119. Create a Rich Life on Your Own Terms
What would make your life feel rich? Maybe it’s picking your kids up from school every day, taking a month off every summer, traveling with your family, or simply not opening your laptop after bedtime. Your version of a rich life doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. It’s about getting intentional about the things that bring you the most joy, connection, and freedom, and then figuring out how to create more of them.
In this episode, I share the conversation my husband and I had six years ago that changed the way we thought about our time, money, and the life we wanted to create together. I talk about what a rich life actually means and how some of the things that make my life feel richest have nothing to do with spending a lot of money.
I also want you to think about your own rich life. What would make your life feel richer right now? What could you start doing with the time and resources you already have? And what might require you to change something about the way you’re currently working or living? Because your business doesn’t have to be the destination. It can be the vehicle that gives you the flexibility, income, and freedom to create the life you actually want.
Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
What a rich life actually means and why it has nothing to do with a specific amount of money.
How to identify the experiences, relationships, and everyday things that make your life feel rich.
Why it’s worth intentionally spending money on the things that bring you the most joy.
How to think about bigger rich life goals that may require changes to your career or business.
Why your business can be the vehicle that helps you create the life you actually envision.
Three questions to help you start defining your own rich life.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
Click here for step-by-step instructions to leave a rating and review to let me know what you think, and don’t forget to share the podcast with others who you think would benefit!
If you're looking for the right environment to start your networking journey, look no further than my group, the Mom Entrepreneur’s Circle. Sign up here for mutual support, advice sharing, and the tools you need for both you and your business to thrive.
Die With Zero by Bill Perkins
Episodes Related to Creating a Rich Life:
99. 4 In-Home Systems That Create More Time, Energy, and Joy
111. How Moms Can Shift Victim Mentality & Manage Mental Load with Zahra Premji
Full Episode Transcript:
I know for many of you, the reason you're thinking about leaving your 9-to-5 isn't only because you hate your job, though that can always be one of the reasons. It's often because you've started to realize that the life you want to live doesn't quite fit inside the structure of the life you've currently built. It's because the 9-to-5 workday is no longer working for you. Maybe you want to pick your kids up from school every day. Maybe you want to spend a month somewhere else every summer. Maybe you want to take a random Wednesday off with your husband or partner without asking anyone for permission. Or maybe you just want to stop opening your laptop after bedtime.
Some of these things might sound small or extravagant or unrealistic. But today, I want you to think about them differently. I am fresh off of a family trip to Yellowstone National Park, and as I was coming home from this trip, I realized something: that this trip actually started six years ago. Not with a reservation to Yellowstone, not with an itinerary, not even with kids. It started with a conversation my husband and I had in a car about what we wanted our life to look like. And that one conversation has shaped some of the biggest decisions we've made since then.
So today, I want to tell you that story, and then I want you to have this conversation for yourself. Because whether you're still in corporate thinking about leaving or you've already started your own business, I want you to get really clear on something. What does a rich life actually look like for you?
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. My husband and I were driving to Long Lake, New York, and we were listening to podcasts. This was before kids when road trips were far less complicated. We were listening to an interview with Ramit Sethi. If you've never heard of him, that's okay. He's the author of "I Will Teach You to Be Rich". He's somewhat of a money coach, and though I've actually never read that particular book, what I've heard from him is pretty good. He's got some pretty good stuff.
During this interview, he talked about a concept he calls a rich life. Now, that doesn't mean changing careers so you can be quote-unquote rich and buy things and do things. Though I totally support you changing careers and building a business that makes you rich, that's what I'm here for. But what he's talking about with the concept of a rich life is being intentional and thoughtful about what you actually want your life to look like. What would make your life feel rich to you? It doesn't necessarily mean you have to buy a bunch of things or spend a lot of money.
I remember growing up, we'd always drive eight hours to visit my mom's family in Bluefield, Virginia. We were a blue-collar family through and through, and I remember we always had the saying that we were rich in love. Rich is completely subjective. There's not a threshold or an amount of money that suddenly makes you rich. But I will say, by most accounts, my family, we were not monetarily or materially rich. And yet, it felt so good when we were all together sitting on that porch in Virginia with endless rolling green hills surrounded by family saying we were rich in love.
