I didn’t just want to share my own life changing moments. I wanted to try something different. I’m going to look at life changing moments worth chasing after in your 20s:

Finishing your education.

Many bloggers like to claim that an education is overrated. I have to disagree with this for the simple fact that college is the best option for the majority of us (unless you’re running a million dollar business at 18) right after high school. What else do you plan on doing at 18 years old?

Finishing your education is a life changing moment because it provides you with a great sense of accomplishment. You were able to complete four years of study. You were able to stick it through. You were also able to survive all of the late night cram sessions and binge drinking weekends to actually make it out alright.

I highly recommend finishing your education in your 20s. You won’t regret it.

Starting your own side business.

There’s nothing like starting your own business and making that first dollar on your own. You can go the traditional route of starting some sort of a service business or you can jump on board and start making money online. Either way it totally makes sense to try starting some sort of a side business while you have all of this energy and youthfulness on your side.

The best part is that you can start a business right now with no money. If you think that you need money to start a business, I have to let you know that you’re thinking is incorrect. With a few dollars, some time, and lots of ambition, you can easily start some sort of a side business in your 20s.

The toughest part with any business is just getting started. Once you start and get momentum on your side, anything can happen. There’s just so many opportunities out there in 2012 and moving forward.

Traveling on your own.

I traveled over a dozen times in my life. In 2011 I finally ventured off to Europe on my own. This was easily one of the most life changing experiences of my life. It’s easy to go down to a party place with your buddies for a week and go wild. It’s another thing to go somewhere on your own and have to fend for yourself.

I showed up in Poland with no real plans. I had to find a place to stay, grab some food, and of course meet new friends somehow. Traveling alone was very humbling. I would totally advise any 20-something reading this to try traveling on your own at some point. It’s the best way to grow as a person and decide what you want to do next.

Getting married.

I’ve been told that getting married can be a pretty great thing. I don’t know much about the topic, but I’ll let you guys add your thoughts on this one.

Life changing experiences define who you are. It would be a shame to miss out on all of those great moments that are waiting for us.

Those are life changing moments that I recommend chasing after. You can have totally opposing thoughts on this topic. What did I miss? What are some of your most memorable life changing experiences?

I’m writing this post right before the birth of our 3^rd child; Caleb. My wife is due in a few days and we just can’t wait until we get the signal that Caleb is ready to see the world for the first time. As we can’t wait any longer until we see his face, I’m thinking about my life changing moments. How many have I had? How did they change my life? When did I realize they really meant something to me?

Here are a few of my most important life changing moments:

Seeing my parents go bankrupt at the age of 14

This was definitely my first experience with money. Since the age of 13, I was working for my parents and making a few bucks. In a single day (right before Xmas), all my dreams, all my money and basically everything we had just disappeared. We lost our house, cars and lifestyle. We ended-up in a crappy rented house where my mom looked between the cracks in the couch to find a few pennies to buy milk. This is when I decided that I will make money and never miss anything in life ever again.

Meeting my wife at the age of 15

Man… she was beautiful. I still remember the sparkle in her eyes when I first met her. She was my girlfriend back then and became my one and only love. Since then, we have become more than boyfriend/girlfriend or husband & wife, we became best friends and soul mates. Life taught me how beautiful it is to love and being loved.

Travelling across Europe for 40 days at the age of 19

This is when I bound my friendship with my partner, Pete. For 40 days, we travelled throughout Europe with our backpacks. At no time were we separated. The guy, who used to be a simple school buddy, became my best friend, the godfather of our child and my partner. This experience not only founded our friendship, it also taught me to adapt to any kind of situation.

Moving into my first apartment at the age of 20

After an argument with my father, I decided to move with in my girlfriend in Montreal. We had no job, no money but a brand new car, a cool apartment and 10K on our credit cards. This was my first experience with balance transfer credit cards when I was trying to simply avoid having a late payment (while piling up ridiculous interest to be paid!). I’ve learned that my independence had no price. Until today, this is still true.

