About

Financial Independence – Early Retirement – Freedom – Choice

Hello and welcome to the blog that’s all about the road to financial independence – building wealth, so we can quit the rat race and take back control of our time. Getting ourselves into a position where we no longer need to work for money – we have money that works for us.

• How to get there – making the impossible possible
• Documenting the Journey (& surviving the wait)
• Achieving the Dream – Life Phase 2

We’re going to talk about choosing how to live and how to spend now, so that we can be free of financial worries for the rest of our lives.

It’s not about being insanely frugal and recycling teabags to save money, but it is about being intentional about how we spend our hard earned cash, living below our means and investing the difference.

Building a war chest of investments that work for us, every single day and even while we sleep, compounding and compounding until we’ve grown our very own magic money tree.

About Me

I am a forty something single parent of two. Monday to Friday I am a Finance Manager at a global corporation. I spend one day of my weekend recovering from the week before and one day preparing for the week ahead. My life revolves around the demands of my job; I am truly shackled – a wage slave.

I work hard for my money. But with a house and a family and a car and a dog and the million other items and obligations we accumulate over the years, just as my job places huge demands on me, there are huge demands on my money.

But here’s the thing. Every time I get paid, I keep some.

Before the mortgage and the bills and the food shopping, before the days out and the holidays, before the new clothes or fancy candles – I keep some. I put it aside and I set it to work.

In the earlier years of my career, or when I was home with the children as babies, it might only have been something small. Now I’m more advanced up the career ladder, it’s much more. But large or small, it’s a discipline that has served me well, because although I still have to work for money, I now have money that works for me. And one day soon (1,757 days as I write this), that money will have grown up and reproduced and be strong enough to support me on its own.

“So what will you do with all this money?” you may ask. The answer is simple. I am buying my freedom. I am buying back my time.

That’s what financial independence buys – freedom from the obligation to make money.

When you are financially free it doesn’t mean you won’t earn money, maybe far from it. If you have read this far, you are likely a hard worker, someone that wants more from their life and is prepared to do what needs to be done to get it. And that’s not a switch that gets turned off when you reach your goal.

The point is – when you are financially independent, you have the choice. You can choose if, or when, or for how long to work. You can choose to travel for six months a year or to write that book or to pursue your hobbies full time or even to work, if you want to. Early retirement is not all armchairs and daytime tv.

Being free to choose how we spend our time, without worry of money or security is surely a great freedom. Let’s make it happen, one money soldier at a time.

 

 

Disclaimer

This site contains my reflections and experiences along my journey to financial independence and early retirement. In a nod to all the wonderful blogs that have preceded mine, I sincerely hope to pay it forward and that something I write about here will help somebody else reach their independence. I am not a financial advisor and nothing on this blog should be interpreted as financial advice. The site may contain some affiliate links which, if used, generates a commission for the site at no cost to the user, which helps to pay for hosting. I do not use affiliate links for books I have not read or products I have not used.