"Bucket List", a list of things you want to do before you die. I really dislike that term, why can't it be a list of things that show you are living life to the full. Perhaps it should be a "Living List", which sounds much more upbeat to me.
Whatever one calls it, it's not something that I've thought about much before now. I can't complain about my life to date, but maybe the past has been a bit too much focus on work and saving, and not quite enough on doing the living (bucket) list type things. However, the flip side is that my work and saving focus has played a major part in letting me retire early, and giving me the time now for the living list ideas.
So having decided that, what's on my living list? A month or so back, the answer was nothing, something I figured needed to change. It's not been as simple as I thought though. To start off, I found that I was trying to think of major things only, next was that travel seemed to be the go to idea but that seemed a bit too narrow. After that, the temptation was to Google "bucket list ideas", but won't that just mean that I have someone else's bucket list rather than my own?
Sally has also joined in, so here are our lists of ideas that we have come up with so far (I've highlighted in red the ones which are on both my and Sally's lists):
David
RV trip - North America
Climb a mountain (not something ridiculous like Everest - friends seem to recommend Mount Kilimanjaro)
Live in France and learn to speak French
Do a Half Ironman Triathlon (and maybe a full Ironman) - seems unlikely given my useless swimming!
Get good at skiing
Renovate a house
See the Northern Lights
Sally
Visit the Grand Canyon (presume we would go during the RV trip on my list)
Holiday in Bali
Buy a cheap shack on a beach on a lesser known Caribbean Island and spend part of each year living in it
See the Northern Lights
Get a job somewhere that will really make a difference
Buy a house and renovate it
Find a way of earning lots of money
It doesn't seem to be a very long or impressive list, but at least it's a start. There are a few other things bouncing around my mind, cycling some of the famous mountain climbs in France, enjoying nature some more, but I'm not quite ready to properly put them on the list. I guess that one issue with these lists is that they don't look cheap, so I'm not sure how they are going to fit in with my Cost to Retire budget.
Make a comment on this blog if you have some ideas - I might like to borrow one or two.