Quit my first job at the age of 21

I just mentioned that my independence has no price, right? This is also why I ended-up quitting my first job after my first evaluation. After only 6 months, I decided that I would not continue working for someone who can’t appreciate me at my fair value. This is when I grew balls, once again, and find a great job.

Getting married at the age of 22

My wedding was not a life changing moment because my wife was the prettiest woman on earth and we threw a hell of a party. It was a life changing moment because we “fired” half of our friends not so long afterwards. It was kind of weird, but we didn’t keep the same relationship with a group of friends. So we just decided to “clean-up” our friend list after our wedding just to keep the “real” friends.

Having William at the age of 23

Being a father at the age of 23 was an awesome experience. I became more responsible; got insured and bought my first house. William is my “little boy”, he is my source of pride as he is a killer soccer player ;-D.

Having Amy at the age of 25

2 years and 7 days after William birthday came my little clown; Amy. She is my clown because she is always ready to follow me in my quest to do stupidity and have fun! Amy is the incarnation of smiling and makes every day my most awesome day!

Completing my MBA at the age of 26

The 2 years when I did my MBA were the toughest in my life in general. It was rough to manage my new career, 2 babies at home (while my wife was working) + my MBA. During this rough time, I developed a true friendship with 2 of my MBA buddies which I continue to see 2 years after completing our classes. I’ve learned a lot from them and had a lot of fun too!

Founding my online company at the age of 26

Oh Boy! Do you I really have to explain this one? If we hadn’t decided to create a corporation at that time and spend money on our company, I doubt we would be here today. I think that investing money in something is highly dependant on your degree of involvement. You can tell me that you are involved and blah blah blah and you didn’t have to spend money to get involved but trust me, there is nothing like borrowing 25K on your house to put it in a company to get you motivated!

Working 4 days a week at the age of 28

The age of 28 was when I first hit the 6 figure mark. I finished my MBA and asked to work 4 days a week. This is when I understood the importance of taking care of myself, my wife and my family. I understood that money and my career were not the most important things. In fact, I realized that it wasn’t important at all. Do what you love and don’t be a slave to your job. This is what I learned by working 4 days a week. Another unexpected result: I’m way more productive by working less!

Having Caleb at the age of 30

When you will read this post, my son will already be here (my wife is due on Feb 2^nd) but I wrote this article on Jan 30^th (to make sure that I don’t run out of posts while I’m at the hospital!). I don’t know how this new person in my life will change me and my family. I just know that he will. My first 2 kids taught me different things and I expect the same thing from Caleb. There is one thing I can tell you upfront: having kids is the true definition of living your life. They are by far the best things that ever happened to me.

What are yours?

All right! Now I feel completely naked! So tell me, what are your life changing moments? When and how you changed something in your life due to some event? In other words; what have you learned from life?

Look carefully.

Yeah, I know, he’s cut… but that’s not what I’m talking about .

For those who don’t know him, it’s Tim Tebow, new quarterback star of the Denver Broncos. He came out of nowhere this season to lead the Broncos to the playoffs and even beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first round (yeah, I know, they lost last weekend, but that’s not what I’m talking about either!)

You know what? I’m not a football fan.

In fact, I don’t know anything about football (besides that Peyton Manning was seriously injured and this is why the Colts missed the playoffs… so my partner says anyway ). So I don’t really know if Tim Tebow is a good player or not. I don’t know if he’s just lucky or not.

But I know one thing: I wake up with the same look in my face everyday!

Look carefully at the picture again and look at his eyes. Actually, let me do a zoom in for you:

Do you see what I see? Do you see this light in his eyes? Let’s look at a bigger close-up:

Nature’s fan will see it like this:

Others may see it like this:

And geeks like me will see it like this (it’s Merton’s magic in Final Fantasy III :

This is the look of someone who wants to win.

This is the look of someone who likes what he does.

This is the look of someone who’s looking for something better.

