How much money is enough to achieve Financial independence: what would you do if there was a never-ending stream of money available?
The answer is unique to everyone, from buying a house to getting out of debt. To me, it’s about having the assets available to cover all my current and future expenses, from basic necessities to one-off luxuries that make life that much sweeter. Traditionally, financial independence could be thought of retirement. The golden years where you can potter around the garden and make rhubarb crumble while receiving a pay check every month as compensation for spending your life working.More recently, there seems to be a movement towards “early retirement“. Millennials, especially, are demanding more out of life than just work. In most Western societies, the norm of working 9-5:30 for most of your life with the lure of a pension at the end of it (when it is eventually given to you – for example, in the UK, the state pension age is rising!), just isn’t enough anymore.In his book The 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss suggests the concept of a “mini-retirement”. It entails relocating to a new place for a couple of months before heading back home, allowing a conscious break from routines and habits. However, having a “mini-retirement” requires knowing what you want to get out of it…
What do you actually want?
“A goal is a dream with a deadline”– Napoleon HillLeaving money aside, what do you want out of life? Many people don’t know what they want. The classic ‘what would you do if you won the lottery’ question may give answers like going on holiday, paying off a mortgage, buying an island. But when every day is totally up to you and your desires, how will you spend all that time?One way of discovering this is thinking about what you want out of life. Instead of a slightly morbid Bucket List, a friend of mine calls it a Life List. It includes everything she would like to achieve, do, experience, make, see, in her life. It is surprising how much you can want out of life! And, once written down, it suddenly becomes real and allows the beginnings of a plan to emerge on how to complete these dreams.Indeed, having this vision on where you want to end up allows it to transform from a dream into a goal. Saving 10% of your income, saying no to going out every weekend, not having the latest phone – it all becomes that bit easier if you have something to aim for.
The Magic Number
I like to think there are two main interpretations of financial independence:
- Being able to cover all your necessary expenses without having to actively work
- Being able to live a life of absolute abundance
Putting real figures on what you want to achieve from life helps them become even stronger goals. Let’s assume that in your wildest dreams, you want to own a chalet in the Alps in Italy. How much is needed to buy one? Can this figure be factored into your financial plans?Once the numbers have been put into place, the countdown to completion starts! Automating finances is a great way to make consistent steps towards goals (and any step, no matter how small, is an achievement). Keeping track of where the money goes can highlight areas in life where money can be saved, or even increased.
It’s Up To You
So what does financial independence mean to you? With the right mindset and goals, we can use both fear (to push away from working until you drop) and joy (the pull of doing what you want when you want) to become financially free.Money gives you the options and choices but the real freedom comes from truly living your life to the full.If you want to learn more about financial independence I would recommend looking into the top 8 personal finance books of 2017.
This much:
While a decent top level view, it's worth mentioning that there is some well regarded math to use when deciding "how much"...typically if you can save up 25× your expenses in invested assets you have reached what many call Financial Independence (assuming you live off of 4% of your initial savings)...also I'm not sure that the point of FI is to live in "absolute abundance" as much as it is to live your current lifestyle with a low probability of having to return to active income.