8 Habits That Will Help You Gain Financial Freedom
Money buys you the freedom to live the way YOU want
You may have heard the phrase, “Money doesn’t buy happiness.”
You’ve probably heard it dozens if not hundreds of times. The problem is, the phrase is incorrect.
Why? Because while money doesn’t directly buy happiness itself, it buys you something that brings you pretty damn close.
Freedom.
Some people believe that money is somehow dirty, that it’s not a proper topic for conversation, and flaunting what you’ve got is tacky and that being poor is almost a virtue.
Epictetus, a stoic philosopher, said:
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
What this means is that wealth isn’t about materialistic things and having grand possessions; it means that you’re not in a constant state of desire for that which you can’t afford, and in turn, this allows you to achieve the goals you have set for yourself.
Achieving financial freedom is a goal for a lot of people. It means having enough savings, investments, and cash on hand to afford the life that you’ve been dreaming of living.
More importantly, having financial freedom gives you something truly priceless:
Time and opportunities.
Everybody has the opportunity to create and invent. The thing that’s holding you back from fulfilling your dreams is that you lack time, you lack time because you have a 9–5 job that you need to pay the bills. Chances are, your 9–5 — while it pays well — doesn’t pay you enough for you to satisfy your goals and dreams truly.
Aristotle said it’s what we “repeatedly do” that produces excellence. So when it comes to money and wealth, what do you repeatedly do?
Financial excellence is a result of our everyday habits, and you want to be able to cultivate those habits in your own daily life to achieve financial freedom.
So, here are eight habits to incorporate into your life to get a step closer to financial freedom.
Learn Money Management + Savings
If you’re like several Americans, you’re living paycheck to paycheck with almost no money in savings and a bit of credit card debt.
I’m not going to say start penny-pinching and don’t ever buy yourself a cup of coffee, but it’d be a wise choice to learn how to properly manage the little income you have coming in if you want it to increase in the future.
Be smart. Devise some sort of budget — figure out how much is coming in and what is going out. Assume only minimum payments on all debts, and whatever happens, the income must be higher or equal to the expenses.
Begin paying off your debts — that should be a priority.
Make a list of all your debts. Your debt list should include things like your car loans, credit cards, student loans, etc.
Organize the debt from smallest to largest.
Begin by paying the minimum payments to pay off your smallest debt first.
Once you’re done with that, put all your energy into debt #2. Continue doing so until the debt is completely paid off.
Once your debt is paid off — you can turn the page to your savings.
The unexpected happens to everything.
Having a savings account to cover anything that might come up will give you peace of mind.
Instead of scrambling for money on car repairs, medical expenses, etc., make sure to create a foundation from which you can pull from in case of emergencies.
Pick Your Career Choice Wisely
Your biggest wealth-building tool is your income.
While not a habit, this is an important thing to keep in mind when switching careers or making new business endeavors.
Whether you’re choosing to go into the corporate world, become an entrepreneur, and start your own business, you need to understand that you have to make sure your career aligns with your monetary goals.
You can’t become a teacher with a salary of 50k and expect to retire at 30 with millions in the bank account and a yacht waiting for you.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Does this job align with your goals?
- Will you grow? Does it have opportunities for you to move up and grow personally and professionally?
- Is there income-earning potential? Does it support your goals of financial freedom? You’re not going to be making your ideal from the start, but is there an opportunity for your income to increase?
- Do you love it? Don’t waste your time at a job you dislike. It’ll make your growth plateau. Find something you’re passionate about that allows you to utilize your skillset.
Your choice of career will have a significant impact on your long-term financial plan, so take it seriously.
Improve Your Self-Awareness
Self-awareness allows you to bring into focus on the motivations behind the daily decisions that you make.
Every thought and feeling you express are results of the seeds you plant in your life. That means that the things that happen in your life are fruits of what you have planted.
“Abundance is something we can attract or reject. It is up to you to decide.”
The amount of wealth you create in your life is based on developing an awareness of what you want for yourself.
People who don’t have an awareness of wealth continually talk about the lack of it in their life. If you’re someone who’s just starting, you can’t allow your current results to control your thinking.
Redirect your attention and focus on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘when.’ Focus on the effort you put into your work, focus on your mind and what you manifest.
Focus on what you want to accomplish and identify the necessary steps to achieve it.