So living a rich life isn't necessarily about making a lot of money or spending a lot of money. It's about how you spend your time and resources in ways that will fill you up. And this is where that drive and that conversation from six years ago really changed something for us. So we were driving to Long Lake, listening to Ramit talk about a rich life, and we paused the episode in the middle of it. And I actually think that's really important to know because when something inspires you, especially when you're in the car or on a date with your partner, pause long enough to have the intentional conversation about it.
So we asked ourselves, what would our rich life look like? It's funny because I recently, for this episode, went back and looked at our notes. My husband is really great at writing everything down. And so I looked at our notes, and there were two things listed. One was having a reading room with lots of windows and bookshelves. That was number one on our rich life list. We're still working on that one.
The second thing we wrote down was treat our parents to a vacation in Italy. So at this point, our wedding was coming up within the next year. I had been told that we needed to give the parents a gift. I, as much as possible, tried to go against all traditions in the wedding world. But this one intrigued me. But our parents didn't need more stuff. They're already hard enough to buy for. So my husband, Chris, and I, we said to ourselves, wouldn't it be cool if we took our parents to Italy as their wedding gift? And so we did.
Now, of course, that's not a cheap rich life item. We paid for the flights and the accommodations. We made all the plans, the itineraries. We spent two weeks in Italy. Italy's not as pricey as some places in the U.S., but it's still not a cheap endeavor. We spent a good amount of money, but that was our rich life. We wanted to be able to take our parents on a really epic trip and make amazing memories.
And then something happened that we couldn't have known when we wrote down that rich life goal. During that Italy trip, we realized that we made more memories, had more joy and happiness, and were more present with our parents than ever before. Not to mention how grateful they were, not just for being treated to a trip, but because they didn't have to plan any of it or worry about any logistics.
So after that trip, Chris and I had another conversation, and we said, "What if our rich life is going on a trip with both sets of parents every year?" And so we did it. We spent those two weeks in Italy. We've done a long weekend in Cape Cod. We've gone to Montreal. And this past weekend, we went to Yellowstone. Now, before you go thinking, "That would never work for me and my parents," I want you to know that I would most likely completely agree with you. The reason this is such a rich life goal for us and my family is because it made us so happy when we did it in Italy.
Our parents get along so well, especially in this environment where there are no worries. They're easy travelers. They go along with whatever we plan. This past weekend, I planned a guided eight-hour safari in Yellowstone, and we were getting picked up by the van at 5 a.m. And when I told everyone, everyone just smiled and nodded, even though my parents have been known to sleep until 10 a.m. sometimes in their retirement days. If your parents would not be fun to travel with, don't do it. This is not your rich life. If your parents and your in-laws don't get along, don't do it. If it would create more stress than joy, don't do it.
This works for us because it's so joyful. I will say, though, if there's a chance something like this would work for you, you've got to do it. This year was the first year with both of my boys. They're two and four years old right now, and I have to say, it's a very rare experience for a child to have four grandparents doting on them for an entire weekend. Usually, there are other cousins or only one set of grandparents, but it is otherworldly to have both there at the same time, not to mention so helpful. Four sets of grandparent hands in our case beats two sets any day of the week.
And this has become even more important to us now that we're living thousands of miles away from our parents. These intentional, meaningful moments that we design are so important for us, for the kids, and for our parents, of course. And that's really the point of this entire episode. We designed this. This is our rich life. It didn't just happen. It started with one conversation about what made life feel rich to us, followed by trying something, followed by doing it, testing it out, dipping into our savings. And then we paid attention. Did this actually make our lives richer? For us, the answer was a huge yes. So we decided to do more of it.
And I will tell you that every year, we look forward to this trip more than anything. And we're already planning the next one. Or at least I'm mentally planning the next one. We never really bring the parents into the fold until after we've decided everything, which is also a lot of fun for me. Your version of a rich life probably isn't taking both sets of parents to Yellowstone. I would recommend it, but I trust you in whether or not you think that would work for you. That might not be yours. So I want you to think, what is it? Is it being able to pick up your kids from school every day? That could be a rich life goal. Is it not having to work after bedtime ever again or take a weekend call? I remember that used to be mine. I thought life would be so great, and it would be a rich life if I never had to work on the weekend again. That would have been my rich life goal a decade ago.
