Think laterally …

I used the (not terribly large) insurance payout from a car accident to downsize, buy some decks, a mixer, some headphones, a lot of music … and the time it took to fulfill a lifelong dream by learning to mix and becoming a DJ.

A year later I had five residencies, averaged two gigs a week, every week, every year.

Now I do contract work for three months a year … doing ‘proper grownup work’ … and earn the rest of my keep DJing, which is enough to make £30K a year — if I want £40K I do another 3 months’ contract work … but I never need the money that badly and am all happier for it.

The most important aspect of it was the realisation that what it would take would be downsizing and cutting my living expenses to the absolute minimum — no junk food, no take-outs, cutting out going to the pub/bar every week, not buying ridiculously over-priced clothes but creating an actual ‘look’ from old-and-worn ‘distressed’ stuff, not going to the cinema but buying the DVD two years after it was released, etc.

And now I’m happier than I ever was when I had a lot more money — because I get to do the thing I love more than the things I don’t love.

What it paid for was … time in which to learn to do the thing I loved.