What is Financial Freedom? Definitions & Achieving It

Financial freedom means many different things to different people.

To a teenager, it might mean having their own place and cutting your ties with the Bank of Mom and Dad. To someone in retirement age, it might mean never having to work again. Still, to others, financial freedom simply means never having to worry about food on your plate or a roof over your head.

Regardless of how you feel about it, money is what makes the world go around. Financial freedom can help you achieve your goals and live the life that you want.

On the other hand, if you’re a slave to your finances, there are going to be a lot of things that are not possible because of money.

 

What is financial freedom?

Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about financial freedom and what it means to me. It’s a difficult question to answer because it forces you to ask many questions and try to figure out what is really important in your life.

The older I get, the more I realize time is the most important thing to me. Time with my family and friends, time for doing things I enjoy, and time to appreciate the life with which I have been blessed.

To me, financial freedom doesn’t necessarily mean retirement. But it does mean being able to work at my pace, doing things I enjoy. Life is too short to spend the majority of my waking hours commuting or sitting in pointless meetings.

Financial freedom means not being tied to a job or a location for financial reasons, but working at a job because I enjoy it, and living where my wife and I are happiest.

For most people, retirement is what they think of when they hear the words financial freedom. The majority of people are looking towards the finish line of retirement, and that’s a great goal.

Unfortunately, a large number of those people are not on track to reach their retirement goals. If they ever want to have financial freedom, there are a lot of changes that they will need to make.

Right now, my wife and I live very comfortable lives. All of our basic needs are covered and then some. We have loving family and friends, we live in a nice house in a nice area, we have good jobs with good salaries, we have no consumer debt (only an affordable mortgage payment), and we have a side business that is growing well.

My wife and I plan on having children before long, and while we plan on going down to one salary, we know we will be able to afford the necessities. In short, we have been blessed and we want for nothing in our lives, at least from a financial perspective.

What does financial freedom mean to you?

There are different definitions of financial freedom for everyone. Mine is having the financial freedom to do the things I enjoy and not being forced to rely on a day job that I don’t like, just because I need the money.

I want to work at my pace doing things I enjoy. Hopefully, that will be something creative that will allow me to spend more time with my family. It’s a dream that I will one day make a reality.

Am I financially free? Not 100%, at least by my definition. But I think I am well on my way.

The journey to financial freedom is not something that happens overnight. If you want to be free, it can be decades of work to reach that point, but I promise, it will be worth all of the work that you put in.

Don’t let money keep you a slave to all of the things that you hate and keep you from doing all of those things on your bucket list.

What does financial freedom mean to you?