Is your rich life seeing certain people, friends, or family every year or every five years? Is it going on an international family trip every year? Is it having a sibling sleepover without the kids and staying up all night reminiscing about childhood memories? Is your rich life renting a movie every Friday and eating takeout? There are no rules. And I think this is where we sometimes make the idea of a rich life harder than it needs to be. It doesn't have to be Yellowstone; it doesn't have to be Italy. Sometimes it's something really small.
Sometimes a rich life is just making life easier: paying for childcare, bringing over that mother's helper from the neighborhood, asking family or friends to come over and help so you can get two hours of work done. Ramit has a lot of financial freedom. So he's pretty well known for his work at this point, and his book was a bestseller. But one of his rich life things was that he and his wife ship their luggage anywhere they travel. I have no idea how much that costs. I can't imagine it's cheap. But he talked about how happy and stress-free it makes them to ship the luggage in advance and to know it will just be there when they arrive at the hotel or at the Airbnb. They don't have to deal with the lines, checking a bag at the airport. They don't have to carry the luggage from the car to the check-in desk.
We haven't gotten there yet. And as night-before packers, I'm not sure that would work for us. But it sounds so lovely and luxurious. We have our own smaller version of this rich life. We park in the closest parking lot at airports. Yep. It's expensive, usually around $25 a day, which can add up, especially when you're taking two-week trips like we like to do. But it's a cost that we save for. It's a cost that we add into the trip and think about when we're booking our flights. The amount of stress we save by not having to factor in the time and energy spent taking the bus from any farther parking lots has definitely put years back on our lives. We get our bags when we arrive, we walk right to our car. That feels so luxurious. It feels like a rich life.
The $200, maybe, or the $300 that we spend to do that every few months or however often we take a trip is worth it to us, especially with a two-year-old and a four-year-old. It's such a game-changer. Living a rich life is all about figuring out what few things will increase your joy and happiness the most. And like I said before, a rich life isn't about needing a lot of money. Of course, you can do extravagant things and really wild trips with money, right? Money will pay for more extravagant and luxurious things, but it doesn't have to be that you need money in order to live a rich life.
Another rich life thing that Chris and I do that really doesn't cost much at all is that we like to go on day dates once a month. Day dates are amazing. I know I've talked about it before on this podcast. If you already have childcare during the day, you don't have to worry about childcare. You don't have to worry about the extra expense. Chris and I don't really thrive on date nights. You have to coordinate special childcare. You have to pay more for that childcare. And if it's someone new, which is often the case for us now, since we don't live near family, it's a whole process of teaching them the lay of the land. It's just a lot of work. Plus, Chris and I aren't really foodies, and we like to go to bed early. So we had a date the other night and we were basically done with dinner and ready to come home before bedtime was over. So we just walked around the neighborhood until the kids were officially asleep, and then we came home.
But anyway, traditional dates just aren't our thing. They're expensive. They're cumbersome for us. But day dates are a whole different ball game. During the day, childcare is already paid for. It's just taking time off work, which is easy for both of us because we're entrepreneurs and can open up our schedules pretty easily. And then we can do really fun things. We can go for a hike, we can have a picnic in the park, we can go to the Botanic Gardens, we can sit at a coffee shop and read. It's amazing. You can spend all day doing date activities instead of limiting it to just a few hours at night. And that's an example of a fairly inexpensive rich life thing that we do.
If you're still in corporate, you would just have to request a day off. And maybe it doesn't feel worth it to take one day of PTO, but I promise a midweek PTO day for a date day is exactly what you need. You catch up on all the emails the next day. You don't miss a beat, and it shortens the week. It's the perfect mental health day. And so some of the examples I've shared are completely different examples of what it means to live a rich life. With the examples I've shared, some cost us more money. The trips that we take are not cheap. We have to save for those. We have to budget for those. Sometimes we have to dip into our savings for those, but they're important enough for us to do that. So some of them cost money, and some of them mostly are about how we choose to use our time.
None of these examples have to necessarily make sense to you. You might be thinking to yourself, "Oh, that would not be how I want to spend my time or money." And that's okay. That's the whole point. Your rich life is yours. So I want you to stop thinking about my rich life and start thinking about yours. I want you to start with what you can do now to start living a rich life. What are the things that would make your life feel rich? If funds are tight, think about the lowest-cost things that give you the biggest gain. What do you want to be doing regularly that would fill you up? What could you be spending money on that gives you the most happiness?
