I have to admit, I have never always been so adverse to name brand goods. And when I say name brand goods, I mean the really expensive stuff that far exceeds the value given by the increased durability and ease of use. There once was a time I was shopping with a friend and we were looking at expensive jeans at an outlet store costing close to $100 a pair. This is an outlet already so the actual cost at the retail store would be close to $200.
Psychologically, I might have jumped the gun and bought it to fit in or to impress that I can purchase it without flinching. But that little show was for the weak minded for I was weak.
Mind you, I was just following along to the store. I myself would not have went around looking at those things all by myself. Let me summarize some points I like to make:
1. Said person could want to impress their other friends by wearing such jeans.
2. The selection is limited because it is an outlet.
3. Increase in quality is not proportional to increase in price.
4. Features such as reduced size availability and unwanted featured led to the price reduction.
After years of wearing these expensive jeans I have noticed a few things. Because they were at an outlet, the length size was not perfect. Hence, you need to get the bottom re-done or fold them in every time. I chose the ladder and it must have cost an aggregate of 1 minute each time I fold them in adding up to eat least 1 hour of folding per year of use. Another point is that the jeans were button fly. I knew I would not like it but got them anyway due to the comparably low price. It turns out I hated button fly. It takes 5 times as long to open and close the fly not to mention the fly sometimes likes to pop open.
All this lead to a sort of dread to wear these expensive jeans. The one redeeming quality is the print on the back pocket that looks unique and the texture of the fabric. The fabric actually felt smooth one way and ribbed another, strange but interesting.
So all this fuss and how does it relate to escaping from the cubicle? Wasted resources. By buying that, I have extended my time in the cubicle by about 1 day. I could go into investing that and all but the amount is not all the much when it comes to retirement. It is the aggregate of purchases like these that matters most.
So I say buying those is for the weak minded because the weak minded fell for the marketing and social pressures. Most people don't care if you wear $100 jeans or not and if they do, they may not be very good friends. What do people do care about? That you care about them and are genuinely interested in them. You still need to look the part in your social circle tho and not appear like a hobo.
It works the opposite way too. Some of my friends who choose to buy expensive cars has zero bearing on if it would make me think more of them or not. I am certainly a bit jealous yes but I have bigger fish to fry first. If anything, buying an overly expensive vehicle is a waste to me and not something I would do myself. (UNLESS of course, I have expendable money over and above the money needed for a lifetime of retirement. I.e net worth minus house of more than 2 million.)
These days, I try to find good quality jeans that are not super name brand costing close to $15-20 a pair. And guess what? It has a zipper, has the correct waist and length, and also looks faded in the right spots. Brand? Don't care.
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
CEO Tragedy
"Energy CEO McClendon dies in Oklahoma car crash, a day after indictment" reads the headline on 3/2/2016. Article here.
The CEO appears to have committed suicide although there's is no final verdict yet. Maybe he did violate antitrust laws, maybe he didn't. Dying one day after the indictment certainly makes him appear guilty. Lets just assume he was guilty and there are not hidden facts in this story, why did he try to rig the bidding process?
Perhaps, it's a shortcut to obtain more wealth? More power? This type of ethics breach may not be as far fetched to everyone as it seems. The temptation of money is great and the actual act of antitrust could just be from a casual remark. Imagine, gaining a few million dollars just from a chat with a fellow bidder which would then allow you to buy 10 new Lamborghini. Yes... all of which you can imagine to drive while sleeping in a PRISON CELL.
A life in prison might just be worse than dying. How long will the sentence be if he was tried and found guilty? It appears he did not want to wait to find the answer. There could of course be other factors that cause him to do such a thing. Let me not speculate further as it just happened and not all the facts are known.
This leads us to a tie in to this blog about financial independence. One must not fall into the trap of shortcuts and ethics breach in order to more firmly secure financial independence. There are plenty of white hat things you can do to increase your wealth the normal and legal way. Once you do those, it certainly FEELS like you're robbing everybody from the loads of cash rolling in.
No, you're not ACTUALLY robbing anyone at all. Merely making money in a strategic manner which so few people actually know, understand, or willing to put in the effort to do.
Rather than talk in generalities, let me point out a few examples where I FEEL like I robbed someone but didn't at all. It was just a gang busters financial transaction. Made out with hundreds without much effort on my part.
1. Checking account sign up bonus. $500 - Signed up, waited 3 months, and closed the account. Probably 2 hours of work and a bit of attention to timing on my part.
2. Dividend payouts at 7%. Every $10k yields $700/year. You need $10k of course but that's why money makes you more money.
3. Credit card points bonus on Citi Premier 50,000 pts equivalent to about $625 in travel dollars. I regularly take advantage of credit card sign up bonuses so this is a pretty regular occurrence. I think I average around $1000-2000 a year on sign ups without trying too hard.
4. Comparison shopping and shopping using cash back credit cards. Assuming you spend $20k/year on everything. 5% cash back of $20k is about $1000. 20-40% discount could be obtained if you shop smart and could amount to $4-8k in shopping smart. This of course means that everything you buy is a pretty awesome bargain. For me, a lot of times I only buy stuff at an awesome bargain. No, you don't go out and buy stuff you don't need, I'm buying stuff I normally use at those discounts. Sometimes I am even able to get things for 100% discount. No, I'm not stealing! I stack my gift card bonus I earn from store cards while also using the store sales.
