It has been five years since I have achieved the financial independence – an endeavor I started fifteen years prior.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely – but peculiarly, the feeling of joy and pride analogous to the winner of the Boston Marathon did not materialized until the fifth year of after the milestone.
We will discuss the mystery behind the idiosyncrasy – but first let distinguish the difference between financial independence and financial freedom from the 1DesignerLife perspective.
Financial independence is the ability to make personal decision that has an impact on the “Self” or the family the “Self” as a member – independently from all others with regard to the financial impact.
For example, if a person has achieved financial independence, he/she has gained the ability to detach from any job for any personal reason independently from the employer or the business entity that provide the financial compensation.
In addition, financial independence provides greater mobility. The accomplishment enhances the capability to move and live anywhere that is in line with his/her personal preference – independently from the constraint of a job.
The short coming for many early financial independence path adopters is surprisingly – money. The financial plan was not thoroughly vetted prior to the execution.
Without the financial chain to a job and so much more free time, many will discover unexpected passion, activities or just plain boredom that often lead to unanticipated expenses that were not in the original financial planning.
Financial freedom is the ability to make personal decision that has an impact on the “Self” or the family the “Self” as a member – independently from all others with regard to financial impact and without the direct limitation of money.
Essentially, financial freedom has the same definition as financial independence but with one additional requirement – without the direct limitation of money.
As depicted in figure 1 below, others can use money to trade for your time. Money itself can enslave you through the choice of lifestyle or your intimate and personal view of money – as illustrated in figure 2.
Financial freedom is the ultimate attainment of relationship between the “Self” and money – fundamentally the two coexist within a close boundary, but money does not drive the core essence of the “Self”.
It can be argued that financial freedom can only be attained through the absolute act – death.
Yes, that is the fact. However, it is so much better to experience it while being alive – albeit with the less than perfect form of financial freedom. Financial freedom is part of the Self-Complexity Odyssey – a work in progress!
On the average, the majority of you will cross the financial independence mile stone in 10 to 30 years time frame with the proper planning.
The typical plan involved managing all expenses with a microscopic view of the entire house hold budget.
In essence, the executor of the plan is aggressively moving away from the lifestyle he/she had been conditioned thus far – to the one that is mathematically predicted to have a better financial outcome.
Depending on the targeted time frame of the endeavor, it should be obvious that the shorter in years of the plan the arduous the effort.
The involved task begins with the internal psychological battle of detaching activity and behavior that cost money, similarly to fighting drug or alcohol addiction.
What really makes the attempt so much harder for many early adopters is that many of the activity and behavior are accepted by the mainstream, friends and family – unlike drug and alcohol.
Monkey sees money does is the baseline hallmark of all the primates – we are primates!
Once the person has crossed the financial independence milestone, he/she has effectively found a lifestyle that is different than the mainstream – and it is a tailored made lifestyle.
Unfortunately, the price of success is often meant leaving behind closed friends and crucially family members that do not want to be part of your financial game plan – they are content with the way of life of the mass.
At the financial independence junction, many of you will fall back because of the failed relationship that was not anticipated in the detailed plan at the start.
In addition to the distance relationship with closed friends and family, many of the players of the financial independence plan struggled to overcome many lifelong addictions that drained financial resource – drugs, alcohols, vacations, cars, houses, clothing, food, entertainment and all things under the sun.
For many, the double whammies of losing closed friends and family along the way and the internal struggles to overcome personal addictions that eventually led to the disintegration of the financial endeavor.
It goes without saying, once the financial independence plan fell apart, financial freedom is no longer a possibility – by definition at 1DesignerLife.com, financial freedom is the mile marker after financial independence.
So what is exactly financial freedom?
For thousands of years, money or its prehistoric equivalent is the corner stone of all societies around the globe.
Money has permeated into the lives of the 99 percents of the population of 7.7 billion as of the first quarter of the 21st century.
When you hear someone says “money does not bring happiness!” – 99 percents of the time, that person is not telling the truth from his/her own perspective with regard to the impact of money onto his/her personal life – to be fair, it is very possible the person may not have the scope of understanding the role of money and society in general.
The “money does not bring happiness” phrase only applied to the super-mega wealthy, the super-mega poor who has nothing left to lose – and the player who has successfully achieved financial freedom before death.
Through the process of looking ahead, planning, steady hands and focus in execution and a pinch of luck – I have arrived at the financial independence mile marker in my early 40’s.
Distinctively I recalled the feeling of indifference the day I darted the financial bull eye. One would think such a personal and momentous achievement would bring on the rush of nostalgia – ironically, it was non-event.
We will not go into the detail of the experience, but I will share an observation one year later that explained the phenomenon.
I was traveling oversea extensively with the new found freedom. One day I was sitting in a makeshift coffee shop in Vietnam across an old man who was handling a cage with a young and beautiful bird – chirping and tweeting all out at the morning sun.
For a moment the old man went back to his house and hooked the cage to the string hanging down from the front fascia of the tiny home.
Suddenly, I heard a faint click that instinctively drawn my attention toward the cage. The door of the bird cage was unlatched and swung opened – freedom was less than a second away for the bird.
The bird looked at the opened door, jumped and stood on the door ledge and remained at that position until the old man returned – the bird hopped back to center of the cage as the old man reached up and latched the door.
I will leave the discussion to the readers why the bird did not fly off at the opportunity of freedom.
Back to the topic of financial independence and financial freedom!
Four years passed the financial independence mile marker, my perception and the understanding of the new found world has grown and the personal creativity rocketed into the blue sky – these creativities were not part of the financial independence plan!
No it was not a mistake or an error of omission – it is part of my self-complexity odyssey.
According to many of the Monte Carlo Simulation implementations, I have 95 percents and greater in probability of living out my life with my family, without ever have to chain myself to uninspiring employments – this is financial independence!
For the remainder of my existence, what started out as the path to financial independence – the endeavor has perfectly morphed into a journey of expressing my inner creativity without the limitation of money – this is financial freedom!
A worthy creativity is not bounded by a financial figure!
Let’s play the game of life!
