Today I want to share a bit of news with you all, I am financially independent, that’s right. I’m retired. I have everything that I need, and I have cut down my living expenses so much, that essentially I am living a simple lifestyle now.
I’ve gotten rid of the Responsibilities of my family, I’m just not taking responsibility for them anymore. With this revolutionary mindset, I have freed myself from the rat race. I am free from the 9 – 5 circle.
Benefits Of Financial Independence:
- You don’t have to work if you don’t want to.
- You can be here and relax and chill.
- Your time is your own time.
- You are your boss.
You can live a financially independent lifestyle just like me. I wanted to talk to you today about financial independence, and what I’ve learned about it, having lived through it.
The first thing is to realize that many of us are financially independent already. Financial independence is essentially when you’re able to sustain yourself and your lifestyle indefinitely, when you don’t have to work for the nine-to-five circle, when you can relax, chill, read a book play some computer games, or sit on the beach, the fact is that everybody has had this at some point in their life.
Financial Independence as a child:
All children are financially independent in some sense. They don’t have to worry about money, working a job, for at least say 18 years. Their Parents are providing them with all these things when they are being raised.
As a child, you all are financially independent, until you are sick of it and want something more for yourself. You wanted to see what more you could do with your life. You want to move out, you want to win the respect of people, and you want to attract a partner for your life, you want a career, you want it to be successful, and you want to see what you could make of yourself. It’s funny that many people want to go back to being Financially independent once more and find ways to downgrade their lifestyle.
I have got good news for you it’s easy to be financially independent. Just move back in with your parents, it will cut down your cost, rent usually takes up the bulk of your expenses. Food doesn’t cost all that much and if you were to cut down on your activities and remove all of your vacations, you could essentially live with very little money.
If you don’t want to move in with your parents, the other thing you could do is just go live on the streets. You can sleep in all-day you don’t have to work and that’s financial independence too.
Even my dog is financially independent. Financial independence at first sounds good, it sounds like a very creative revolutionary idea where you essentially can sustain yourself indefinitely
Other Way to Understand Financial Independence:
Assume you have a million bucks, you could make four percent off of that on the interest stock investment returns every year. That’s like a 40k income a year and you could just keep that going for as long as you want and you will never run out, as long as you don’t spend above say 40k a year. Now, inflation may eat away at that. So in reality, you may need more than that.
A while ago when I had come into some sum of money, I had thought to myself, “Well, I could just retire on this, If I choose to just lower my living expenses, lower my expectations, I could probably live forever on this amount of money and I thought, “Well, where would I live?”
I wouldn’t live in Silicon Valley, because it’s just way too expensive.
Well, I could just go to Southeast Asia where expenses are even lower and I could have an even better life, I could live like a king over there. I’m sure that there are many backpackers and Instagram influencers, Who have chosen life over there and say Bangkok, Thailand, or Bali in Indonesia.
Sometimes I wonder to myself if Given choices I will just find a small village to live in, sipping coconuts and sitting on the beach all day. The funny thing is a lot of people choose not to go after that and I think that’s where financial independence starts to show its flaws.
What you are not getting?
Imagine that you could get a million bucks and you were making four percent off of that. You have a 40K annual income and that all sounds good until you realize that there’s still a lot that you don’t get with that
Your health insurance is one thing to think about: If you have to provide health insurance for your spouse, Two to three kids plus yourself. That’s like four to five people already, and you need to pay for each person individually. A career, a job will get you that automatically. Otherwise, You’re gonna have to pay for yourself.
Missing the Carrer Path:
You might also be missing out on a career path, Which I think a lot of people think about. It’s not so big of a deal now but over the long run, you might find that as you get older, as you get into your thirties, forties, fifties. You find your classmates your peers they keep rising in status and level and you know some of these people are getting into like director positions, vice-president positions, their salaries going up. And meanwhile, You don’t have that career path. You’re just sitting on the beach, maybe with your financial independence.
You’ve got some amount of income that’s coming in, maybe that amount looked good when you’re in your 20s. But over time it didn’t keep up with the career progression, because there was no career progression there.
You don’t have social Status:
You also don’t have social status, which I think many people care about. I think financial independence usually sounds good for single people. When they don’t have to think about their family when they don’t have to think about whether their kids are going to respect them or if their wife or husband is going to respect them.
I think everyone wants to hear at least something more solid than being financially independent. Like, an actual career path, something that you’re passionate about, something that you’re at least working on.
Financial Independence Alone is not sustainable:
I think the fact is that financial independence itself is not so sustainable,
it’s sustainable with a steady velocity, but in reality, most people don’t have a steady velocity it is slowly accelerating over time as their career goes up.
I have realized that financial independence gets you a very bare-bones lifestyle. Very basic stuff and most people already had that and it’s more about realizing.
I think it’s really about creating more options for yourself, you know at the most basic level, maybe we can all afford to go live in a cheap place, like in the desert in a very sparse bare-bones lifestyle with our parents.
What’s Important?
When I think about it, I might want something like the ability to live in a pretty nice city. You know like New York City, with at least a nice apartment, good view and I would want to be able to support a family if I wanted like a bigger family.
Maybe go out to movies and theaters, if I would like to, and on top of it all it would be great, I don’t want to feel the burn of money leaving my pockets every time I go to a nice restaurant.
Even getting some respect from people around me, from my family, from my friends. Who would say, “Well, this guy seems pretty cool? He’s kind of a role model. He’s not just like a deadbeat guy, but he seems actually like he’s a productive functioning member of society.” That would be great.
Now you may not need any of these things and I don’t either. Nobody needs any of this stuff as I told you, The only thing we need is basic food water, and shelter and we’ve already got all of that. Most of us already have it.
Worked When I was Financial Independent:
You know, like when I was “financially independent”, Where I just simply wasn’t working for some time. I would say to myself, Well, there’s a nice thing over here and I would like it, But I know it’s a bit of a splurge and I would not buy that not with my own money. Not with my financially independent money.
I’m not gonna waste money on that, but I’m willing to do a little bit of additional work to get that, so this thing costs 500 bucks, so I’m willing to work for this thing, looked for jobs, and found the job paying 500 bucks for me to work for them. That’s what I did. I am just built-in that for them got my 500 bucks on PayPal and then use that to go buy this piece.
That’s pretty much like a job, isn’t it?
We Need More out of Life:
Doing Nothing was an option that most of us decided was not sufficient enough. Plenty of people do choose to go sit on the beach, you could go to Santa Monica and find a bunch of homeless people there. Those are the people who choose that route. Many people just said to themselves they wanted more than that. They wanted to taste the finer luxuries of life, they wanted more options, and more security, they wanted to see how far they can push themselves.
They wanted to play the game and I think that’s a good way to think about this.
The world is the Game to be Played:
Imagine you’re playing the game and this world has so much to offer excellent food, fine luxuries, and nice scenic destinations. Play the game see how far you can get and do it sustainably, such that, if you were to ever lose your job or if you wanted to just quit or do something else, it would not hit your lifestyle too hard.
I think that’s really where the mindset of financial independence comes in. Where you keep your spending controlled, such that, you always have the freedom to do what you want to do.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say on this topic. Let me know your thoughts on financial independence in the comments section below this post.