Financial freedom doesn’t mean more money, and happiness isn’t defined by it.
The most important thing for most of us is to separate financial Freedom from making a lot of money. I define financial freedom as having enough to pay the bills, save for retirement and enjoying time with family. If your goal is simply that, then it comes down to saving, budgeting and not overspending.
Happiness is tied to your level of stress, your level of stress among other things is more commonly tied to how well you are able to take care of your daily expenses. Start by defining what happiness means to you. We get so caught up in looking at neighbors and friends looking at what they have and then start playing the comparison game.
Everyone’s goals in life are different which is great. That’s the way it should be; We all have a different drive and strive to achieve different levels of success; that not only allows the world to progress, it leads to new innovations and discoveries every day, but there is no shame in not aspiring to be the next Elon Musk.
It is however important to define what you want out of life. A lot of times we don’t give ourselves the chance to find out if we like something if we ever try at all sometimes is a big surprise.
Lacking the patience to let things develop would be a great way to describe our everyday lives. This causes us to miss a lot of opportunities.
When you say you hate your job did you really give yourself a chance to actually enjoy it?
I am all for leaving a job that doesn’t make you happy if you truly are in a miserable situation. I have been in sales my whole life and went into it right out of High School, having no experience was very scary and intimidating. I thought about quitting every time I couldn’t close a client; with time I got better and more confident. Safe to say I’m glad I didn’t quit.
The world of sales is like a revolving door I’ve seen people start the position and quit within a day of starting the job. Always give yourself a chance to become good at something before you quit; there’s a great feeling of joy and satisfaction that comes from being good at what you do. It gives you that desire and energy to wake up every day.
That being said, don’t make the mistake of staying at job you hate for the money. If you don’t get that feeling of satisfaction we talked about, it might be time to look at different options. The world is full of examples where we see that making a lot of money doesn’t guarantee happiness. Choose Happiness first and the rest will follow.
In this scenario: Who is happier?
The person at a job they enjoy making $45k a year with a sound base of budgeting and investing knowledge or the person making $100k a year who dreads walking into his job in the morning, saves very little of his money and has no clue how to budget and save.
Learn to budget
I believe learning to budget is a lot like most things in our lives; we start off strong, then eventually something pulls us off course. In the case of budgeting, its usually social pressures to keep up with friends and family.
My recommendation to anyone would be to add up all your living expenses for the year and calculate how much you expect to spend every year on the essentials (Mortgage, car note, car insurance).
Once you’ve done that, break that total amount into a monthly cost. If your monthly income is higher than your monthly spending you’re off to a good start; if it’s not then you need to start looking at your budget and start cutting down on non-essential spending.
Spend According to your goals
Once you have your budget locked down, everything becomes easier and you enjoy knowing that you have that part under control. Start putting away those 6 months of emergency funds to always be ready for those unexpected expenses.
Spend your time and your money towards what happiness means to you; If your goal is to be comfortable while enjoying your weekends with family plan those weekend trips and nights out.
On the other hand, if you are 25 and your goal is to retire by 45 then your goal might be to save your first $25k to invest in your first property.
It’s not how much you make its how much you keep and invest
Always keep that in mind when you think you need an additional source of income. I thought that for the longest time before I started paying attention to how much I was spending. These days there are so many ways to produce additional streams of income. I recommend anyone consider it, but remember without a budget that’s just more money you’re not keeping track of.