Oh, who doesn’t want financial freedom?
The rising cost of living is jolly painful! Fixed expenses are increasing, there are mortgage rate rises, energy bills are up, grocery bills are higher. Even leisure activities like holidays and dinners out are more expensive. But if I am honest, the rising costs in our budget have as much to do with my rising level of spending as much as they do with the rising cost of living! Sometimes I am overindulgent in spending money on our current lifestyle. I admit it!’
There is a great appeal to the words ‘financial freedom’ for me.
At my current stage of life with young children and a mortgage and all the normal costs of living in Australia, our wages are getting sucked up by living expenses. But its not just that. Our future financial freedom is being eroded by our current lifestyle choices.
It is the words current lifestyle that I want to mention again. Because the point of this blog is for me to learn simple living to find financial freedom. I am hoping that by changing our lifestyle to simple living there will be an impact and a change on our finances.
I am going to go on a tangent for a moment, but it will loop back to what financial freedom means for me.
Years ago, I started reading a blog called Mr Money Moustache, which applies the concept of FIRE. FIRE means Financial Independence, Retire Early.
When I first heard about the concept of FIRE I was immediately intrigued by it. Financial independence means your investments generate enough income so that you can retire early. The financial independence part appealed to me more than retiring early. BORING! I don’t want to be done with my career in my mid-thirties. I’m just getting started.
Even though I am definitely still interested in financial independence, I am not interested in the massive sacrifices that need to be made to obtain early financial independence. To generate a proper wage, you need about $1 million dollars in investments. (i.e. $1 million dollars invested in shares / investment properties making about 5% interest, equals about $50,000 income per year)
Saving $1,000,000 in the near term would require a lot of sacrifice. I am not interested in making massive life sacrifices when I am relatively young and healthy. I want to enjoy life! However, I am fine to make some life sacrifices so long as it doesn’t impact on the quality of my life.
That concept of financial freedom as compared to financial independence sounds more achievable and less impactful than a full financial independence.
What does financial freedom mean for me?
It means:
- Spending money on things that I LOVE guilt-free (travel. I am all about travel)
- Making career choices not based on $$ but based on what I want to do with my time.
- Saving and investing in a prudent way
- Being generous to others (I really enjoying being generous things for people)
- Being able to take a mid-career break when I want.
I do NOT want to retire early. However, I do really want to have periods of ‘mini’ retirements. I want to have some more extended times off work at various points in my life. For example:
- I would like to take the kids out of school for six months and travel Europe with my family.
- I would like to have a year off work to write a book.
- I would like to take a year off work when each of my children are in their final year of school, just to enjoy the season.
An important part of financial freedom for me is that I would like to be financially free to make career decisions without worrying about the money. Stay up to date with my blog by Finding My Simple Life on Facebook or Instagram.