This is the look of someone who’s going to do whatever it takes to make his life fun.

And this is how I feel when I wake up in the morning!

I truly believe that we should all wake up at least 5 times a week with this look on our faces. You should want to get up and conquer the world and live the life you want. If this isn’t the case, there is something wrong with your life. And you know what? Life is too short to ignore this problem!

Where did I find the inspiration to look like William Wallace every morning?

Some people look at me and they just don’t get how and why I can do all these things without falling down. Many people have told me that I am heading directly towards a burnout.  As if I light the candles with a blow torch… but I don’t believe in burnout. Not if you like what you do and do it with great passion.

And I think this is where the secret lies: within your passion.

I’m happy to wake up early because I love working-out while you sleep.

I’m happy to start my day while you are still in bed because it means that I spend time writing on my blogs.

I’m thrilled to start my day at work because I can’t wait to meet inspiring people.

I can’t wait to get back home to tell my lovely wife about my day and to play with the kids. I actually play with my kids 4 days out of 5 in average. Note this: playing with kids is the best way to stay young. And I also play with them because I lost the last 28 Yum Jr games we have played and I desperately want to win! Lol!

As you can see, there is not only one thing that makes me want to crush it every day of my life. I have plenty of motivations. On the other hand, someone could easily see the same day with the following perception:

I can’t believe I’m waking up while everybody else is still sleeping. But I’m afraid of getting fat so I have no other choice but to go to the gym.

I’m upset at people who take time to read the newspaper while I have to blog for an hour.

Then, I’ll have to bend over to some impossible requests from annoying clients.

And finally, I have to get back home, supervise my son’s homework and play boring games while I’m too tired to shoot myself.

See? Same day, 2 ways to see it. So the problem is not with your life. Tim Tebow didn’t become “the starting quarterback” by thinking what he sacrificed to get there sucked. Your life is just great. And Tebow just did what he had to do because he loves football with a great passion.

Now it’s up to you to make your day look like an amazing opportunity.

Remember; today is very unique: it’s your first and only chance to live it and it’s happening NOW!

Your friend John graduated from college without any debt. Must be nice, right?

Your co-worker Jackie left the place of employment to go work for herself. It must be nice, right?

Here you are working your butt off and having no fun. Why do others have it so much better than you?

It must be nice, right? Are the three examples proof that things are just nicer for other people while you struggle? Are you getting screwed over?

Not exactly. Nothing is ever as nice or easy as it seems. There are two possible scenarios that are occurring when someone appears to have it easier or better than you financially:

1. The person is putting everything on their credit card.
2. The person working their butt off when you’re not around.

Both are not situations that you should be envious of. I used to be guilty of the “victim mindset” where I thought that others had it better than me and I was a victim. This is the worst type of attitude that you can have for trying to get ahead in life.

I wanted to write about how you can avoid the “it must be nice” syndrome that so many of us are guilty of at some point…

Take an honest look at your situation.

What’s your situation? Is it really so tough? Are you getting adequate sleep? Are you sleeping too much?

Where am I going with this? You need to take an honest look at your own situation before you try to envy anyone else. I had a friend tell me it must be nice to finish college without any student debt. What he failed to realized was that I worked full-time, lost out on sleep, and was always tired. It sucked at the time. It was worth it when I got to finally graduate without any debt. The problem was that I did miss out on lots by always working. Nobody considers that aspect to it.

Deal with your issues as they come.

All issues can be dealt with. The problem is that we put them off and let them get bigger than they need to be. I believe in dealing with small issues (two minute tasks– paying a parking ticket for example) as they happen. This way you get it over with and don’t need to stress about it.

When it comes to bigger problems, I always believe in taking the next small step. I find that a small step is much more beneficial than no step at all.

How hard are you working?

Are you really working hard? I used to be envious of more successful people. I thought that they were luckier than me or perhaps they were given something. Nobody is given anything. You have to take everything. You have to work for everything. I’m no longer jealous of more successful people because I understand that they work harder and smarter than me.

