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Financial Independence: The foundation of FIRE
Financial Independence representing the first two letters of the ‘FIRE’ acronym is the bedrock of the entire FIRE movement. But why is it so important and why should you care? Well my friends, that is exactly what we are going to discuss in this article, and get clear on why all while painting a vivid picture for what a life of financial independence can look like for you.
Financial Independence provides you with the freedom to enjoy life
Society has taught us for a long time that we should get a degree, buy a house, get married, and work a regular 9 – 5 job with the aim of saving enough money to one day, maybe, maybe retire and enjoy the fruits of your labor. However, with life becoming ever more expensive, achieving the same basic lifestyle that our parents had is becoming increasingly difficult. On the flip side, we’ve never had so much access to quality information that can help inform us and achieve an abundant life. The fundamental issue with the 9 – 5 is that too often we trade our time for money and miss out on the important things in life. Financial independence is what provides the opportunity to get out of this loop.
Imagine a world where you don’t have to live pay check to pay check and a world where you have the flexibility and freedom to do what you want, when you want! I’m here to tell you that its absolutely possible and you’re in the right place.
Forget living paycheck to paycheck
Financial independence will provide you with the opportunity to transform yourself from a constant hustler, perpetually trading their time for money to an abundant millionaire! One of the biggest challenges of living with financial constraint is that you often don’t have the needed breathing room to enjoy life to its fullest and are more vulnerable to making poor financial decisions. Financial independence provides you with an incredibly important security blanket to take the stress out of life by protecting you from life’s challenges. This goes beyond the emergency savings and extends to having the funds available to pursue your passions whether that be travelling, spending more time with your children or even starting a business.
To summarize here are 10 reasons why financial independence might be important to you
- Be able to retire early instead of maybe, retiring at 65
- Reduced stress by virtue of not living paycheck to paycheck and having enough funds to cover life’s unexpected events
- Time to pursue your passions
- Time to focus on your health and live a longer, happier life
- Creating generational wealth for your family
- Freedom from debt
- No longer being reliant on a job for income and survival
- Improved quality of life by being able to take advantages of life’s opportunities
- Greater peace of mind
- Ability to create a schedule on your terms
- More time to focus on personal growth
If you take one thing away from this article, I hope that its an understanding that financial independence goes beyond simply having enough money. Its about what the freedom and opportunities to maximize life brings to you. With this newfound clarity, its time to create your vision of what your life will look like when you achieve financial independence. As you then go through the ups and downs on your journey you should always reflect back on this vision as your North Star and purpose towards achieving financial independence. If not, there is a danger that financial independence becomes solely about achieving a particular number. That might not sound like a problem in and of itself however I have seen many people so focused on achieving their FIRE number they forget to enjoy the journey and they lose sight of why they wanted financial independence in the first place. They then reach there goal and look back on the past 10 years or whatever their growth stage is and realize 10 years of life passed them by. Therefore my advice to you is to be clear on your why, work hard towards your goals, but remember to enjoy the journey!
Ok, freedom hunters, that’s it for this one.
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