And All the Little Ants are Marching...

Kids have a tendency to spill things.  

Well, lets be real, everyone has a tendency to spill things....  Especially after one too many drinks at the bar.

But as a kid I remember food falling to the patio and in the summer months, without fail, thirty minutes or so later you would see a line of ants marching back and forth to the spill.

I would look down at them thinking how simple their life is.  What "losers" to be marching in a straight line to get food and then back down into the ant hill they go.  Each ant tearing off tiny pieces of food and carrying it all by their lonesome.  Never stopping.  This would go on for hours until the food is gone.

As I drove home from work the other day, the Dave Matthews song, Ants Marching starts playing on the radio.  Towards the end of the song, the lyrics state:

Driving in on this highway
All these cars and up on the sidewalk
People in every direction
No words exchanged
No time to exchange

And all the little ants are marching
Red and black antennas waving
They all do it the same
They all do it the same way

 

The lyrics took me right back to that time when I was 5 years old thinking of how those ants were such "losers"...

Here I am after 9 years in the corporate world, doing the same exact thing they are...  Driving to work so I can make enough money for my family to eat and pay for our lifestyle.

I drive on that highway every morning, never exchanging words with the fellow car clowns, thinking to myself just how similar we are to ants.  

How pathetic is our life to be able to look down at an insect that is 1/1,000,000 our size and think that we are all so similar.  What Losers.

But then a wonderful thing happens...   Happiness overcomes my body as I think that I am no longer just working to pay for our lifestyle.  I am not working to just make ends meet.  I am not working for just food.  I am not working paycheck to paycheck.

I am now entirely working towards RETIREMENT!

My wife and I are blessed with good jobs and NO DEBT.  We are not people who need the latest electronics or brand new cars.  We enjoy travel but are doing our best to "churn" credit cards to travel for as cheap as possible.  We are not working to keep up with the Joneses.

Unlike those ants and unlike the Joneses, we will stop marching in that straight line much sooner than most.  We will walk out of our house on a Tuesday morning at 11:00am to go grocery shopping when there are no corporate clowns there.  We could take a back road to the boys and girls club to volunteer our time and give advice to the younger generation.  We could do part time teaching at the highschool.  We will be able to travel whenever we want to wherever we want.  No deadlines to hit, no TPS reports to develop, no supervisors to report to. No food to gather up when it falls to the patio.  We will do what we want when we want!

This is the benefit of saving as much as you can.  I cannot express enough to any new readers out there how important it is to control your expenses.  The more you are able to save, the less you need for retirement and the sooner you too can stop imitating ants...  think about it.

My wife and I are following down the path of dividend stocks to maintain our lifestyle.  At this point, every $50,000 - $100,000 we save is a month worth of expenses depending on yield from each stock.  This means, that if we tighten our belts, each year could provide us with 1 - 3 months of freedom!


For your listening pleasure:

                                                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdidovCPhVM

Keep following your Dreams!

ADD