And if you have a partner, bring them into the conversation. Don't assume you know their answers. Have the intentional conversation. Here's the other thing: some of these things can start as goals, and you can work to make them reality. Look at your finances and really decide what you can do now. I talk to so many moms who have these big old savings accounts for emergencies but never think about intentionally using some of those funds for lifelong memories for their families to step into a rich life in one way, shape, or form. It's not always what I would recommend, but I would be honest with yourself, and I would look at all of your savings and all of the things that you're saving for. And then I would think about some of the other important things that you want to save for.
A really great book that I recommend is "Die with Zero". It really hits home on this concept of when to save and when to spend to essentially create a richer life. Between the podcast and the book, which I'll link in the show notes at jenna.coach/119, so 119, you'll be set on creating a life you love.
The last thing I want to talk about is within this concept of creating or living a rich life. Sometimes your rich life requires bigger shifts, bigger changes. When some of these rich life things are goals, you may have to shift a few things in your life to get there. Maybe you want to live abroad for a few weeks or a month every summer. This was one of our goals, actually. It wasn't necessarily a rich life goal, but it was kind of like a "wouldn't it be cool if" goal. We wanted to live in Buenos Aires for three months out of every year. And we went for a month in 2024, but we're still figuring this one out. It's kind of complicated with school schedules and such, and that's okay.
But if that's your rich life goal, vacationing for two months or a whole month internationally for every summer, you may not be able to do it with a job that requires you to be in an office five days a week. You may not be able to do it with a job that doesn't allow you to work internationally. If your rich life goal is to drop your kids off and pick them up from school every day and be done with work by 3 p.m., you may not be able to do that in your current corporate role. And that's okay. Because now you know something. You know what you're actually trying to create. And that's an important distinction.
Sometimes we know that something about our career isn't working anymore, but we haven't stopped long enough to identify really why. Maybe you don't hate your career. Maybe you're not desperate to become an entrepreneur. You've simply reached a point where the structure of the life that you've built no longer supports the life you want next. And once you know that, you can start making different decisions. And this is why we talk about business. This is why this podcast exists: so that you know you have options, so that you can create value in the world, you can make money, and have flexibility to choose how you spend your time.
Starting your own business may be the best next step to get you to those rich life goals. It may be the thing that gets you the flexibility you're looking for. And listen, it could also be the thing that fills your bank account and brings in other rich life goals. There are limits to your corporate paycheck. There always will be. Someone else ultimately decides what your role is worth. Your own business is different. You get to create, you get to try things, you get to figure out what works, you get to adjust when something doesn't. And you get to adjust to make more money. You get to build something that supports the life you're actually wanting to live.
Because the goal isn't to leave corporate just so you can say you own a business. The goal is to build a business that helps you live the life you actually envision. So here's what I want you to do after you've soaked in and digested this episode. I want you to grab a piece of paper, grab the voice memo app on your phone, sit down with your partner tonight and answer three questions. What would make our life feel rich right now? What are the things that we are not doing that we'd like to be doing right now that we can afford right now? That was all just one question. What would make our life rich right now? Question number two: what could we start doing with the time and resources we already have? Question three: what do we want that might require us to change something about the way we're currently working or living?
There are no right answers. Your rich life is allowed to evolve. You get to try things and discover that something you thought would make you happy actually is more stress than it's worth, and you get to change your mind. You get to discover what works for your family by experiencing it and living it. Maybe you take that random Wednesday off and discover you love it. Maybe you decide you're going to do monthly date nights and realize you actually hate date nights and hate the logistics and shift to day dates. Maybe you take your parents to Italy once and discover that what was supposed to be a one-time trip becomes one of your family's most treasured traditions, like what happened to us. Maybe you drop your kids off and pick them up and realize that you'd actually really love to stop working at 3, but you want to have me time from 3 to 5 every day.
You get to decide. You get to make the decisions. What's important is that you write it down and you work to execute it. Six years ago, Chris and I wrote down, "Treat our parents to a vacation in Italy," and we couldn't have known that one sentence would eventually lead us to standing in Yellowstone with our two boys and all four of their grandparents and feeling just so filled up with love and gratitude and joy.
