Looking back 50 years into the past and maybe a little bit into the the future, it's interesting to see a certain evolution of the mentality.
Fifty years ago it was perfectly normal to have a job where to expect to retire from. And if you didn't have it, that was the average person's maximum expectation. To have a decent job, that pays well enough to take care of their family and pay expenses and debt month to month.
If you got a promotion at your workplace, great, that came as a bonus, if not, you had your secured job and waiting for the retirement.
But in the last thirty years and more obviously as we come closer to present days, it became clear people won't have only one job their entire lives.
So, they either were happy with any job they could find or they started to pick and choose if they were in the position to do so. It is a common practice to leave a job for a better one or for companies to offer bonuses to keep their top employees (I'm not talking here about unjustified fat bonuses to top management regardless of performance).
But the movement has gone even further. After the internet was widely introduced, but especially in the last decade, we hear more and more people who want to achieve financial freedom or early retirement.
I believe there is a distinction between the two. Early retirement involves more responsibility than financial freedom, because you wouldn't want to be out of money when you are 75-80, and get back to work.
You can achieve financial freedom at 25 if you are really lucky, lose it at 27 if you make a lot of poor choices and get back to work and maybe achieve it again before you retire.
Otherwise, it can be only wording that differs between financial freedom and early retirement. Of course, if you consider 35, for example, a good age to retire early, if that's when you achieve financial freedom.
Anyway, the two are becoming increasingly popular. People want their independence and appear they don't often enjoy working for a company or administration, especially if they have to, to pay the bills. I know I don't and never really did.
Lately we see another shift taking place slowly, but right now it's thin.
And that sometimes comes from the extraordinary opportunities found in the crypto-sphere, certainly most of them are from tech-related fields.
The target is "generational wealth". Why limit yourself to the span of your life? Real wealth is multi-generational. Imagine how much time will Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk children and grandchildren and so on need to spend their wealth. How many generations. 10? 15?
Anyway, you don't have to be either of them to create generational wealth. Even if it offers financial freedom to your children and your grandchildren for the rest of their lives, it's generational wealth. But generational wealth depends on your offsprings more than on you.
Generational wealth is attainable by very few. Even if crypto goes x10000 in the next 5 years, on average (I pulled that number from my behind, I have no idea what it will be).
But financial freedom is achievable by significantly more people.
We'll look into that in another post.