For most of my life I've worked under the assumption that money buys happiness. It didn't matter how many times I heard critics preach to the contrary, it seemed simple: money will allow me to buy the things that make me happy. Over the last three years my perspective has shifted.

One day I sat down and made a list of all of the things I wanted to do in my life. I realized I'd never put much thought into it, so I wanted to see what would come out. Some of the things — like “Compose a spectacular HDR photo” — were pretty simple. Others items — such as staying at the Burj al Arab Hotel in Dubai — were going to be a bit of a challenge. Then there were a few that were downright impossible (go on a Virgin Galactic space flight, for instance).

When I created this list, I had a solid job as a financial analyst. I was making good money. I'd written these things out, but didn't really plan to cross many off anytime in the near future, simply because I didn't have the time. After all, it was probably going to take more than my two weeks of vacation to prepare for my Galactic space flight.

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Last fall, I quit my job. As nice as it was to have a steady paycheck and the prestige of being known as a “portfolio analyst”, there was one key component that was missing from the job: I wasn't happy doing it.

Around the time I quit, I wrote a post here at Get Rich Slowly called “Budgeting for a Lifestyle Change”. The post recounted a few details of my story, and gave some pretty basic advice about how to financially prepare for a big change — in my case, this was a move to Thailand to do some freelance work and start my own business.

The response to that post was all over the map. Some loved the idea; some thought I was nothing more than a selfish twenty-something; still others thought I'd be back in a “real job” within months.

After