Hello fellow Yakezie members, challengers, and friends,

This is Joe from Retire By 40 where I blog about my journey to early retirement. Today, I want to write a bit about the person most influential to my goal. His name is Will and he can never work for anyone else for long. He always goes his own way no matter what anyone thinks and here is a bit of his story.

About Mysterious Will

Will was born in Chiangmai, Thailand and was orphaned at 8 years old. He had 3 older brothers, 1 older sister, and two younger sisters. His parents were laborers and after they passed away, his uncle took the boys into his household. The uncle was wealthy and could have raised all the kids as family, but he only took in the boys to work for him and didn’t want the girls.

The oldest sister was 17 and was able to work at the market, so she took care of herself and one of the younger sisters. The youngest sister was just a baby and was given away because no one could take care of her. The uncle wanted the boys to finish the required 4th grade education and then work full time at his business after that.

Will was the youngest boy, but he was the smartest and the laziest of them all. He wanted to keep going to school because school is so much easier than being a laborer. He asked the teachers to come speak to the uncle and the uncle finally relented and told him – fine, you can go to school, but if you don’t work, you don’t eat. So Will did what he had to do and somehow finished high school with many whippings along the way.

Will was a bright kid and he was able to pass the entrance exam to enter Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, the best university in Thailand. He was the only student from Chiangmai to make it into that university that year. He worked and financed his own education by giving private tutoring lessons, selling insurance, selling kitchen wares, selling encyclopedias and many other jobs. He graduated with a Bachelor degree in Education, but went straight into the business world and never became a real teacher. He was always a salesman at heart and went to work selling air conditioners and soon after started his first business doing just that.  Will was an entrepreneur and even with minimal resources he could figure out how to get a business off the ground.

Some other businesses he started were a chicken farm, pig farm, copy shop (similar to Kinkos), electronics store, restaurant, liquor store, and more. Many of these businesses were successful initially, but something always went wrong and the business failed eventually. Making money was never a problem for Will. Whatever he did, the money always came rolling in. The problem was that he did not know how to sustain a successful business. He operated on a razor thin margin, over leveraged and eventually, the house of cards always came tumbling down. His risk tolerance was extremely high and he gambled on many things. It only took one wrong gamble to bring down a structure with a flimsy foundation. Will never let any failures stop him though. His motto was “never look back and always keep moving forward.”

Will’s retirement

Currently Will is “retired” and is living in his hometown, Chiangmai. He has a little shop dealing in antique Thai Buddha amulets, collects rents on two rental condos, sells rubies and diamonds on the side, and is waiting for some teak wood to mature on a few acres. He tried doing nothing for about a year and drove everyone around him nuts. These little side businesses keep him busy and are more or less hobbies that make money. He has a good time socializing with his antique collector friends. You can read more about his retirement over at my site.

In any case, you can probably guess by now that Will is my dad.

My retirement plan

My early retirement will be similar to my dad’s retirement. My plan is to make a bit of money from several side hustles so I can keep busy. I don’t think I will ever stop working completely because I would be bored to death. Some readers questioned my definition of retirement and said if I work, how can I be retired? All I can say is my retirement is not going to be golfing all day or sitting around watching TV. As we can see from the retirement accounts of Americans near retirement age, many of us will not be retiring to a life of leisure. A working retirement is going to be the new normal soon.

In my How to Retire By 40 plan, many people wonder why I contribute to 401k and other retirement accounts when it’s not really accessible until I’m older. My motivation is that I want to keep a nice big war chest on the side so I can let it compound and be my security blanket.  It is easy to make just enough money with side hustles to pay the rent, especially with Mrs. RB40’s help. I went through many success and failure cycles with my dad and I don’t want to start from scratch over and over again. I’d rather stay small and comfortable. Once I have my nest egg, I will not bet it all on any business. Sure, I’ll never be rich with my plan, but I am comfortable with that. I am not fearless enough to risk it all like my dad, but I am patient enough to go slow and steady.

Thanks!!!

I started Retire By 40 in October 2010 and luckily I discovered Yakezie very soon after. I didn’t know anything about blogging and I learned so much from the Yakezie forum’s great members and challengers. I would like to give a hearty thank you to everyone here especially Chris and Sam. My blogging journey would have been so much more difficult without all your support. Keep having fun everyone!