One of the things that I keep writing about is our ongoing quest to be unjobbers. There have been a variety of ideas put forth, including living in a tipi, lol. I think we've at last finalized our goal. John and I are both getting a degree in Business from a British Columbia university that offers most of its classes online, so we can work on the same classes, buy only one set of books and support each other in getting our degrees. This is all part of unjobbing goal, because while eventually being able make money from home is awesome, we both need a backup education. We have no debt at the moment, but I will be getting a student loan that we will pay when I graduate, and we'll pay for John's education cash. This essentially gives us a chance to pay them one at a time.

We also opened an investment account. We looked at lots of options for our retirement... mainly investing in index funds vs. investing in real estate. No matter how we calculate it out, the index fund has a bigger return and more security than real estate, surprisingly. We also discovered an amazing thing here in British Columbia called a Tax Free Savings Account. Basically its an account that you put money into, and when you take the money out you don't have to pay taxes on it. So our index fund can make a million dollars in 30 years, and then we can pull out all that money and not have to pay the government for it. This also makes an index fund more worthwhile in the long run. We set up an automatic withdrawal every month that goes into this fund and when we want to retire when we're 50 we should be millionaires. We are able to do this because we don't have a car payment, or actually any payments which frees up the cash to invest.

The last step to this plan was to create more ways to make money from home. My husband thought of a great idea for a website that would serve our local area which we are working on setting up right now. The key to making money on the internet is to create a service that people don't have yet (or modify something that exists to make it better, or better-looking), and to charge pennies for it. It has to appeal to a large group of people, but it can market a small group of people who actually pay for it. A good example of this is Google. The search engine is the most used website of all time, but it makes its money off of a relatively small group of businesses who pay-per-click for ads that the rest of the world clicks on. Eventually this model allows you to pay someone else to run it for you because it doesn't actually require much work once it's set up.

So to sum up... the smart way to unjob is to:

1. Make a backup plan in case unjobbing doesn't work. Getting education in something that is usually in demand is a safe bet.

2. Invest wisely for your retirement. This means putting money away every month long-term (30 years or more is optimum). Then make that money make more money for you - putting it in a savings account is a tremendous waste.
EDIT: Not to say that we won't eventually buy some real estate - but not relying on it as an investment. And it must be cheap enough to almost pay cash for, or at least half.

3. Stay out of debt, and if you must get in debt, only do it for school. And only get a degree in something that can pay for your loans in the first year.

4. Create ideas to start a business from home, and utilize the internet. Notice that I said start a business, not work from home. The difference between being self-employed and owning a business is that eventually owning a business should allow you to not work at all, while being self-employed means you'll be working forever. For example, a plumber is self-employed and has to work to make money, but if he managed his business right he could eventually employ a couple of other plumbers to do the work for him. Also pick something you really enjoy. Just because someone says 'Oh this will make you money!' doesn't mean it will. Actually, it absolutely won't unless you believe in it.

5. Retire early, but don't get old. If you start acting old, you'll get old. Make a plan to do stuff with your free time. Travel, take up new hobbies, hang out with your kids (if you retire that early). I plan to swim with dolphins! :)