Freedom is Enough
You don’t need a portfolio of 5 real estate properties and 50 years of compound interest to build financial freedom.
Financial freedom is really just when you are in control of your money related decisions, such as how you make your income and your level of work-life balance.
CAN I LEARN how To build financial freedom?
True freedom with money is making enough money in a way that you are finding enough fulfillment with your time to live a life that is rewarding enough to you.
Not to society's standards, but to your standards.
Freedom is enough.
But 'enough' has two different sides to it:
1. Your actual money behaviors and situation.
2. The story you tell yourself about your money situation.
In this article, we’ll focus on #1: money habits.
Healthy Money Habits
To gain control of your money life, you have to build healthy habits in 5 key areas:
1. Healthy Money Attitude
Money Attitudes are what drive our underlying money behaviors. What makes you happy is unique to you. By exploring what your unique motivations and tendencies are with money, you can better understand how to improve them, and how to use them to our advantage.
2. Healthy Earning
Healthy earning is the combination of 4 variables. Do you like what you’re doing? Are you good at it? Does it pay you well enough? And does it make the world a better place?
3. Healthy Budgeting
Think of budgeting like the coach of a sports team. You take stock of what you have. You take stock of what your next opponent has. You use that to make a plan. And you adjust after each game. Same with money.
4. Healthy Spending
Healthy Spending is about spending on things that you actually want, not what other people want for you. In the fast online world we live in now, controlling your spending can be very hard. The key is to learn about your emotions. Spending is very emotional, so the answer starts there.
5. Healthy Investing
Healthy Investing is all about learning. Whether you’re investing in your own talents, in a stock, in a property, or in a relationship, they all require learning and some calculated guesswork.
The Full picture
When you begin to see how these habits are related to each other, the full picture becomes clear.
We think of healthy money habits like the propellor of a boat, with 4 blades and a center.
Most people just Earn and Spend, without really much thought between the right and left hand. Budgeting is really all about planning how you will spend the money you earn.
Investing is all about how you will spend money in a way that earns you more.
When these all become habits, the cycle keeps growing and gaining momentum, and your life propels forward.
Your money attitude is your driving purpose for where this propellor is headed. It is basically your why. More money doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know why it will make you happy!
how do you build healthy money habits?
By learning!
We grow happier by learning how to be happier.
Learning takes motivation. Think about the life you would love. Let that motivate you to make the hard decisions, even if they hurt now.
Learning also takes reflection. If you make a good decision, reflect on why it was good. If you made a bad decision, reflect on why it was bad.
As Ariana Huffington said, “Failure is not the opposite of success. It is a part of success.”
So keep learning, and you will find out how to build financial freedom, before you even realize it!
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To learn more about building healthy money habits and designing a life that fits your values, goals, interests, check out Money Club- an online game, course, and community of people learning how to become financially intelligent and independent.
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