Talk about it, try it, and pay attention to what the experience is like. When we realized, "Oh my gosh, this makes our life feel incredibly rich," we did more of it. And that's what I want for you. Not somebody else's definition of rich or success, not somebody else's perfect schedule, not somebody else's idea of what you should do with your time and resources and money. This is your rich life. Figure out what you can do now, choose something bigger that you're building towards, and then ask yourself what might need to change in order for you to make it possible. Because maybe the business you've been thinking about starting isn't actually the destination. Maybe it's the vehicle that allows you to build the rich life that you've been thinking about all along.
Okay, moms. I want you to have fun with this. I want you to dream. I want you to think and really put yourself in that rich life and know that it's possible. Okay? Write it down, share it with me. If you're not a part of my newsletter, I send out an email weekly to anybody who follows, and I'll be doing a post and sending out an email with pictures from the trip. So be sure to join the email list or follow me, jrykel3 on IG, j-r-y-k-i-e-l-3, and I'll share some really fun pictures from this past trip in Yellowstone that was so much fun. Okay. Take care of yourselves. I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Some of these things might sound small or extravagant or unrealistic. But today, I want you to think about them differently. I am fresh off of a family trip to Yellowstone National Park, and as I was coming home from this trip, I realized something: that this trip actually started six years ago. Not with a reservation to Yellowstone, not with an itinerary, not even with kids. It started with a conversation my husband and I had in a car about what we wanted our life to look like. And that one conversation has shaped some of the biggest decisions we've made since then.
So today, I want to tell you that story, and then I want you to have this conversation for yourself. Because whether you're still in corporate thinking about leaving or you've already started your own business, I want you to get really clear on something. What does a rich life actually look like for you?
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. My husband and I were driving to Long Lake, New York, and we were listening to podcasts. This was before kids when road trips were far less complicated. We were listening to an interview with Ramit Sethi. If you've never heard of him, that's okay. He's the author of "I Will Teach You to Be Rich". He's somewhat of a money coach, and though I've actually never read that particular book, what I've heard from him is pretty good. He's got some pretty good stuff.
During this interview, he talked about a concept he calls a rich life. Now, that doesn't mean changing careers so you can be quote-unquote rich and buy things and do things. Though I totally support you changing careers and building a business that makes you rich, that's what I'm here for. But what he's talking about with the concept of a rich life is being intentional and thoughtful about what you actually want your life to look like. What would make your life feel rich to you? It doesn't necessarily mean you have to buy a bunch of things or spend a lot of money.
I remember growing up, we'd always drive eight hours to visit my mom's family in Bluefield, Virginia. We were a blue-collar family through and through, and I remember we always had the saying that we were rich in love. Rich is completely subjective. There's not a threshold or an amount of money that suddenly makes you rich. But I will say, by most accounts, my family, we were not monetarily or materially rich. And yet, it felt so good when we were all together sitting on that porch in Virginia with endless rolling green hills surrounded by family saying we were rich in love.
So living a rich life isn't necessarily about making a lot of money or spending a lot of money. It's about how you spend your time and resources in ways that will fill you up. And this is where that drive and that conversation from six years ago really changed something for us. So we were driving to Long Lake, listening to Ramit talk about a rich life, and we paused the episode in the middle of it. And I actually think that's really important to know because when something inspires you, especially when you're in the car or on a date with your partner, pause long enough to have the intentional conversation about it.
So we asked ourselves, what would our rich life look like? It's funny because I recently, for this episode, went back and looked at our notes. My husband is really great at writing everything down. And so I looked at our notes, and there were two things listed. One was having a reading room with lots of windows and bookshelves. That was number one on our rich life list. We're still working on that one.
The second thing we wrote down was treat our parents to a vacation in Italy. So at this point, our wedding was coming up within the next year. I had been told that we needed to give the parents a gift. I, as much as possible, tried to go against all traditions in the wedding world. But this one intrigued me. But our parents didn't need more stuff. They're already hard enough to buy for. So my husband, Chris, and I, we said to ourselves, wouldn't it be cool if we took our parents to Italy as their wedding gift? And so we did.
