Financial Freedom

No this is not going to be some Gary Vee rant about how poverty is a mindset that you can simply cast off by engaging in "the grind." This is not some MLM or pyramid scheme promising to "get rich quick." Nor is it a self-help easy 12 step program towards "financial freedom."

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This post is about a conversation I had decades ago with my uncle. I was still going to high school, and it was a period when I had a fallout with my father, one of many I might add, in which I stayed at my uncle's house. The reason my father and I were at odds was because of my grades and because he was of the opinion, and looking back he was right, that I didn't study nearly enough to pass the end of year exams. And seeing that my uncle was the only one in the family who had truly "made it," my father and uncle both agreed that it would be a great idea to live at my uncle's for the remainder of the school-year. This uncle is still alive, unlike my father and mother, and is retired, living in a million euro plus estate.

In this long conversation my uncle and I had, he tried to impress upon me how important it is to do well at school, and to go to a university after that, so I could have a chance later in life to score a well paying job. This hasn't helped at all, as I never finished school, never went to a university and work a slightly above minimum wage job right now. Sure, I've had better jobs, even one that had me traveling the world interviewing game developers, visiting E3 in the L.A. Convention center and writing game reviews about my favorite games. But in the end I chose to not stay involved in that hectic world, look for an easier job and work way less hours. For me, working only 28 hours per week right now, that produced the best balance with maximum freedom.

Freedom. That's what's ultimately important. But my uncle said something during that conversation that I will never forget. He said that the first moment he realized that he was truly free, was the moment he realized he didn't have to worry anymore if at the end of a night out he would have enough money left to pay for a taxi. You see, he said, having to worry about money weighs on you. True freedom in this world means having enough money to do the things you want to do. And that's one of the wisest things my uncle ever said to me. Especially because he included the "in this world" bit. He's retired now, so he can truly enjoy all the freedom he's been building for himself now. However, during his professional life he always had the money, but not the freedom. He spent every waking hour on the job, studying for the job or doing the things needed for survival, like eating and sleeping. He was, like Gary Vee rants about, on the grind all the time. That was his choice. I made another choice.

But ultimately I write all this to make the point that freedom, in this world, is tied to money. Every freedom is a financial freedom. Free time means nothing if you don't have the money to do stuff in your free time, and most of us have to sacrifice free time to make that money; that's how my wife and I came to the conclusion to both work around 30 hours per week, making enough money to meaningfully fill the remaining hours while still being able to buy a modest house. However, I won't be as free as my uncle is right now at age 70. I worked less, I studied less, so I had more freedom in my younger years, but I'll pay for that when I'm retired. My problem is that it shouldn't be necessary to make this choice. It shouldn't be necessary for billions of people to have no choice at all, or to choose between eating healthy or sending the kids to school. There's more than enough wealth in this world for us all to have a dignified, decent and prosperous life. It's the distribution of the wealth that's completely fucked up. There are millions of people who work twice as hard as I do, harder than even my uncle did, and have nothing to show for it. Who have no freedom whatsoever, no time and no money left after paying all the necessary bills. That's just wrong, and I believe we all know it. So, linked below is an interesting video about some freedoms rich people have that most of us don't. Like the freedom to make bad life-choices, or the freedom to play loose with the law. Watch it, there's some freedom lessons in there my uncle never shared with me...

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