subject: Living The Internet Lifestyle - Why Changing Your Life and Coming Online Could Be An Excellent Idea [print this page] Living The Internet Lifestyle - Why Changing Your Life and Coming Online Could Be An Excellent Idea
Did you make the decision to become an online entrepreneur in order to change your lifestyle? That's exactly what I did, and I was not even aware of all of the implications at the time. After working six or seven days a week for more than twenty years, I was seeking a way to be able to work from home and replace my income from classroom teaching and real estate appraisal. Little did I know that we were headed for a global recession and that my decision would be such a good one for many years to come.Sometimes I think about what I would be doing if I were not working online. Today, for example, would be a heavy work schedule for me if I were still teaching in the classroom and doing real estate after school. I would have left my house before 6 this morning, and I would be preparing for the exams given at the end of the semester. It would most likely be 5 o'clock before I could leave school, and then I would be rushing to make my real estate appointments before it got dark. By the time I would return home it would again be dark, and I would have been away for about thirteen or fourteen hours. Many people spend their entire adult lives in this way, but I was never comfortable with the idea of making a house payment for a house I could not truly enjoy because I was not there.I decided to resign from the school district at age fifty. This enabled me to cash out of my state's retirement fund, giving me enough money to live on for about eighteen months. It also made me eligible once again for Social Security, even though I knew that would not be sufficient. I also began to give away my best real estate clients to people who worked full time in the business. I knew that another school district would not hire me because of my age, and that most of my real estate clients would not come back to me. I guess I believed that burning my bridges was the smartest strategy for me at that time.I now work from home, or from wherever I have an Internet connection. I am able to travel, spend time with family and friends, and earn more money than I ever have in the past. I have no regrets that building an online business was the right thing for me to do.