Now, of course, that's not a cheap rich life item. We paid for the flights and the accommodations. We made all the plans, the itineraries. We spent two weeks in Italy. Italy's not as pricey as some places in the U.S., but it's still not a cheap endeavor. We spent a good amount of money, but that was our rich life. We wanted to be able to take our parents on a really epic trip and make amazing memories.
And then something happened that we couldn't have known when we wrote down that rich life goal. During that Italy trip, we realized that we made more memories, had more joy and happiness, and were more present with our parents than ever before. Not to mention how grateful they were, not just for being treated to a trip, but because they didn't have to plan any of it or worry about any logistics.
So after that trip, Chris and I had another conversation, and we said, "What if our rich life is going on a trip with both sets of parents every year?" And so we did it. We spent those two weeks in Italy. We've done a long weekend in Cape Cod. We've gone to Montreal. And this past weekend, we went to Yellowstone. Now, before you go thinking, "That would never work for me and my parents," I want you to know that I would most likely completely agree with you. The reason this is such a rich life goal for us and my family is because it made us so happy when we did it in Italy.
Our parents get along so well, especially in this environment where there are no worries. They're easy travelers. They go along with whatever we plan. This past weekend, I planned a guided eight-hour safari in Yellowstone, and we were getting picked up by the van at 5 a.m. And when I told everyone, everyone just smiled and nodded, even though my parents have been known to sleep until 10 a.m. sometimes in their retirement days. If your parents would not be fun to travel with, don't do it. This is not your rich life. If your parents and your in-laws don't get along, don't do it. If it would create more stress than joy, don't do it.
This works for us because it's so joyful. I will say, though, if there's a chance something like this would work for you, you've got to do it. This year was the first year with both of my boys. They're two and four years old right now, and I have to say, it's a very rare experience for a child to have four grandparents doting on them for an entire weekend. Usually, there are other cousins or only one set of grandparents, but it is otherworldly to have both there at the same time, not to mention so helpful. Four sets of grandparent hands in our case beats two sets any day of the week.
And this has become even more important to us now that we're living thousands of miles away from our parents. These intentional, meaningful moments that we design are so important for us, for the kids, and for our parents, of course. And that's really the point of this entire episode. We designed this. This is our rich life. It didn't just happen. It started with one conversation about what made life feel rich to us, followed by trying something, followed by doing it, testing it out, dipping into our savings. And then we paid attention. Did this actually make our lives richer? For us, the answer was a huge yes. So we decided to do more of it.
And I will tell you that every year, we look forward to this trip more than anything. And we're already planning the next one. Or at least I'm mentally planning the next one. We never really bring the parents into the fold until after we've decided everything, which is also a lot of fun for me. Your version of a rich life probably isn't taking both sets of parents to Yellowstone. I would recommend it, but I trust you in whether or not you think that would work for you. That might not be yours. So I want you to think, what is it? Is it being able to pick up your kids from school every day? That could be a rich life goal. Is it not having to work after bedtime ever again or take a weekend call? I remember that used to be mine. I thought life would be so great, and it would be a rich life if I never had to work on the weekend again. That would have been my rich life goal a decade ago.
Is your rich life seeing certain people, friends, or family every year or every five years? Is it going on an international family trip every year? Is it having a sibling sleepover without the kids and staying up all night reminiscing about childhood memories? Is your rich life renting a movie every Friday and eating takeout? There are no rules. And I think this is where we sometimes make the idea of a rich life harder than it needs to be. It doesn't have to be Yellowstone; it doesn't have to be Italy. Sometimes it's something really small.
Sometimes a rich life is just making life easier: paying for childcare, bringing over that mother's helper from the neighborhood, asking family or friends to come over and help so you can get two hours of work done. Ramit has a lot of financial freedom. So he's pretty well known for his work at this point, and his book was a bestseller. But one of his rich life things was that he and his wife ship their luggage anywhere they travel. I have no idea how much that costs. I can't imagine it's cheap. But he talked about how happy and stress-free it makes them to ship the luggage in advance and to know it will just be there when they arrive at the hotel or at the Airbnb. They don't have to deal with the lines, checking a bag at the airport. They don't have to carry the luggage from the car to the check-in desk.