If you take anything from this post I want it to be this: look at how hard you’re working if you’re not reaching the level of success that you want to. You need to be realistic. You have to be working hard before you can complain about your situation. If you’re working hard and getting no real results, then you need to switch things up.

Do I think that others have it better than you? Maybe once in a while. When it comes down to it, we all have the same 24 hours in the same day. With the Internet we have access to the same resources. It’s just not fair to assume that someone has it better than you.

How does that saying go? If you want to get rich quick, then just count your blessings.

I’ve been struggling with what success means to me. I decided to look for some answers through a few of my favorite books that I have beside me on my desk right now. I wanted to see how successful people view success and getting more out of life.

According to Gary Vaynerchuk in Crush it!, there are three simple rules when it comes to his secrets to success:

1. Love your family.
2. Work super hard.
3. Live your passion.

Those are some pretty simple rules. Obviously no advanced techniques are mentioned. This is a really simplified, yet effective way to look at success.

I wanted to learn more on top of this answer so I continued to read. I checked out one of my favorite books. In Linchpin, Seth Godin writes:

“The astonishing fact is that the most successful people in the world are those who don’t do it for the money.”

What’s the theme here? Both of these successful individuals are more focused on on delivering something valuable, instead of chasing the quick buck. There are many successful people in this world that never thought about making big bucks. They were more worried about the service and what they were actually going to deliver instead of thinking about how rich they could get. This might sound corny at first, but it seems to be true. When the chasing the big bucks, we often get distracted away from focusing on value. It happens to the best of us.

Where am I going with this? We all get a little too greedy sometimes. It’s perfectly natural to go after the money because we all need money. Well need to money to pay the bills and to live a normal life. Nobody wants to blindly “follow their passions” and live life with no money. That’s just not realistic at all.

Is there a solution to this greed? There are many ways that you can make money without a traditional job. There are many ways to get paid to do something that you love. I’ve been learning this over the past few years.

You don’t have to quit your job and follow you passions like the “experts” suggest you to do. You can moonlight with your new side business or you can keep a part-time job to ensure that the bills are always paid. You can eliminate your expenses so that you can survive off little money. You can move to a part of the country where the cost of living is much lower. You can start a side business as a hobby without any thoughts of money to see if you can even get it off the ground. There are many ways that you can live a life where you fulfilled. You don’t always have to be rich.

It’s impossible for me to define what success means for you and how you can be successful. At the end of the day we all view success differently. What I do know is that I’m interested in hearing how you define success.

What simple rules for success do you follow?

Haven’t you notice that most people become generous all of a sudden at Xmas time?

Maybe it’s because we feel fortunate and we know that some people are not.

And maybe we are simply brainwashed by the media who show a bunch of little orphans with nothing to eat on Xmas eve!

Well, regardless of the case, I’m giving $500 CASH for Xmas!

All right, I lied.

Yeah, yeah, I’m giving the $500 and the blog is hosting the giveaway but the money is not coming from me. It’s coming from my buddies at Life Insurance Finder, the easiest place to compare life insurance. They contacted me to host a giveaway where all you need to do is confess your financial sin for 2011 and you could win $500 in cash to repent in 2012! No catch, just cash ;-D

If you have followed this blog during the year, you know that I am pretty good at making money but I’m also a big sinner when it comes to pay down my debts! I think it’s obvious that I’ve been pretty bad at managing my budget this year and I count solely on my ability to increase my income instead of sitting down with a piece of paper and starting some calculations!

Now it’s your turn to tell me where you have been bad in 2011… and you can get paid to do it!

