What is Financial Freedom?

Why do we want more money?

None of us just want more money. Let us face two cold hard facts:

• money in and of itself can not make us happy; and
• money sure as heck cannot buy love (something that we are all looking for on some level).

We want more money because money allows us to do certain things. Maybe we want to spend more time at home with our family, or maybe we want to travel the world. Whatever our reason is, we need to figure out our WHY.

The Financial Freedom journey

The journey to Financial Freedom is not a smooth or easy one. It takes A LOT of energy to put it mildly. There will be several points along the journey when we will feel like we should throw in the towel (give up). We will start having the thoughts that it is so much easier:

• to just continue going to our jobs and being miserable;
• to continue to wish that we had a better life;
• to continue looking for a better paying job.

It is at these points along our journey that we will need to remind ourselves of our WHY.

How to use our WHY

How bad do you want it? You are going to have to fight for it.

When our WHY is big enough, when we have a burning desire for something deep down in our soul, the how tends to take care of itself. Our WHY will keep us moving and will make us try again and again after we have failed for the umpteenth time! It is our WHY that will keep us disciplined and make us take action towards Financial Freedom.

A burning desire to win

In Think and Grow Rich, Napolean Hill tells us that the starting point of ALL (not only Financial Freedom) achievement is a burning desire. A burning desire can make us live a life of abundance in all areas. Hill goes further to tell us “that every person who wins any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a BURNING DESIRE TO WIN, essential to success.”

Think back to times in our own lives when we wanted, yearned for, something so much that we went through hell and high water to get it. On those occasions, we had a burning desire (a WHY). So we see that our WHY may sound simple, but it is not to be taken lightly. Here’s a brief presentation I did about my “why”.

Most valuable asset

Did you know that our most important asset is our time?

What if we could spend our time doing what we love and fulfilling our purpose instead of moping around complaining about our jobs?

Research shows that over 60% of people are not engaged or motivated at work – they pretty much do not care. They turn up (most of the time) and drag themselves through each day. They turn up primarily for the paycheque.

Is there another way?

This is where being financially free comes in.

So what exactly does Financial Freedom mean and most importantly, how do we get there?

This kind of freedom is having enough passive/residual income. Passive/residual income is income we earn over and over again from work that we have done one time. For example, sales from a book we wrote, income earned from network marketing, or income earned from a rental property to cover our monthly living expenses.

The formula

Passive/residual income > (greater than) monthly living expenses

This means that we can do whatever we want whenever we want – with this freedom comes CHOICE!

What Financial Freedom is NOT

It is NOT:

These views make this kind of freedom seem out of reach. They also lead to the belief that this freedom is only for the chosen few. These are two of the reasons why so many of us do not aim to be financially free.

Example

Let us look at Sam as an example.

Sam has a job that pays him $15 million dollars per annum. This is his only source of income. His wife is a stay at home mom and she takes excellent care of their 2 children. Their children attend one of the best private schools in the country.

In recent times, Sam has been finding it challenging to save money and to meet his monthly living expenses. In addition, there were some adverse changes to his job. Sam is worried that he may lose his job because he has no idea how he and his family would survive if he did.

You see that even though Sam is earning a 7 figure salary, he is still not financially free: no job = no pay.

How do you get closer to this freedom?

To successfully get somewhere, a few of the things that we must know are:

• exactly where we are right now;
• exactly where we are going;
• why we want to go to the place; and
• how we intend to travel to the place.

Becoming this free is a process; it takes time and rarely happens overnight. To get closer to financial freedom we can either increase our passive or residual income and/or decrease our living expenses.

Of course, most of us fall into the trap where our living expenses increase the more we earn. Sometimes this is a mere case of Keeping up with the Jones. In these circumstances, we need to let go of the limiting thoughts that we need to look and act a certain way the more we earn. We need to keep our eyes on the prize!

Conclusion

In conclusion, Financial Freedom is not necessarily about becoming a billionaire. It is about having enough passive/residual income to cover our living expenses. With this kind of freedom comes choice.

We must ask ourselves: “what do we love doing?” “What tickles our fancies?” “What gets our juices flowing?” We should spend our time doing these things by becoming financially free.