The core thesis
Four planes. One life.
Ask ten people what retirement means and nine will give you a number. That's the Money plane talking — and it's only one of four.
A "retirement" with money but no people you love, no place that feels like yours, and no ideas of your own isn't freedom. It's unemployment with savings. This site works all four planes, because that's where the actual life is.
Read each plane below. Score yourself honestly, 1 to 5. Your lowest plane is your real retirement date — that's the one to work on first.
Place
What it is
Freedom over where you live, work, and spend your days. It can mean staying rooted in one place by choice — or being able to leave whenever you want. The point isn't travel. The point is that your geography is a decision, not a sentence.
What it isn't
It isn't a passport-stamp collection or a van parked somewhere photogenic. Plenty of nomads are running from something; plenty of rooted people are exactly where they'd choose to be. Place-freedom is about the choosing.
Conal's story
I live in Saskatoon. I could live anywhere the work allows — and I stay because I choose it. That's the difference a decade of building optionality makes: the same postal code feels completely different when you're there on purpose.
Score yourself — Place (1–5): Could you live somewhere else for a year if you wanted to? Is where you are now a choice you'd make again today? Be honest. Write the number down.
People
What it is
Freedom over who you spend your time with and who you answer to. Chosen relationships — family, friends, community, partners in the work — instead of obligatory ones. It also means the freedom to say no: to rooms, roles, and relationships that cost more than they give.
What it isn't
It isn't popularity or networking. A thousand LinkedIn connections and nobody who'd help you move a couch is a People-plane score of one.
Conal's story
I spent years saying yes to every room. Boards, committees, "quick coffees" that ate whole afternoons. The most freeing sentence I've learned is a polite no. These days my calendar has fewer entries and better people — including the First Nations partners and communities I work alongside, where the relationship comes before the transaction, always.
Score yourself — People (1–5): Who did you spend time with last week — and did you choose them? How many relationships in your life are opt-in versus inherited obligation?
Money
What it is
Freedom from needing to trade hours for survival. Income you own — not income you rent from an employer who can evict you with a restructuring. The amount matters less than the structure: owned income at a modest level beats rented income at a high one, because only one of them survives you quitting.
What it isn't
It isn't a net worth number on a screen. (There's a whole essay on that.) It isn't yachts or "financial freedom" merch. Money is fuel for the other three planes — if it isn't buying you Place, People, or Ideas freedom, it's just a high score in a game nobody else is playing.
Conal's story
I'm a trader and a builder. I run income strategies — the wheel, cash-secured puts, covered calls — that pay me monthly instead of asking me to hope. I own businesses. I own a rental. Every one of those is a small engine, and engines compound. The flywheel page is the full curriculum.
Score yourself — Money (1–5): If your main income stopped tomorrow, how many months before your life changes? What fraction of your income would continue without your hours?
Ideas
What it is
Freedom of thought. Thinking for yourself in an age of narratives, hype cycles, and manufactured consensus. It means having a thesis — about money, about the world, about your own life — that you built yourself and can defend, and being willing to update it when the evidence changes.
What it isn't
It isn't contrarianism for sport, and it isn't mainlining financial media. Consuming ten hours of market commentary a week isn't research — it's renting your thinking to whoever shouts loudest.
Conal's story
I keep a list of thinkers I actually read — Gromen on debt, Saylor on hard money, Annie Duke on decisions under uncertainty — and I argue with all of them in my own notes. This whole site is my thinking in public. The day I stop updating the thesis is the day it stops being mine.
Score yourself — Ideas (1–5): When did you last change your mind about something important? Could you explain your own investment thesis — in your own words, without quoting anyone?
Your lowest plane is your real retirement date.
That's the one to work on first. A 5 on Money and a 2 on People isn't a plan — it's a warning. The good news: planes compound. Income buys back time, time deepens relationships, chosen people sharpen your thinking, clear thinking makes better money decisions. That's the flywheel.