by Nyiko Mongwe | Mar 11, 2019 | Financial Freedom | 0 comments
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Welcome to the 4th Installment of my:
Achieve TRUE Financial Freedom Series
Welcome to my Financial Freedom series. By now, you have read, What Financial Freedom is NOT, then, and then, .
One cannot have a conversation about Financial Freedom with me and not speak, at least for a little bit, to the concept of opportunity. Opportunity is probably one of the biggest factors that setFinancial Freedom apart from Financial Independence and Retirement.
If “opportunity” is a major currency to you, as it is to me, pursuing Financial Freedom will be the most cost-efficient pursuit of your life. In my post, , I made reference to an Ellen Goodman quote:
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
Now let’s revisit what this quote seeks to draw our attention to, but frame our analysis in the language of opportunity. All that time spent on your job or your career (see: Are You in a Job or a Career Right Now?) can be spent directly on your vocation, or indirectly on your vocation, as we discussed in .
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Where should we send it to?
Opportunity Cost: Personal
Imagine all those moments that you had to give up, and will continue to have to give up, spent instead at the office, or preparing or making your way to the office.
How many moments will you miss? Your toddler’s first steps; being there for a friend or relative after they have suffered a loss; being able to accompany your spouse to every single chemotherapy appointment; watching your son develop his soccer talent; travelling the world; learning a new language; learning to play a musical instrument; the list can literally go on, and on, and on.
Not attaining Financial Freedom will cost you many more such moments than if you pursued and attained Financial Freedom. Conversely, successfully attaining Financial Freedom can afford you many more of these moments.
Opportunity Cost: Business
Many of you reading this have probably, at some point in your life, wanted to start a business or simply turn the passion you already have into a business. You didn’t, because you felt you had run out of time and could no longer take such chances, and as such elected to continue with the “security” of employment.
I want to keep this short, so I will employ the use of an analogy by Microsoft’s president, Qi Lu, in stark contrast to what is commonplace, who does not view luck as fortune but more
Opportunity Cost: Spiritual
You may often find yourself not having enough time to balance work, life as well as your spiritual life. I will not delve too deeply into this one because it may take any shape for you, or none at all.
This being said, it cannot be disputed that there is a clear link between spirituality and contentment. More than this, there is a clear statistical relationship between lasting marriages and active spirituality.
It would be a shame if alack of time was the biggest reason you did not express your spirituality.
What is My Point?
To me, moments and pursuits like these, are what life is really about and I refuse to capitulate and adopt the notion that I have to give this up in pursuit of stability, security, and money, often times while trading these personal moments and opportunities in our life to become a part of building somebody else’s empire. In any case, I refuse to believe that perpetual employment is the only means to gain stability, security
Financial Freedom, by my definition, grants you access to opportunity while you can make the most use of it. For instance, being able to learn to play the piano at age 35 is much more useful than it would be at 65. Being able to learn to ski is much more useful at age 25 than it is at 65. This is not a revelation of my latent ageism so much as a protest against the status quo. You can do anything you purpose to at any age you want to, I am just saying you can choose to before you reach a milestone of age that society has set out for you.
Do not surrender your entire life to giving up any or all of these kinds of opportunities. At the very least, try to pursue Financial Freedom. Visit, Deploying Your Money, regularly to get tips on how to achieve this.
Catch the next installment of my Achieve TRUE Financial Freedom Series, Why Your Financial Advisor Can’t Help You Achieve Financial Freedom.