Here are the contest rules:

(1 entry): Confess your financial sins for 2011! Leave them in the comments below

(1 entry): TWEET about our Financial Redemption giveaway!  Just copy & send the following:
“I just entered to win $500 with @lifeinsurancef and @FinancialBlogr! Enter here:http://bit.ly/rZm4x6

(5 entries): Subscribe to my TFB newsletter: You’ll get exclusive info on how I run my online business and make money online:

 

(5 entries): follow @lifeinsurancef on Twitter

(10 entries): BLOG about this Giveaway!  Post up YOUR Financial Confessions List of 2011 on your site  – either in text, or in pictures  and then make sure to mention you’re trying to win “the $500 Financial Blogger competition, sponsored by Life Insurance Finder – the easiest place to compare life insurance” somewhere with both links & text fully included, then include the URL in the comments below.

EDIT: Contest runs until January 14th!

NOTE: the winner must have a paypal account (which is free anyway!)

By the way, I’m not getting anything from it… beside looking cool by sending money to my readers ;-D

Back in November 2006, I was sitting in front of my computer and doing something of high importance.

I didn’t know back then how it would turn out. So, I innocently clicked the “publish” button for the very first time on November 15^th 2006 at 10:45 am. This post was more than ordinary, it sucked. On top of that, my English writing skills were horrible too. But there was more to come from The Financial Blogger…

This simple motion created a huge mushroom effect and has resulted in a 1,337 posts blog with 10,143 comments, 982,418 visits and (most importantly) $271,202.34 made online, so far!!! (from March 2008 to October 2011)

But back in 2006, my blog was nothing. Nothing more than some kind of a bet to prove to my friend that I was able to keep up with steady work and was worthy to partner with.

He had doubts.

Big time.

I actually can’t blame him as many people fail online everyday.

He thought I was no different than the others asking him to partner with him, a proven online mogul.

He asked me to blindly follow him. To open my first site and to start writing. He wanted me to learn the hard way.

What’s the hard way? It’s when you check out your Analytics at the end of the day and you have 4 visits… 3 of them coming from your own computer and 1 coming from a spambot.

The hard way is to write for 6 months before hitting your first day with 100+ visits. Waiting 2 years before making any kind of money. You read that right, I had to write 397 articles before I cashed my first online dollar.

It’s funny how it seems easy now to make $10,000 in a month from my online business right? I guess you read my blog income report thinking that you would be able to do it if you had access to the same network. I guess this is why it is so important to remember how it all started:

With faith and passion and NO INCOME!

That’s all you need (oh… and LOTS of patience!). Today, there is a lot more competition but there are lots of resources as well. I see “young” bloggers succeeding much faster than I did and often stop at one point because they are burned out. Because blogging ain’t that easy and requires a lot of willpower to keep going. But I’m sure you can do it .

Dude, Where’s the iPad Giveaway?

Nope, it wasn’t just a catchy title, I’m definitely giving an iPad to one of you

How can you win? It’s pretty easy:

You must be a newsletter subscriber at the time of the draw (December 1^st)

You can sign-up here:

25 Entries for telling me what is your favorite post on TFB. Here are a few suggestions:

How I run multiples blogs and makes money without burning out

Blogging Reality Check

The Dream Crashers

My blog Income Report

Hitting 6 Figures Income at 28

How I Get a Huge Income Raise Each Year

Making $125K Online in 12 months

How I Buy Blogs

Most Debated Articles: The Primerica Saga

How I Have Survived My MBA

10 Entries for telling me what you like best about TFB

25 Entries for Retweeting: TFB 5^th Anniversary iPad Giveaway @financialblogr  http://bit.ly/vbJfH9

I can’t wait to read your comments!!!

You have until December 1^st to participate.

BONUS: I lied to You, I’m giving away TWO iPADS!

There is another giveaway at The Dividend Guy Blog

Make sure to participate in both!

I wrote the article you are about to read last Friday afternoon. I usually write when I get to the office (see how I manage my day job and online empire here) but on Friday, I couldn’t come up with anything. It is very rare as I always have a dozen of topics and ideas stocked in my USB key. Therefore, I rarely land in front of a white page. But it happened on Friday and I didn’t know why.

Now I know.

Because inspiration was scheduled in my agenda this morning at 11am… with one of my client.