Everything you have is a manifestation of your mind. If you want to achieve great things, you need to manifest great things.
Set Life Goals For Yourself
It’s not enough to simply ‘want’ financial freedom. It’s not enough to write ‘make money’ as a goal in your journal every day.
You need to be specific about your goals and intentions. Write down how much money you want to have in your bank account, write down how much money you want to be earning each month, write down how you plan to start and scale your business to grow financially.
Write down what your lifestyle will look like and how old you want to be when you achieve the life of your dreams.
Create milestones for yourself at regular intervals, write them down, and look at the weekly to make sure you’re on track.
The more specific your goals, the higher chance of achieving them.
Educate Yourself Always
The habit of lifelong learning will improve your career, any investments that you make, the money you spend, as well as any other areas of your life.
Learning is an ongoing process.
As soon as you think you’ve got it all figured out, you’ve read all the books and studied all the courses — something comes along to remind you that you’ve barely scratched the surface.
Make learning a daily goal, and your finances will rise because of it.
Invest in knowledge because it pays the best interest, and your return will always be the highest.
Take courses, read books, listen to podcasts, knowledge makes you see the world through a different lens, it makes you a valuable asset, and it gives you a sense of confidence like no other.
Put In The Work — Daily
Achieving financial freedom is the result of consistent diligence.
We have all heard of individuals who stumbled into wealth through inheritance or the lottery, while it’s a great story, it’s not a memorable one.
The memorable stories are these:
Jeff Bezos worked 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and is now president of the multinational technology company Amazon with a net worth over 150 billion dollars.
J.K. Rowling was a single mom struggling to make ends meet before she wrote the Harry Potter books. She battled depression and other obstacles before becoming one of the most successful female writers in recent history.
Roman Abramovich is known across the globe as a multi-billionaire with stakes in Evraz, Norilsk Nickel, and the UK’s Chelsea soccer team has a net worth of $11.2 billion.
However, before he landed on Forbes’ Billionaires List, he was an orphan growing up in Moscow who flipped multiple investments in companies such as oil industry giant Sibneft, Russian Aluminum, and steelmaker Evraz Group to turn huge profits.
Oprah Winfrey was born into a poor Mississippi family in 1954, after a traumatic upbringing in which she was abused and molested by two family members and a family friend, she ran away from home when she was 13. At 14, she gave birth — and the child died. Winfrey was awarded a scholarship to Tennessee State University. Following an appearance in a local beauty pageant, she went on to become the first African-American TV correspondent in the state at the young age of 19.
She began work on her very own morning show. It became known as “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” She was the first woman in history to own and produce her talk show.
The show aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011. Since moving on from her talk show, Winfrey has founded OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network. Her net worth is over 2 billion.
These are the real inspirational stories. The ones that show you that only through hard work will you achieve the life you desire.
Success and discipline go hand in hand. You can’t be successful in life if you don’t learn to be disciplined. You can’t crush your goals if you don’t make an effort to work hard.
There isn’t a single thing that you can occasionally do that will lead to optimal results. The only thing that will ever determine success in your life is what you do every single day.
Patience Is Key
Shortcuts, born out of impatience, make things 10x more challenging.
With wealth, impatience often leads to decisions with dire consequences.
Warren Buffett is the epitome of a patient investor.
His investing success is often the result of patiently waiting for the right time to buy a stock or a company.
Patience is what allows investors to ride out waves in the market. They know that declines are inevitable, but they also know that eventually, the market will rebound.
Life isn’t meant to be comfortable and breezy, you’re supposed to have road bumps, but patience teaches you how to overcome those moments with grace.
You wasting precious time worrying about every variable and outcome that’s beyond your control keeps you in a negative and helpless state of mind. It takes discipline to move forward, but forward is where you need to go if you want to achieve anything in life.
Perseverance Is Essential
If earning financial freedom were easy, every single person would be doing it.
Financial freedom requires you to jump through several difficult challenges. It may be small, it may be significant, it might be every day that it feels like the world is against you, or it may come in waves.
Regardless, perseverance keeps you working towards your goal and achieving them.
Perseverance is a quality that gets less attention, yet it’s crucial in the work required to turn a business into an enterprise, given the challenges and roadblocks thrown up along the way.
Whatever the challenge, perseverance keeps you working through it to your end goal.
