HOW MUCH DOES YOUR DREAM LIFE COST? {BIRTHDAY EPISODE} – EP. 40

In this episode we introduce an exercise called Dreamlining (05:05), including mapping your ideal way to spend your time (08:13) and how to calculate your potential financial needs (11:00).

Audio Transcript

(5s):
The Wanderlover Podcast was created with a mission to enable travel and freedom through entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Danielle Hu, business mentor, content creator, and founder of The Wanderlover. Tune in every week for episodes about travel, online business, social media, and mindset that will inspire you to take massive action towards living the life of yours. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Wanderlover Podcast. I’m your host, Danielle Hu, and today is my birthday!

(45s):
Woo! I have such a special episode for all of you guys today, all about designing your dream lives and really figuring out how much it all costs. But first I would love to share with you guys a discount code. I love giving the gift of knowledge. So for this week only if you enter the code capital Y A Y the number two eight, so YAY28 at checkout, you get 28% off of any of my e-books or The Wanderlover Business Academy, my e-course. So that includes The Travel Influencer Handbook, Instagram for Business, and my eight week course Wanderlover Business Academy and it’s for this week only.

(1m 29s):
And you guys know how much I adore investing in yourself and in knowledge. So that’s my treat for all of you. You can find all my eBooks and e-courses on The Wanderlover website at thewanderlover.com and just taking a moment to reflect on my 27th year, we started off in a pandemic in lockdown, the Florianopolis Brazil, and still managed to make our way around the world. Ragz and I went to Porto Escondido afterwards, and then New York, Hawaii, Costa Rica. And now we’re celebrating my 28th birthday in Hawaii. And at the end of this week, we are making our way back to Bali. So if you guys have been following me on Instagram, you’ll know that Ragz’s visa is expiring.

(2m 12s):
And we decided to go back to where we met two years ago, and that is on the magical island of Bali, where I used to live. And I’m just so excited to go back, see all my friends, enjoy the surf, the fast Wi-Fi and all that Bali has to offer. It feels really aligned. And even the timing of it rises. Tourist visa is expiring. At the end of June, we decided that we needed to fly back, looked into it, got our business visas approved, and it turns out we have to quarantine in Jakarta and the capital of Indonesia for five days. And it just so happens that the day we end up flying after quarantine back to Bali is our two year anniversary.

(2m 56s):
So July 3rd, like what are the chances of that happening? Right? And I feel like when I see signs like these, it’s just the universe telling me everything is meant to happen the way it’s supposed to be like it’s out of your control, but everything is just destined to ball aligned. So perfectly last announcement before we get started with today’s episode, Ananda is launching in just a few short weeks. This is my jewelry line that I started with my best friend, Annie from childhood. We’ve known each other for like almost 20 years, have been best friends ever since. And this is our new ocean inspired jewelry line. You can find us@anandabrand.com to sign up for the waitlist.

(3m 37s):
We are opening up our store to wait-list only on July 1st. So if you are on the wait list, you get first access. First look, first, everything on all of our pieces, you get first dibs on all of them. It opens up to the rest of the world’s on July 5th. So if you want a sneak peek, if you want to get your orders in early head over to Ananda brand.com and get yourself on our waitlist, this is our passion project. We’ve been working on it behind the scenes for so long. And it’s just so amazing. Seeing ideas translate into reality and into real pieces. It’s been so much fun, designing all the pieces together, working on branding, working on our website, working on our photo shoots together.

(4m 22s):
And it just proves that business can be as fun and easy as you want it to be. I’m already so excited for my 28th year. I know it’s going to be the best one yet so much can happen in a year. And when you multiply that by multiple years, your life can look completely different. The inspiration for today’s episode was actually from a recent conversation I had with one of my ex coworkers who I used to work with at the bank. We caught up and he admitted that he was unsatisfied unfulfilled with his job. He was still working in finance and just wanted to pursue something new, but had no idea how and had no idea if he could do it.

(5m 5s):
And so I shared with him the same exact exercise that I went through when I was working in finance that I learned from Tim Ferris and his book, the four hour work week, he calls this process dreamlining and it’s so helpful. And my coworker loved it. So I want to share this with you. And this will help you. If you are stuck in a corporate job, you don’t like, or don’t feel fulfilled with, if you’re looking for alternatives, if you want to start your own business, but have no idea how you don’t know what even your dream life looks like, this is really going to help you put it on paper. So the conversation kind of started with me asking him if you had 24 hours, seven days a week, free time, no office job, Monday through Fridays nine to five, what would your life look like?