We were discussing investment strategies and risk tolerance as he is officially retiring this year. The client has a fairly aggressive investor profile and definitely enough money to live a very comfortable life.

This is why I asked him “don’t you think it’s time to secure a portion of your portfolio since you are showing gains? I think it’s time for us to review your investor profile to make sure you are on the right path”.

He smiled back and answered: “I have a very unusual investor profile now that I don’t have any “life expectancy””.

Without changing his face, without losing his smile, without tear sin his eyes, this guy just told me that he has an incurable cancer and that he doesn’t know if he will live 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years. He has accepted his fate and is ready to enjoy life… as long as life wants him on this earth.

We often hear spiritual questions such as

What would you do if you if you had cancer with 3 months to live?

Or

What would you do if you had 1 day / 1 hour /  1 minute to live?

But this guy’s perception was different. He knows his cancer is incurable. But he is on medication that prevents him from having complications. Therefore, if the medication is right, he could live a few years without any problems. In other words; the doctor didn’t give him his expiry date.

So my question for you today is;

What would you do if you knew you were going to die but don’t know when?

This sounds silly as we are all going to die one day and don’t know when… But this question leads to deeper thoughts:

Do you live the life you want?

Are you proud of yourself?

Is there anything really important you need to do before you die?

Is there anything holding you back from doing what you really want to do?

I know I almost live the life that I want.

I know that I’m very proud of myself, my wife and 2 children.

There are tons of important things I need to do before I die (attend my kids’ weddings, play with grand kids, sponsor a “children wish” by myself, etc.)

Is there anything holding me back? Yeah… this is called a good job…. And I don’t know what I’ll do about it to be honest. But at least, I’m fairly satisfied with my life. Would fairly be enough if I die at the end of this Monday? I don’t think so.

So this morning, before you finish your coffee, tell me;

What would you do if you knew you were going to die but don’t know when?

image credit

While I was on vacation I was asked by Tom, at Canadian Finance, to write about my 7 links projects. This is an article that will relate 7 of my articles answering 7 questions. I think it’s a great initiative as it gives an opportunity to newer readers to discover what we consider to be our best articles so far. So here we go!

Your most beautiful post

In the blogosphere, I am known to be good at increasing my income. In fact, in a single year, I managed to get 3 income raises. In this post, I made the analogy of poker and how to ask for salary raise. From 2003 to 2010, my day job income has gone from $30,000 to over $100,000 last year. I share my secrets in this post.

Your most popular post

One of my most popular posts is from last year when I declared that my online company went from 18K to 124K in a single year. This was my second full year as a corporation. At that time, our income was quite irregular and we finished the year with a big boom!

Your most controversial post

My first success on The Financial Blogger comes from my highly debated Primerica Reviews.  I had so many comments in this series that I closed a few comment threads (one of them is over 700 comments!). Regardless if you are Pro Primerica or against it, I think you need to read this series. The comments are very interesting too (from both sides!).

Your most helpful post

Last year, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income challenged people to write a “pillar post”. This is an article that explains a specific topic. I wrote How I run my multiple blogs; a complete guide to how I run my business and make money online. I think that anyone who wants to manage more than one blog and make it a success should read this, it will be of great help!

A post whose success surprised you

It was a big surprise and it did not even come from me; 30 financials moves before 30, written my MD at studenomics, gets constant traffic month after month. It seems that it has touched the younger readership and I must admit that MD hit right on the nail.

A post you feel didn’t get the attention it deserved

A while ago, I wrote a 4 article series on How to buy blogs, at that time, TFB was not oriented towards a ‘make money blogging’ audience and it has since picked up the steam I wished it would. I hope that a few of you will go back and look at this series as I detailed each step I follow in order to buy blogs.

Nominees

Now it’s my turn to nominate 5 bloggers for the 7 links project:

Phil Taylor at PT Money

MD at Studenomics

Crystal at Budgeting In the Fun Stuff

Sunil at Extra Money Blog

Corbett Barr at Think Traffic
What’s your favorite post on The Financial Blogger?

