Standing in line to sign up for EI is a short term first step, but wouldn’t you rather be in a position where you wouldn’t need it right away? Living a self made life can help you stay out of the situation where you rely solely on an employers good will to keep you employed, and lets face it when the market goes through a down turn, employment is on shaky ground. So, how do you get this self made life?
Not every one can own and operate there own highly successful business and have money poring out of their pockets, but most of us can operate some sort of small venture that can keep us afloat in difficult times, and give us playing money during the good times. We can also become more self sufficient in our own lives to reduce our need for cash. The less cash we need the more likely we are to ride out those crunch times. We can also own our own home, this gives us equity that can give us access to funds that otherwise we would not have. Owning your home outright is one of the best ways to have more financial security. And owning your own home is not as hard as you might think. Yes you need money, but not as much as you might thing. What if I told you that you could build your own home for less the $30,000.00, what would you say? Now what if I told you, you could build your own home for $20,000.00 or $10,000.00 or less than that?
What if I told you, you could feed yourself and your family for pennies on the dollar? Electric bill, what electric bills? Am I nuts? Well consider that
we have the power in our own hands and minds to make our own lives as we choose them to be. We can live a life that everyone else is living or we can map our own unique way through a life of our own making. A life that has been planned by others is a life for others. Plan your own life, live your own dreams. If everyone else is doing it, them it is already hum-drum. Planning your own life does have a catch, in order to plan your life you need to know what you want out of life to begin with. If others are telling you, you should do this or that ask yourself if they are saying these things because that is what they would’ve liked to have done with their life. If the answer is yes take a step back and consider if it is a good fit for you. Don’t live someone else’s dreams live your own.