(5m 56s):
And to him, and maybe to some of you who have worked a corporate job for a number of years, the concept of having seven days of free time just seems impossible at the moment. This was especially true. I remember before I quit my job, I had taken a sick day and my intention with the day was just to explore New York and see what quitting my job would kind of feel like, because I knew I would have all this extra time on my hands. I remember going to a coffee shop, going to a restaurant for lunch. And just looking around like looking at the people in the coffee shop, walking on the streets. I was so surprised that New York city was so busy in the daytime, like not on lunch breaks, but in the actual day hours where I was in a cubicle, I remember thinking like, are these people just unemployed?

(6m 49s):
What do they do? How do they just have so much freedom on a weekday? And the concept of people having actual lives out of nine to five hours was just such a new concept to me. And it was so new to me, but this is where I can clearly see now how society has such an impact on you because as we are born, right, we are all free creatures. And at what point, if we think it was okay for us to just give up all of our time, give up at least 40 hours a week in order to live, we all think that’s the norm. We all think that’s standard, but then when you start questioning it, there are ways outside.

(7m 32s):
And those ways are seen as abnormal, right? And so today is when you decide I am going to create my dream life. I am going to live and prioritize myself over society’s expectations that I need to be working 40 hours a week in a corporation or for someone else. And today I put myself first and I’m going to live my life the way I design it. So first exercise in dreamlining is to get a piece of paper and divide it into three columns. The first column label it, having the second column, label it being the third column label it doing.

(8m 13s):
And what you’re going to do is in each of these columns, if this was a magical piece of paper, and if you had 24 hours a day, seven days a week of free time, where would you be? What would you be doing with who would you be spending your time with anything about your dream life? Imagine it and write down every single thing that you can think of. So the exact location, the exact country, the exact city, the exact environment, like who are the people you’re going to be with? Who are you going to be interacting with? What are you going to be doing? And the most important piece is to write down today’s date and the date in one year’s time. So everything that you want to have to be, to be doing in one year’s time.

(8m 57s):
Next, what you’re going to do is write down how much it’s going to cost you to get everything in the having column and the being column and in the doing column. And more often than not. When I do this exercise with my clients, your monthly expenses, when you factor in your time, freedom and location, freedom more often than not, it’s going to be less than whatever it is you are paying for in rent. Especially if you live in a hub like New York or San Francisco. So I can attest for this. I was living in New York city. I was paying New York city rent, and I thought I needed to sustain that level of income for the rest of my life in order for me to quit my corporate job.

(9m 39s):
However, I realized a, I love traveling. I love exploring. I’ve been to so many countries and I know that the cost of living is lower in other countries. And so if I didn’t have to be in an office 40 hours a week, five days a week, and wasn’t limited to vacation days, I could totally relocate to Hawaii or work from a tropical destination. I did not have to stay in New York city and that’s not even what I wanted to do. I was only paying for a year’s rent because that’s where my job was located. So let’s go through a very practical example of this. Let’s say you want to travel Southeast Asia because you’ve never been there before and you want to do so for six months.

(10m 19s):
If you had all the time, all the location, freedom, all the money, freedom in the world. And let’s give two ends of the spectrum. Let’s say on one end, you are a backpacker. You really want to meet other people, socialize, live freely and not have glitz and glam everywhere you go. Let’s also have the other end of the spectrum where you want to stay in really nice hotels or really luxurious Airbnbs. And you have a higher budget. Let’s also throw in there that under the having column, you also really want to have a motorcycle. So you can road trip on your own. Let’s also say that you’re really active and you want to have a gym membership wherever you go.

(10m 59s):
So you can stay fit on the road. And under the being column, let’s say after six months in Southeast Asia, you have plans to explore more of Latin America and you want to be conversational in Spanish. So every week you’re going to take online Spanish lessons while you’re traveling, add up the costs of each and every one of these line items. And more often than not the lower end of the spectrum. If you’re backpacking Southeast Asia, I can tell you that you’re going to spend no more than $1,000 USD a month, including your gym memberships, including your Spanish lessons, including anything and everything you can possibly describe in your dreamlining exercise on the higher end of that budget.

