Can money buy time?

Can we buy time with money?

In a way, it can. I'd like to think that is what I did three months ago, telling my boss that his service was no longer required and giving him the required notice.

Haven't I always felt that a person who finishes his work life at the retirement age (which is sixty for my generation and sixty-five for the next) is like letting his own battery run until it is about used up? While he is by then free to do whatever he didn't have the time to do while engaged in paid work, his energy, vigour or dynamism may well have deserted him.

Haven't I always resented the prospect of having to stay with my job until the retirement age? However, while this dream of retiring early was excruciatingly tempting, it was also incredibly intimidating. No mortal souls in their right minds, it seems, would be so reckless as to do something to stop the monthly pay cheque coming in and wreck their job security. I had, for so long, found this to be an impossible hurdle to cross.

But one thing I have never lost faith in is that if there is something you dream about or want badly and you are really determined to make it come true, it will. Early retirement is one such thing in my case. Living in another country is another. With God's guidance and help, I can now afford to buy a few years' time and start a new life in Canada. There is probably no better deal in life than to buy time with money.