Diary of a future rentier (1)

Not far from a year ago, I shared with you the day in the life of an annuitantwhich more or less fictitiously retraced my life at the time. I say more or less because I wasn't an annuitant at the time, but a number of things had fallen into place, deliberately or otherwise, that enabled me to live a very relaxed life. Unfortunately for me, new professional upheavals have since upset this momentary calm, and today I'm living far less well than I ever have before. It looks like I'm on the last dive of the happiness curveI'd just thought I could spare myself the trouble.

However, the "day in the life of an annuitant"It was a trigger, a foundation on which to build. This pillar article gave me the idea of writing a diary to retrace my life's journey as a future annuitant, strewn with pitfalls as it is today, but which should show that little by little, the things I've put in place are also reflected in my daily life. My strategy for living better by becoming an annuitant, explained in my e-bookis indeed still relevant today. It's just that my current professional context unfortunately forces me to live differently, for the time being.

Like most teenagers, I never really liked to study, but I didn't see it as a disease either. I saw it as a necessary evil: not studying meant having to do manual, physically demanding work. It has to be said that back then, as today, the craft professions were very much frowned upon. They were preferred to the muffled world of offices. Yet today, unemployment is more likely to affect salespeople and young graduates than so-called manual professions. What's more, the physical fatigue generated by the latter has given way to psychological fatigue and constant stress in the administrative professions. In the end, I tell myself that I wouldn't be any unhappier today using my hands rather than my brain... but that's another story.

In short, I was studying, and I have to admit, with today's eyes, that I was leading a privileged life, with few responsibilities or worries other than passing my exams. This still left me plenty of time to enjoy life to the full. My four years at university were undoubtedly the best I've ever had. Paradoxically, my financial means were derisory at the time.

I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life... perhaps unconsciously because I didn't want to work! I remember visiting a guidance counsellor, who put me through a battery of psychological tests. Among the professions I was looking for, I had ticked off "rentier", without really knowing what this would mean for me afterwards. The counsellor simply told me that my profile was original, and I think that in the end she was even more borrowed than I was from the results of the analysis.