(11m 43s):
Of course, it goes on to, you know, however much you want to be spending, but realistically, it’s not going to be more than two or $3,000 a month, Southeast Asia, crazy cheap compared to the cost of living in many cities in America. And where we go from there is we take this cost number. Let’s say on average, it’s going to be $2,000 a month for you to be traveling for you to be motorcycling and taking Spanish lessons and working out perfect life like eating out. And it’s going to be $2,000 a month. You multiply that by 1.3 for a grand total of $2,600 a month for you to be living this lifestyle for six months.

(12m 28s):
This number is what is known as your target monthly income. So how much money you need to be making on a monthly basis for you to be living your dream lifestyle and divide that by 30 to get your target daily income, which is how much money you need to be making on a daily basis for you to live that life. And $2,600 divided by 30 is around $87 a day, which in reality is not that much money, especially with your own business, especially with the ability for online businesses to scale internationally. It is so doable. And when you go through this exercise yourself, you will see how within reach your dreams really are when you’re not limited by time.

(13m 12s):
When you have an extra 40 hours a week of your time to work on your own projects and work on your own business, all things that are seemingly impossible. So for me, it was like, what do people do with all that time? How do they have their entire days free? This will all seem so possible for you on my personal dreamlining exercise. I knew I always wanted an assistant. I knew I always wanted to live in Hawaii and really defining these things, seeing how possible it was and the number amount to make it possible. That is the first step I know all of us are different. And so I’m going to ask you some questions to really get those creative juices flowing and see what you really want out of your life.

(13m 57s):
I think these are great prompts for you to just think about, you know, think outside the box. The first is one place you’ve always wanted to visit, calculate whether that’s on a trip, whether you want to live there, how much that would cost, how much the flights are, how much Airbnbs are next one thing to do before you die a memory of a lifetime. So whether that’s skydiving, whether that’s throwing a giant 30th birthday party, whether that’s having a destination wedding of a lifetime, write it down and dare to dream. Next is one thing you want to do on a daily basis. So one thing that’s so powerful, you can create a habit out of it.

(14m 38s):
And one thing you really want to commit to one thing to do weekly. And lastly, one thing that you’ve always wanted to learn, I am constantly learning. I’m constantly motivating the people around me to be learning. I want to continue learning and I guarantee you the most fun things. The best things you can possibly create for yourself are probably going to be outside of a nine to five. I hate to say it. I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but if you’re listening to this episode and you feel stuck, you feel like no one around you understands this vision you have for your life. That’s so much more than what you’re living now. Just know that you are not alone and listen to that.

(15m 21s):
Intuition know that you are meant for something different and you can achieve whatever it is that you have on your dream line. I am so excited for you to be thinking this way, to be thinking out what it is in life you want to accomplish. First milestone is seeing and knowing how it’s possible. So seeing the number on that sheet of paper, the number it takes for you to be living this dream life that’s milestone number one and milestone number two is to be hitting this income goal on your own accord. So with your own business, with your own side hustle, you don’t have to quit cold Turkey and just go complete 100%, although you totally can.

(16m 5s):
But if you are currently in a corporate job, really be grateful for that financial safety net. You have no that you’re not going to be there forever and take all the extra time you possibly can on your lunch breaks after works on weekends, but really focus on your side hustle. So you can scale it to a point where you can replace your corporate income milestone. Number two, I think is the biggest. One of them all is specially when you get your first sale and first client, that is the aha moment when you’re like, I do not need to rely on my employer. I’ve experienced that so many times through my clients, and I know that it is possible for you.

(16m 48s):
So I hope this episode was really helpful, really eyeopening for you guys. If you’re listening and you have the number of what it takes to live your dream life, but you don’t know how to get there. You don’t know how to get to milestone. Number two, I want to invite you to apply from my start, your hustle intensive. This is my signature six week intensive for you to get to milestone number two, where you have your business idea and business assets. So you know how to get the clients and customers to reach your target monthly income. This is a really comprehensive program. We have weekly calls. You have my calendar to a book in calls.

(17m 28s):
Whenever you need weekly modules for you to work through private Voxer access. So you can walk, you talking me or send me voice notes or send me videos whenever you need help. And by the end of our time together, you will have a monetizeable business and you will have complete clarity and be able to replace your corporate income. So if this sounds like something you’re interested in, just DME on Instagram, or send me an email and I would Love to talk to you about what is possible for your future. All right, guys, it’s my birthday week. I’m going to go celebrate, don’t forget. You’re 28% off discount code. I will link it in the show notes, have an amazing week, and I will see you guys next week when I am quarantining in Jakarta, Have an amazing week guys, love you all.

~~~

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