Hobbies & Passions. How to have a (near) perfect day.

I think the key to having a perfect day is to combine a hobby with a passion.

I define a hobby (generally) as something quite personal that you usually do alone and is joyful.

I define a passion (generally) as something that usually involves other people and can sometimes be quite serious.

I often ask people to tell me what they would do if they had enough money. This is quite a difficult thing for most people (because our lives revolve so much around getting more money) but I ask them to just suspend disbelief for the exercise and focus on their hobbies and passions. I also suggest that no hobby or passion (for this exercise) involve anything to do with money.

A good example of the difference was illustrated to me perfectly by a client recently when they interrupted me and said "Bill, I know exactly what you mean" and he went on to explain...

His hobby was playing soccer. This is a grown man we're talking about, not a young kid or budding sports star. Just a local F division player. Loved training and pushing himself on Tuesday's and Thursdays and LOVED game day on the weekend. Even alone he loved kicking the ball and practicing his skills.

Hi Passion was helping Autistic children. His perfect day involved organising a soccer match for Autistic children.

Another example might be a hot rodder or classic old car restorer. Hobby is working on the car, passion might be to helping local charities so they organise a local car show and give the proceeds to charity. A great day that will be remembered for a long time.

Being with your family, working for your church or community or helping charities are all passions and will make an excellent and easy mixer to add your hobby for your perfect day but personally, I'm really and most interested in your hobbies and why is this relevant in this forum? Because I think that the only thing money can do for us is bring relief and security and that's all good (obviously) but what's it all for? So we can sit around bored all day? Nope, the best thing I can see about achieving financial freedom is the time we get to indulge your hobbies and passions.

What are your hobbies and passions? Remember hobbies and passions can't (just for this thread) have anything to do with making money. You might be passionate about investing or making money but you will not be remembered by how much money you made and I have yet to see a hearse with a tow bar so let's just have a holiday from making money for a minute and talk about the things we REALLY love and prefer we were doing.