Do You Desire Financial Freedom?
Ask yourself these important questions.
- Are you happy with your existing lifestyle?
- Have you found a meaningful work-life balance?
- Do you enjoy your job and find purpose in the daily routine?
These are important questions to answer. They provide important information about your desire for financial freedom. In my experience, responses can be divided into these categories.
1) Work is meaningful
You find purpose in your career and have no desire to stop working. That’s perfectly fine and respectable. You can continue working and be financially free – the two are not mutually exclusive.
Even if you have no desire to stop working a 40 – 60 hour week, I believe financial freedom is beneficial. At the very least, saving enough to reach “temporary freedom” can provide peace of mind. There is a possibility that your job could be eliminated, or your life circumstances change, or any number of concerns that might be partially remedied by financial freedom.
2) Work is meh, but necessary
You might be somewhat indifferent about work. If you are in this group, you probably don’t love work, and it’s not your burning passion, but it’s tolerable and it pays the bills. There are good days and bad days, but the overall trend might be described as neutral and necessary.
In this situation, your preferred level of financial freedom would be inversely related to your overall disdain for work. You need to work harder to increase your savings rate and reach financial freedom if you find yourself increasingly unhappy at work, because financial freedom will allow you to change careers or quit the rat race altogether.
3) Work is boring, terrible, soul and mind crushing
If you are in this group, financial freedom needs to be your highest priority. If you truly hate your job, you need to be willing to make sacrifices to escape. That might include cutting unnecessary expenses, working a side-job, building your human capital, or moving somewhere with a much lower cost of living. You need to be saving as much money as possible, so that you can change careers as quickly as possible. However,…
By focusing on Financial Freedom, your perspective can be transformed. You can go from slugging through 40 years of dreaded employment, to designing the life that you desire. And you can find freedom quickly if you’ll devote your time, attention and energy toward that goal.
The point is this, time (not money) is your most valuable asset. If your time at work makes you miserable you can create another source of income to quit and go find a new job or quit the work race for good. Life is too short to be miserable on a daily basis.
If you are interested in creating Financial Freedom, Contact me. drdorothy@drdorothy.net