If you are reading this financial freedom article, you are probably stuck in a rut in your job or life, and you need a change. Maybe a big change. More than likely you want to live a life where you get up every morning energized and ready to tackle the day. And, be in total control of every minute of that day. When I began writing this blog, I was forced to try to put together a method or a system for something I’ve been working on for a very long time.
This is a lifestyle system I’ve been slowly working on for years, subconsciously. When I decided to start blogging about it, I found it very hard to put it into an actual methodology. I changed it several times even in the first couple of months of this blog. I think it will evolve as I understand it better and come up with better ways to articulate what needs to be said. This is what I’ve come up with so far. The idea of total financial freedom, I consider, is being only reliant on an economic system where you are in complete control.
The first key is getting the right mindset. You need to believe you are in control of all your finances and you are the only one responsible for your finances. There is no blame to be put anywhere else. The decisions we make now will affect where we will be years down the road. The Problem is there are a lot of people who will want to push you down and place the blame on the government or other systems. If you’re going to have financial freedom, you need to take total control of everything.
I call this the mindset category. Then there is the category where you need to get control of your finances. Pay down your debt. Understanding how to use money as a tool to get the life you want rather than using money to buy things. I call this the personal finances category. Then there is the final category. I love this one the best, as do most of the people I talk to.
It’s the replace the income category. This is where you create multiple streams of income where you are the business, and you find customers. Most of the time, this includes not having a 9 to 5 job. Although some people prefer to still have a job, just create several side hustle streams of income. Let’s break all three of these categories down further and explore them further.
Financial Freedom Category #1; Getting your financial mindset right
I think this is the most critical aspect of getting to financial freedom. Most of us have been taught, as well as our parents and grandparents, to get a good job, and that job will take care of us. School systems are designed around this idea as a means to create a workforce to keep our businesses and our economy moving. Businesses were traditionally always started by renegade risk-takers who flew by the seat of their pants; throwing caution to the wind to possibly create something great.
Everybody else was expected to fall in line and take care of these businesses. The problem with that is business isn’t as stable as it was years ago. One minute you’re chatting with the friends you’ve made there about the events of your weekend, the next minute you’re sent packing; looking for new friends.
With so much instability in the business world, why should workers feel obligated to a job? Jobs are fine if you like the daily routine. But, if you don’t, you have more options now than ever to do your own thing. I suggest, that even if you like having a job, you think of yourself in a business mindset and create multiple streams of income. This way when your job decides they don’t need you anymore, you always have income coming in until you find a way to replace it.
The next part sounds pretty harsh, but I believe it to be the reality. Don’t own your job. I consider owning the job you work for like this. If someone asks you what you do for a living, the first thing you mention is the place you work then you talk about what you do there. I did have jobs for a long time, but when asked what I did, I mentioned all the ways I made money instead of the company where I worked.
The more you do this; the more your mind will begin to transform into thinking of yourself as your own business. The goal of your business should be to take care of you and your family at any cost. Anybody else’s business comes second to yours.
Financial Freedom Category #2; Getting your finances in order
This second part is about getting your finances in order and creating a place where you and your family don’t need to worry about the weekly income. I don’t know if that sounded right, so let me clarify it better. You shouldn’t be worried about your next paycheck. We face too many other problems in life worth worrying about. Your next paycheck shouldn’t be one of them; especially if we can take control of it.
We need to free our mind of that burden, so we can better concentrate on things we can’t control. There are more than enough problems we can’t control. Let’s eliminate the issues we can control. So, you say, everyone worries about money except the super-rich. That’s not true. There is a growing number of people in our society who are not super-rich but have eliminated the worry of money from their daily lives.
It’s a matter of extending your focus from your next paycheck to the next three to five years. If you knew all your bills were covered for the next year, would you think about making money differently? Could you relax and create a good plan for making more money well into the future rather than figuring out how to get your bills paid next week or next month? Getting to this place requires three basic things, paying off all debt, creating a nest egg of money as a buffer to your income, and creating spending habits where you always spend less than you consistently earn.
You will have times when things come up, and you slip past your earnings for the week or month, but these should be a rarity. These small occurrences are why you need a nest egg as a cushion. Don’t get into a consistent habit of dipping into the nest egg. You would not believe the stress that gets relieved once you get your finances in order.
Financial Freedom Category #3; Getting multiple streams of income where you are in control
The final section is the one I find the most fun; making more money. With more money, we can do more, see more, and experience more in life. If we have a 9 to 5 job, we can go on vacation, but we always need to be back to work Monday morning. What if we didn’t have to do it? What if we had a life where if we wanted to stay an extra day on vacation, we could? And we could do it without calling and asking someone’s permission? There are a ton of ways to create passive or even semi-passive income streams using the internet.
The internet is still the ‘Wild West’ when it comes to creating income. Systems can be mismatched and assembled like a great Lego creation. Something can be created and tailored to fit just about anyone’s skill level or personality. If you like to sell physical products, arbitrage, an Etsy store, Amazon FBA fulfillment, or eBay are all Lego pieces to be assembled into a creative money-making machine. If you only want commissions without the hassle of providing customer service, affiliate marketing probably fits you better.
If you want to create your digital products or write books use Amazon Kindle Store, Create Space, Apple I Books, or Amazon S3 or AWS as a means for delivery. There are specialty shopping cart tools you can put together or even just use the internet’s largest payment system, PayPal, to exchange money for goods. The systems you can use to build multiple streams for yourself are staggering. All you need is your imagination and a little guidance to figure out how to use them.
Be Safe,
Kevin