We haven't gotten there yet. And as night-before packers, I'm not sure that would work for us. But it sounds so lovely and luxurious. We have our own smaller version of this rich life. We park in the closest parking lot at airports. Yep. It's expensive, usually around $25 a day, which can add up, especially when you're taking two-week trips like we like to do. But it's a cost that we save for. It's a cost that we add into the trip and think about when we're booking our flights. The amount of stress we save by not having to factor in the time and energy spent taking the bus from any farther parking lots has definitely put years back on our lives. We get our bags when we arrive, we walk right to our car. That feels so luxurious. It feels like a rich life.
The $200, maybe, or the $300 that we spend to do that every few months or however often we take a trip is worth it to us, especially with a two-year-old and a four-year-old. It's such a game-changer. Living a rich life is all about figuring out what few things will increase your joy and happiness the most. And like I said before, a rich life isn't about needing a lot of money. Of course, you can do extravagant things and really wild trips with money, right? Money will pay for more extravagant and luxurious things, but it doesn't have to be that you need money in order to live a rich life.
Another rich life thing that Chris and I do that really doesn't cost much at all is that we like to go on day dates once a month. Day dates are amazing. I know I've talked about it before on this podcast. If you already have childcare during the day, you don't have to worry about childcare. You don't have to worry about the extra expense. Chris and I don't really thrive on date nights. You have to coordinate special childcare. You have to pay more for that childcare. And if it's someone new, which is often the case for us now, since we don't live near family, it's a whole process of teaching them the lay of the land. It's just a lot of work. Plus, Chris and I aren't really foodies, and we like to go to bed early. So we had a date the other night and we were basically done with dinner and ready to come home before bedtime was over. So we just walked around the neighborhood until the kids were officially asleep, and then we came home.
But anyway, traditional dates just aren't our thing. They're expensive. They're cumbersome for us. But day dates are a whole different ball game. During the day, childcare is already paid for. It's just taking time off work, which is easy for both of us because we're entrepreneurs and can open up our schedules pretty easily. And then we can do really fun things. We can go for a hike, we can have a picnic in the park, we can go to the Botanic Gardens, we can sit at a coffee shop and read. It's amazing. You can spend all day doing date activities instead of limiting it to just a few hours at night. And that's an example of a fairly inexpensive rich life thing that we do.
If you're still in corporate, you would just have to request a day off. And maybe it doesn't feel worth it to take one day of PTO, but I promise a midweek PTO day for a date day is exactly what you need. You catch up on all the emails the next day. You don't miss a beat, and it shortens the week. It's the perfect mental health day. And so some of the examples I've shared are completely different examples of what it means to live a rich life. With the examples I've shared, some cost us more money. The trips that we take are not cheap. We have to save for those. We have to budget for those. Sometimes we have to dip into our savings for those, but they're important enough for us to do that. So some of them cost money, and some of them mostly are about how we choose to use our time.
None of these examples have to necessarily make sense to you. You might be thinking to yourself, "Oh, that would not be how I want to spend my time or money." And that's okay. That's the whole point. Your rich life is yours. So I want you to stop thinking about my rich life and start thinking about yours. I want you to start with what you can do now to start living a rich life. What are the things that would make your life feel rich? If funds are tight, think about the lowest-cost things that give you the biggest gain. What do you want to be doing regularly that would fill you up? What could you be spending money on that gives you the most happiness?
And if you have a partner, bring them into the conversation. Don't assume you know their answers. Have the intentional conversation. Here's the other thing: some of these things can start as goals, and you can work to make them reality. Look at your finances and really decide what you can do now. I talk to so many moms who have these big old savings accounts for emergencies but never think about intentionally using some of those funds for lifelong memories for their families to step into a rich life in one way, shape, or form. It's not always what I would recommend, but I would be honest with yourself, and I would look at all of your savings and all of the things that you're saving for. And then I would think about some of the other important things that you want to save for.
A really great book that I recommend is "Die with Zero". It really hits home on this concept of when to save and when to spend to essentially create a richer life. Between the podcast and the book, which I'll link in the show notes at jenna.coach/119, so 119, you'll be set on creating a life you love.
The last thing I want to talk about is within this concept of creating or living a rich life. Sometimes your rich life requires bigger shifts, bigger changes. When some of these rich life things are goals, you may have to shift a few things in your life to get there. Maybe you want to live abroad for a few weeks or a month every summer. This was one of our goals, actually. It wasn't necessarily a rich life goal, but it was kind of like a "wouldn't it be cool if" goal. We wanted to live in Buenos Aires for three months out of every year. And we went for a month in 2024, but we're still figuring this one out. It's kind of complicated with school schedules and such, and that's okay.
