Financial Freedom

Financial Freedom Financial Freedom - countless people and organizations talk about financial freedom. Financial consultants seek to assist those who are having trouble with their finances. Many websites and books give suggestion and advice. The reality is that getting your finances under control goes hand in hand with my simple help guide. To really gain financial freedom, you must first take the steps to discover who you are, get yourself in order, and then financial freedom will become a logical next step.

Get Yourself Straightened Out

Trying to get your finances straightened out without first getting yourself straightened out is like wanting to learn to fly and hopping into a jet aircraft and attempting to fly it. There is no familiarity, understanding, or purpose and the flight will not even get off the ground. It will not even crash and burn, it will just flat out not even happen. Once you have spent some time figuring out your purpose in life, changed your bad habits, changed your thought process, and are painting a new, better picture of yourself, financial freedom is then an attainable step.

Eliminate ALL Unknowns About Your Money

The first step to financial freedom is to know exactly where all of your money is going. Because figuring out where your money is going takes time, effort, and responsibility, I must again reiterate that you must first get yourself in order before attempting to do this. Having done that, here are the steps you will need to take to begin your journey towards financial freedom.

List every necessary expense

If you give listing every necessary expense some real thought, you will come to realize that if you really had to make it happen, you could come up with only a few necessary expenses. Making my necessary expenses list, I come up with the following: This is a bare necessity list. The first two items, house expenses and food expenses do not have a * by them. The * means that this item is an absolute must to live. Sure I could not pay for them, but then life on the streets and/or starving would make things much more difficult and would eliminate most hope of financial freedom. Every necessary expense is whatever we are paying for that we need to stay alive.

The items with *'s by them are items that would be difficult to live without, but would not cause us death. Our transportation, clothing, and if we have a business, business expenses are tough to get around. A retirement plan and family expenses are important. I list charitable donations because I feel that giving back is a wise investment and gives us far more than what we donate.

List every un-ncessary expense

This is a sample list of un-necessary expenses. This list is far more expansive than what I've listed here. An un-necessary expense is anything which we pay money for that does not return back an equal or greater amount of money, or that does not build up or assist others in a positive way. In short, be careful spending money on anything that is not beneficial in some way. Once you've listed necessary and un-necessary expenses, you will have every expense you incur down.

Decide Which Expenses to Cut Out

Many expenses that we have can be eliminated. Taking the steps to work on ourselves first will eliminate any justification of needing comfort, pampering, or the notion that you're worth it so it's ok to rack up thousands of dollars of debt on junk. My wife and I realized we did not need the cable tv plan we had and switched to a bare bones cable tv plan and are saving 50 dollars a month just by eliminating that expense. Not only that, the time we spent watching TV is now filled with more productive things like spending time with our family, and working on our business more!

Decide and act on eliminating expenses that aren't necessary. Do you need all those shoes, cars, clothes, tv, eating out, and whatever else it is that you are doing? Make the choice to eliminate those expenses. Then replace the energy that went into those expenses with worthwhile activities. You will be amazed at the change in your life if you simply decide to do productive things in place of the things that were causing un-necessary expense. For me, I gave up playing the game, 'World of Warcraft'. The time I used to play, I now put into doing this website. That means many hours over the course of the week are now productively used!

List Every Income Source

For most people, our main income source is what we make at our day job, and if married, also what are spouse makes at their day job. The sum of the paychecks each month becomes the main income source. To put it bluntly, if this is your only income source AND that income ist barely getting you by, you have not made the decision to better yourself and gain financial freedom. A true decision to reach financial freedom means educating yourself, getting yourself in order, and putting in the hard work to make it happen.

Write down your income sources, even if it's just your day job. At least now you have it documented somewhere and can take a good hard look at it. Write down how much money these sources bring you each month.

Decide on Extra Income Sources

There are plenty of ways to bring in money besides your day job. Here are just a few of the ways. Again, this is a simple list of ideas. Give yourself some time to think, and you will be able to come up with some ways you can make some extra, additional money. There are many resources available to help us figure out ways to make extra money.

Negotiate courageously

Because you are confident, important, and have a sense of purpose in life, negotiating courageously will be very important. There are countless resources about negotiating and getting the best out of a situation. For the sake of simplicity, if you are taking the time to find our your purpose in life, and make the changes needed, you will want to negotiate whenever you feel you are not getting what you are worth, or are not getting what you feel you should be paying for something.

In a nut shell, do not EVER leave a negotiation without feeling good about it. This includes buying a car, buying a house, asking for a raise, and buying/selling anything big or important. The differences that the amount of money you will save and gain will add up over time and further your quest for financial freedom.

Take Time to Manage and Know Your Money

Know your money. Having done all the above mentioned steps, you now have a plan in place to reach financial freedom. You are not swayed by get rich quick scams. You know that true financial independence requires education, confidence, independence, and hard/smart work. In a way, it is a pitty that many of the financial freedom websites, products, and resources out there are not worth a dime. The reason is they are targeting a primal, emotional human response, and that is having a lot of money without working for it. I know that through hard work and productive choices, financial independence can be attained.

I hoped you enjoyed this discussion on financial freedom. This freedom comes from getting ourselves in order, and focusing on the important things in life.