I’m curious to know what is your favorite stuff on TFB? What do you appreciate the most? Let me know so I can write more about the things you like!

In a few days, it’s going to be my birthday. A birthday that is a little bit more important than the others as I’ll be turning 30. Thirty is a big number and it means a lot to me. Not because I’m afraid to age or that I feel older (mind you, I can now talk about what happened 25 years ago, that is scary ). 30 is an important number as it starts the countdown of my life, the M-35 countdown.

M-35 is the name of my online company. What does M-35 stand for? It stands for millionaire at 35! By the end of this year, I should worth about $200K. Therefore, I need to multiply my net worth by 5 if I want to reach that level. Why is it so important to become a millionaire? Because I want to live THE life. Because I want to experience everything that is cool in life. Last weekend, I had a glance at that life as my wife offered me the birthday present of a lifetime.

Escape to NYC for a weekend

When I got home on Thursday night, my wife was waiting for me with an envelope. In the envelope, there were 2 airplane tickets for NYC. We were leaving the next morning at 2am to make it to our hotel by 8am to spend 3 days in this beautiful city. This was my very first time in New York and I had the time of my life. I’m not going to tell you everything I did in New York, but I will tell you about my Saturday night dinner at Daniel, one of the best restaurants in New York the World.

More than a dinner, more than a restaurant; an experience to put on your bucket list

For those who don’t know about this place (I didn’t either before I sat down at the table!) Daniel is a very high class French restaurant in Manhattan. The food is incredibly good, the service is better than that offered to the Queen of England and…. My best friend (and partner!) was waiting for me inside with his wife to share the moment. They were coming back from their vacation and stopped in New York to dine with us. What a perfect evening!

I’m not going to lie to you, this place is crazy expensive. It exceeds any logical reason to pay such a high price to eat in a restaurant. You would probably tell me that it’s crazy and useless to pay so much just for food. And this is where you are wrong. As I mentioned, this is more than food on your plate; it’s an experience in and of itself.

Money does buy happiness

During our delicious meal, I was telling my partner about how great it would be to go there once a year and to be able to afford such a huge expense without having to plan for it in our budget. This requires being rich and financially independent. And this could probably only happen if we work hard for several years to grow our online company and to make it all happen.

The time we had in this restaurant last Saturday night cannot be described with words. The surprise to see my friend and his wife there, the high quality service we enjoyed (they even found a French waiter to explain the menu since my wife doesn’t speak English very often) and each time my fork was reached my mouth, I was eating a piece of pure happiness.

Last weekend, I had the time of my life, the birthday of my life and definitely by far, the dinner of my life. I will keep these unforgettable memories with me until my very last minute on earth. These emotionally charged moments couldn’t have been lived without money. And this quick vacation will definitely hit my next monthly net worth statement. However, there are no credit card bills that can convince me that it wasn’t a good idea.

Create an emotional rush to improve efficiency

I don’t know how you work in order to perform in your day-to-day life but I use a reward system. Each time I work very hard for something, I reward myself. It could be a golf game, a nice restaurant, a spa day, etc. Anything that I can enjoy that will give me energy to keep moving.

This weekend was like injecting the juice of 10,000 batteries into my brain. I was already fully charged from my vacation in Virginia Beach a week ago, now I’m like a volcano ready to explode! While we have spent a considerable amount of money during these 3 amazing weekend days, I know I just gave myself the gear to crush it until the end of the year and generate even more income!

Instead of cutting expenses on my budget, I prefer to find ways to increase my income. After living such a crazy life for 3 days, I just want to repeat this scenario many times moving forward. I just want to enjoy such moments and live THE life. And the only way to do it is to hustle and grow my own company.

Are you there yet? Are you ready to crush it?

I’d be curious to know if you share my point of view about money. Do you think it is important? Do you think you can live without having so much money and that you can live similar feelings? If you do, are you willing to crush it to make it? Where are you at in your world domination plans?