But if that's your rich life goal, vacationing for two months or a whole month internationally for every summer, you may not be able to do it with a job that requires you to be in an office five days a week. You may not be able to do it with a job that doesn't allow you to work internationally. If your rich life goal is to drop your kids off and pick them up from school every day and be done with work by 3 p.m., you may not be able to do that in your current corporate role. And that's okay. Because now you know something. You know what you're actually trying to create. And that's an important distinction.
Sometimes we know that something about our career isn't working anymore, but we haven't stopped long enough to identify really why. Maybe you don't hate your career. Maybe you're not desperate to become an entrepreneur. You've simply reached a point where the structure of the life that you've built no longer supports the life you want next. And once you know that, you can start making different decisions. And this is why we talk about business. This is why this podcast exists: so that you know you have options, so that you can create value in the world, you can make money, and have flexibility to choose how you spend your time.
Starting your own business may be the best next step to get you to those rich life goals. It may be the thing that gets you the flexibility you're looking for. And listen, it could also be the thing that fills your bank account and brings in other rich life goals. There are limits to your corporate paycheck. There always will be. Someone else ultimately decides what your role is worth. Your own business is different. You get to create, you get to try things, you get to figure out what works, you get to adjust when something doesn't. And you get to adjust to make more money. You get to build something that supports the life you're actually wanting to live.
Because the goal isn't to leave corporate just so you can say you own a business. The goal is to build a business that helps you live the life you actually envision. So here's what I want you to do after you've soaked in and digested this episode. I want you to grab a piece of paper, grab the voice memo app on your phone, sit down with your partner tonight and answer three questions. What would make our life feel rich right now? What are the things that we are not doing that we'd like to be doing right now that we can afford right now? That was all just one question. What would make our life rich right now? Question number two: what could we start doing with the time and resources we already have? Question three: what do we want that might require us to change something about the way we're currently working or living?
There are no right answers. Your rich life is allowed to evolve. You get to try things and discover that something you thought would make you happy actually is more stress than it's worth, and you get to change your mind. You get to discover what works for your family by experiencing it and living it. Maybe you take that random Wednesday off and discover you love it. Maybe you decide you're going to do monthly date nights and realize you actually hate date nights and hate the logistics and shift to day dates. Maybe you take your parents to Italy once and discover that what was supposed to be a one-time trip becomes one of your family's most treasured traditions, like what happened to us. Maybe you drop your kids off and pick them up and realize that you'd actually really love to stop working at 3, but you want to have me time from 3 to 5 every day.
You get to decide. You get to make the decisions. What's important is that you write it down and you work to execute it. Six years ago, Chris and I wrote down, "Treat our parents to a vacation in Italy," and we couldn't have known that one sentence would eventually lead us to standing in Yellowstone with our two boys and all four of their grandparents and feeling just so filled up with love and gratitude and joy.
Talk about it, try it, and pay attention to what the experience is like. When we realized, "Oh my gosh, this makes our life feel incredibly rich," we did more of it. And that's what I want for you. Not somebody else's definition of rich or success, not somebody else's perfect schedule, not somebody else's idea of what you should do with your time and resources and money. This is your rich life. Figure out what you can do now, choose something bigger that you're building towards, and then ask yourself what might need to change in order for you to make it possible. Because maybe the business you've been thinking about starting isn't actually the destination. Maybe it's the vehicle that allows you to build the rich life that you've been thinking about all along.
Okay, moms. I want you to have fun with this. I want you to dream. I want you to think and really put yourself in that rich life and know that it's possible. Okay? Write it down, share it with me. If you're not a part of my newsletter, I send out an email weekly to anybody who follows, and I'll be doing a post and sending out an email with pictures from the trip. So be sure to join the email list or follow me, jrykel3 on IG, j-r-y-k-i-e-l-3, and I'll share some really fun pictures from this past trip in Yellowstone that was so much fun. Okay. Take care of yourselves. I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Enjoy the Show?
Don’t miss an episode, follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or RSS.
