Beginning the Journey to Financial Freedom
What is Financial Freedom (or at least, what is it to me?)
Does your stomach turn on Sunday nights when you think about the work week ahead? Better yet, do your eyes water every time you think about your portfolio of work projects? Although I am not at that point right now with my current job, trust me, I’ve been there.
Therefore, I am on a mission to help you and myself figure out how we can develop long term strategies to enjoy life without monetary constraints. That’s financial freedom to me.
Why This? Why Now?
Just over a year ago, my husband and I purchased and moved into our first home together. During the move, we went to New Jersey and got items that I left in my condo building’s storage area for over ten years. It was time to consolidate!
As I went through the storage, the items conjured forgotten, but fond memories. I found journals and books that reminded me of the dreams I once had been working towards more than a decade ago.
Flashback!
During the fall of 2008, I matriculated at a top 5 business school for my MBA. At that moment, I left a fairly decent career on Wall Street to fulfill my dream of taking on six-figures in student loan debt.
Well, that is a harsh way of putting it! However, I was truly hoping that the MBA would be some magic pill to get me started on my journey toward financial freedom, building generational wealth, and sharing my “How I did it” story with others. This is actually the gist of how I wrote my MBA entrance essays!
Fast forward 12 years to now, and I have really only danced around the concepts of being financially free. However, I don’t regret how I spent the past decade one bit.
Key Highlights of the Past Decade
- Obtained that MBA from a top business school
- Lived and worked in five difference countries
- Worked in impact investing for financial inclusion as well as environmental sustainability
- Secured a job in mergers and acquisitions
- Served as Chief of staff to an executive team preparing for an IPO
- Traveled to 26 countries
- Most importantly, I met and married my husband!
It was an adventurous decade!
However, I’ve always had dreams of working for myself, being financially independent and teaching others to do it, also – especially my family.
As I unpacked the storage, one of the books I came across was called Multiple Streams of Income by Robert G. Allen. When I opened the front cover, there was a receipt from Amazon.com that was dated January 25, 2005. This book was one of five items purchased – 3 GMAT prep books and a book called The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth.
The Two Roads
Maybe I am overthinking this, but when I saw this receipt last year, it represented a moment in 2008 where I faced the proverbial fork-in-the road. I was making serious decisions that would inform my future.
Road 1: Relentlessly pursue financial freedom by educating myself on concepts;
Road 2: Taking the path that most of my Wall Street colleagues were taking – get an MBA and work yourself to the bone in your post-MBA career.
Undoubtedly, I chose Road 2. Please note that I did read One Minute Millionaire in 2006, and when it didn’t happen for me in one minute, I zealously prepared for entry into business school. I never even read Multiple Streams of Income at that time.
From This Point Forward
I want to give Road 1 a trot. I am certain that it will take some serious discipline and dedication. My current situation is that I have mastered budgeting and saving (at least I think I have), I have no credit card debt, and now I am ready to tackle the next levels of becoming financially free. I have a strong hunch that becoming debt free is strongly correlated with financial freedom.
Right now, in terms of debt, I have student loans from graduate school, an investment property in New Jersey, and the home that my hubby and I purchased a year ago. That totals just under a half a million dollars in “good” debt!
Writing this post is the first time that I actually looked at it all on a cumulative basis, and my eye is twitching at that number! That’s a sign of stress, and we need to do something about it.
We’ve been disciplined in building our emergency fund, saving for retirement and not having credit card debt or a car payment. We have good jobs and we have been investing in our retirement accounts. In spite of all this, this number is staggering. All the more reason I am embarking on this journey. Won’t you join me? We can learn from each other along the way.
What Clicked?
You may be wondering what clicked for me now, at this moment, to take control of my financial future. You’re right. I picked up that book in September 2019, and I was moved, but not moved enough to heed to the call to action. Now in 2020, like many of you, I have experienced true life events on a personal level.
I realize that the phrase “life is too short” isn’t just a convenient phrase to say when we want to indulge in the pleasures of life, but life is really too short for us not to be fulfilling or even trying to pursue our interests or purpose. As I previously mentioned, I realized this on a very personal level this year, and I want to turn what could be seen as a year imbalanced with negative memories with some positive ones that will continue for many years into the future.
Let’s prepare ourselves for a journey! Trot on trotters!
