The Hardest Part of Achieving Financial Freedom

I wanted to answer a question that actually came from a real estate meetup I was at. Basically the question was, “What’s the hardest part about earning financial freedom?”

There are so many things that go into that but let’s define what financial freedom is to me just so we have that, that definition. Financial freedom for me essentially means, you have a set of bills that are due during the month and sometime over that month you earn what’s often called passive income to pay those bills, it doesn’t mean you have a fancy lifestyle, to use what Gary Vaynerchuk talks about, it’s not about being fancy, it’s not about the cars, it’s not about the vacation, the watches, it’s not even about unit count. It’s simply the ability to have options. An amazing thing happens when you have options, you can choose how to spend your time, going forward. So that’s what I mean by financial freedom or at least that’s what I took it to mean when I was asked that question.

The hardest part about financial freedom, and earning that for me personally was sacrificing for 15 years. I’ve talked about it many times. I spent my twenties wasting them. We lived paycheck to paycheck even though we had okay income. In our twenties we were not doing anything that would set us up for the future.

That all changed on my 30th birthday when we realized that we didn’t want to have to do that for the rest of our lives and so we started this journey. What I mean by sacrifice is it’s easy to start and you can use that first week, month, year, whatever it is, to start living below your means, you start saving.Then financial freedom tests you because let’s say from 30 to 45 say your income triples or maybe doubles. Then you’re buying assets, you’re starting to feel richer. That house you bought is worth $20k more. Maybe it’s worth $25k more.

You can go to the bank and refi out and get this tax free money. Wouldn’t that $20k really, wouldn’t that buy a new car or take a once in a lifetime vacation and then, oh, by the way, not only are your incomes rising around you, but your friends and your family, they’re starting to show off now. They moved from an apartment to a house. Maybe they go from an apartment to a Condo, a condo to a house. Then they go from that house to a nicer house. Maybe they go from a Honda to a BMW to a Mercedes. But you could see around you that people are showing off. And again, you’re on this cycle of sacrifice and living below your means and I can tell you it’s hard. It’s hard to go from spending a hundred percent of your income to spending 50% of your income is hard.

Going to that third house warming party in the great school district. It’s hard having your friends roll up in the latest, greatest wizbang car. But how bad do you want it? Are you willing to sacrifice for 10 to 15 years. That’s hard. The hardest part of being financially free is being consistent, consistently sacrificing, realizing it doesn’t feel good.

It will test you, your income will go up and it will test you. Your friends will test you, not out of a mean way, but they will show off and they will show you what they got and what they’re comfortable spending. But we got two years into this, both of us being retired and now we can go anywhere we want. We could pitch in and help somebody if they need help during the week, which is really flexible and nice. People don’t realize how hard it is to sacrifice for 10 to 15 years. Can you do it? Can you and your significant other do it? Because I promise you your income will go up, your assets will go up and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to do stupid things.

We didn’t upgrade the kitchen. Our kitchen was the same kitchen from the base model we bought in 1999 when we couldn’t afford it. Our cars were 10 years old. It’s tough, but it can work. All this other stuff about finding and leveraging and financing, that’s nothing compared to sacrificing for 15 years. So that’s the hardest part. I hope that makes sense.

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