Early Retirement Extreme Forums

It just occured to me while I was in the kitchen with my wife and daughter goofin' around in the kitchen while my wife was making supper (One Pot Pasta for those foodies who are interested).

Someone asks your child or teenager or young adult etc. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Answer: Reasonably speaking, It doesn't really matter as long as I am cash flow positive.

The End! (Takes a bow)

P.S. I have not had any wine.

Hah! With the wine I bet it would have been "ridiculously cash flow positive".

I hope you're spreading the gospel to your kids instead of just preaching to the choir (folks here). It's a great line that could be followed up with kid-friendly narrative. Nothing like inoculating the young.

stand@desk wrote:It doesn't really matter as long as I am cash flow positive.

Good vaccination against affluenza.

I remember answering "Subsitence Farmer" at a very early age, and I think I'm coming back round to that idea 20 years later. a lazier version though, permaculture abundance harvester? Need to get some land.

When I was growing up I wanted to be a combination of Forest Gump and James Bond. Certain parts of each. Take out the retard part, and the violence part, and the kid, and that's pretty much it. It wasn't the being rich or fancy cars that I admired so much. It was the adventurous lives, and the independence/self-reliance. This is pretty much still what I want to be. Maybe make the lifestyle a little more Benjamin Buttons, and add in a bit of Leonardo Da Vinci and some John Muir or whoever like that.

Oh yeah, and I also wanted to be like Ross Perot. 1992 was the first election that I watched debates and such for. I liked Ross Perot because he was straightforward and convincing. Remember how he was convincing? He used CHARTS!! (If you've seen my journal, you probably know I like making charts)

@C40 Indeed, you do like charts

I seem to recall answering engineer at young age. The caveat being I most certainly thought they operated trains

I wanted to be a gerontologist, then a landscape architect. When I visited Washington DC and saw the stately old Georgetown townhouses, I decided that I should be a senator (because the president's tenure is so short-lived). I finally settled on waitress.

Maybe revolutionary/activist, adventurer, permaculture homesteader, author, public-speaker, lover<3

I want my life to be a grand, epic narrative of my own and life's making!

@OP - I seriously like your answer so much. Its a very liberating point of view for a young person to grasp.

It seems like there is so much societal pressure around what job someone aspires to from a young age which contributes to a great deal of unwarranted angst, worry, procrastination, bad decision making and debt.