To achieve the lifestyle of our dreams is not beyond any home owner these days if they acquire a little financial understanding and apply a well thought out plan, which they adhere to.
With ever burgeoning Social Security budget blow outs in most Western countries, aged pension payments have become an issue of high priority.
Baby Boomers are beginning to hit the pension queues as governments scramble to cope.
Many imminent retirees who are home owners have never thought it possible to Escape the Rat Race to live a better life.
With wise use of savings gained from continually paying extra repayments into your home loan, it is possible to build a good sized property portfolio over a period of time.
Unfortunately it takes time to pay down your mortgage and then purchase another property by using similar sized repayments.
A very good plan for a hefty self funded retirement if started early in life.
There are a few simple strategies used in Australia by some home owners to plan their self funded retirement and I will share the easiest and most popular one here.
There are no capital gains or income tax applicable on your principal place of residence in Australia and that is why the smarter home owner uses this tax free investment strategy to create a secure retirement lifestyle.
I guess USA, Canada, UK and New Zealand would have legal and justice systems based on the Westminster model and therefore the basic ideas of what is being proposed would be applicable in idea format at least.
Here is a very popular model, which I have called The Italian Method: This plan begins with very humble beginnings.
Italian friends of mine originally used this strategy, that's why I named it after them.
The cheapest most affordable little home available is bought and basic repayments plus a small buffer are made.
The overall plan here is to upgrade every few years to larger and larger homes, maintaining their repayment ratios all the way through.
The usual ratio they set themselves is about 30 to 50% or more of weekly income being paid in repayments, depending upon areas of course.
The type of person taking this path is dedicated to the final outcome and they allow nothing to take them off course.
They never use equity growth to fund some whimsy.
They sensibly budget for trips and emergencies.
The outcome they seek is to have a very large home owned outright at retirement time and sell it off in good times(they seem to understand property cycles) and down size to a much smaller home, pay it out, the invest the balance and live from interest earned.
Say a three million dollar home is sold, a smaller home around one million dollars purchased and two million dollars invested at say 5% clear after income tax paid on interest earned.
That is a good plan.
$2,000 a week...
but even if it was only $1,000 a week...
it's a whole lot better than $365 a week on the pension! Golden Nuggets to take away from this 10th Article in the Series of 24 Articles is:

• Start planning your retirement as early as you become aware to do so.
  Time gives the added effect of your money compounding which assists your wealth creation goals.
  
• Be very focused on the end in mind.
  First you have to create a goal and set a plan to attain it.
  Then you must stick to that plan to reap the benefits.
  

You have about 40 years of working life and now with increases in longevity, you will have about 30 years to live on less than half of what you could not live on when you did work!