While many strive for financial freedom, few actually seem to attain it.
Why do so few people achieve this worthy ideal?
The problem doesn’t tend to be one of education, or earning capacity, rather a lack of planning. If we don’t plan our financial health, we will be like a ship without a rudder or a sail on the high seas of life, constantly being pushed and shoved by circumstances. When we have a plan to achieve financial freedom, inconveniences are but minor detours.
While there are many ways to define financial freedom, I will define it this way:
“Financial freedom is being able to do what you want to do, where you want to do it, and with whom you want to do it.”
Looking at financial freedom in this way, it isn’t so difficult to achieve, though it is far from easy. It takes determination, perseverance, and persistence. In most cases, it takes time, though there are always exceptions.
Three steps to put you on track to financial freedom:
1) Pay yourself first: Before paying others, pay yourself first. While we tend to pay the electricity, the telephone, the water, as well as the rest of our bills without thinking twice about them, the payment many miss is to pay themselves. I suggest you pay yourself 10% of everything you earn. Aren’t you worth it? If you are really good at what you do, why not pay yourself a bit more? I know it seems impossible, and in the beginning it is difficult, but you can establish the habit of putting aside 10% of everything you earn. You will soon learn you can manage the rest of your expenses by either reducing them or making more money. It’s that simple.
2) Use a professional: When investing your money, seek out the right professional to advise you along the way. Would you ask your best friend to fix your plumbing, if he isn’t a plumber? 
Of course not, so why would you ask him for investment advice? When you are ready to invest your money, look for an expert in the area you want to invest. If you want to invest in diamonds, find a jeweler; if you want to invest in real estate, find a real estate professional; if you want to invest in the stock market, find an investment professional. Taking advice from the wrong person with your hard earned money can be a very costly mistake.
3) Invest in yourself: After you have saved enough money to cover unexpected emergencies, begin to invest in yourself. Buy your own home, invest in your education and in your self-improvement. Find out what it is that you really love and enhance your ability to do it, because when you love what you do for a living, you will be happy. One goes with the other. Invest your time and money to become the best you can be at that activity. Once you do, you will never have to work another day in your life, and the money will come readily.
The majority of people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan. Reaching financial freedom isn’t about having a specific amount of money in the bank. It is about wisely using your financial resources to take care of short, intermediate and long-term necessities. Paying yourself first, using professionals and investing in your future gives you the wherewithal to create your own life doing what it is you love to do, where you want to do it, and with those you want to do it with; this is financial freedom.
∞ Rob McBride ∞
LL IV 18