You have to create financial freedom, you can't wish for it. You have to do it when you’re young and no one is monitoring how you spend your money and your time.
People my age are spending money to look free. They’re taking out credit card debt and they’re taking out loans to buy cars that lose half their value the moment they drive off the lot. It may look like a normal thing but debt is more like a monthly subscription to anxiety. You pay the subscription fee, but you never really cancel it. I’ve seen some people that look rich work for 30 years and still freak out when their car breaks down or they get sick.
Spending way less than you make can be boring because you have all this money and yet you discipline yourself to not use it when you know you can have serious pleasure. But at least you’re not screwed when your boss is an asshole or when your landlord increases your rent again. Money sitting in a savings account earning nothing is still better than money you don’t even have.
It’s easy to squander time. I scroll through YouTube shorts for hours a day. Infact yesterday I had to ask chatgpt whether it's healthy to spend that much time on YouTube even if I've done my job for the day. If it's ruining your life and productivity, it's definitely bad.
I’ve done nothing productive with my time. At least learning a hard skill badly leaves you with something. Having a skill makes you less dispensable, more trustworthy. That helps when chances arise.
Also know that the company you keep matters. I had to push people out of my life who made excuses seem okay for me. Not because they were bad people, but because their mindset was dragging me down into places I didn’t want to go.
Being around people who actually accomplish things has a way of changing your mindset. You start to see discipline as normal because it's all over you.
No one likes to hear about patience. I hate it. Saving a few hundred dollars a month for years seems stupid when you see others buying nice things and smiling. But their smiles fade when the bills come due.
My cousin bought a really nice watch last year. He’s still paying for that watch. He’s still stressed out about work. That watch didn’t change his life.
Financial freedom isn’t about the ability to show off. It’s about the ability to say no. It’s about not having to check your bank account every time something breaks. And freedom is easier when you start young. It’s still possible when you start old, it’s just harder.