All these may seem like chump change but it adds up pretty quickly when you go in increments of $500. With proper application of being frugal and earning residual income, you can almost cancel out your living costs!
The exact details of how I get stuff for free, I'm going to save for a later post. It's a doozy.
The CEO appears to have committed suicide although there's is no final verdict yet. Maybe he did violate antitrust laws, maybe he didn't. Dying one day after the indictment certainly makes him appear guilty. Lets just assume he was guilty and there are not hidden facts in this story, why did he try to rig the bidding process?
Perhaps, it's a shortcut to obtain more wealth? More power? This type of ethics breach may not be as far fetched to everyone as it seems. The temptation of money is great and the actual act of antitrust could just be from a casual remark. Imagine, gaining a few million dollars just from a chat with a fellow bidder which would then allow you to buy 10 new Lamborghini. Yes... all of which you can imagine to drive while sleeping in a PRISON CELL.
A life in prison might just be worse than dying. How long will the sentence be if he was tried and found guilty? It appears he did not want to wait to find the answer. There could of course be other factors that cause him to do such a thing. Let me not speculate further as it just happened and not all the facts are known.
This leads us to a tie in to this blog about financial independence. One must not fall into the trap of shortcuts and ethics breach in order to more firmly secure financial independence. There are plenty of white hat things you can do to increase your wealth the normal and legal way. Once you do those, it certainly FEELS like you're robbing everybody from the loads of cash rolling in.
No, you're not ACTUALLY robbing anyone at all. Merely making money in a strategic manner which so few people actually know, understand, or willing to put in the effort to do.
Rather than talk in generalities, let me point out a few examples where I FEEL like I robbed someone but didn't at all. It was just a gang busters financial transaction. Made out with hundreds without much effort on my part.
1. Checking account sign up bonus. $500 - Signed up, waited 3 months, and closed the account. Probably 2 hours of work and a bit of attention to timing on my part.
2. Dividend payouts at 7%. Every $10k yields $700/year. You need $10k of course but that's why money makes you more money.
3. Credit card points bonus on Citi Premier 50,000 pts equivalent to about $625 in travel dollars. I regularly take advantage of credit card sign up bonuses so this is a pretty regular occurrence. I think I average around $1000-2000 a year on sign ups without trying too hard.
4. Comparison shopping and shopping using cash back credit cards. Assuming you spend $20k/year on everything. 5% cash back of $20k is about $1000. 20-40% discount could be obtained if you shop smart and could amount to $4-8k in shopping smart. This of course means that everything you buy is a pretty awesome bargain. For me, a lot of times I only buy stuff at an awesome bargain. No, you don't go out and buy stuff you don't need, I'm buying stuff I normally use at those discounts. Sometimes I am even able to get things for 100% discount. No, I'm not stealing! I stack my gift card bonus I earn from store cards while also using the store sales.
All these may seem like chump change but it adds up pretty quickly when you go in increments of $500. With proper application of being frugal and earning residual income, you can almost cancel out your living costs!
The exact details of how I get stuff for free, I'm going to save for a later post. It's a doozy.
Trick your mind into thinking you're already retired.
Retirement is part financial independence and part state of mind. What if you could feel like you are retired while still working? Maybe you love your job and get a lot of satisfaction from it from day to day. You wake up in the morning everyday and cannot wait until you get into work.
It's true, this can happen but my experience says it only lasts a year or so. The work becomes mundane and repetitive. You can try to jump puddles by moving to higher and higher positions but in the end of the day, the fact is, you MUST do it. You MUST keep your appointments or you loose your credibility at work. You MUST keep your deadlines, etc. These are the basic responsibilities of an adult. I would have to qualify that as the responsibilities of a <i>typical</i> adult. Everybody has to answer to someone but the typical adult has to answer to others at a typical amount.
I have 10 personal projects I would like to do and they are proceeding at a snails pace. Why? Because I give my day job a priority. It must have the top priority because it is financially the most important unless I want to get fired. I show up to work 8-9 hours a day and this takes priority over working on some random project during the weekday. When I have left over time, I work on the other stuff.
Okay, so what if these side projects ARE the things you work on at work? If that is, you're in a great spot but I'm sure you have other projects that are not work related right? Even if you work on things you love at work, your efforts are being monetized and put back into the company and distributed back to the shareholders in the form of stock appreciation and dividend payouts.
Can you imagine a fictitious company that is large and promises to grow slowly so they are not reinvesting most the the profits? Instead, all the profits are distributed to all the employees evenly? Lets look at Apple (even though they are not growing slowly at all) as an example:
AAPL:
2015 Profits $54 Billion
Employees: 111,000
Profits per employee: $490,000
There you have it. In one year, each employee makes the company half a million dollars. This is the value each employee is contributing to the company and money that should be going to you.
Now, I think it should not be distributed completely evenly since each employee's value contribution will be different. If one employee was the key to a huge financial gain show said person get those profits? It's really hard to measure. If the profits are to be distributed, I think a good starting point would be to distribute it by weighting it to your salary. However, we do know executives might be overcompensated so something in between weighting by salary and HOURS worked might be a very rough starting formula.
This sounds very much like a socialist scheme and it is but we all know this type of thing will never fly. No one would want to buy the stock if all the profits goes to the employees. Instead, sometimes a company may have a profit sharing plan where some of the profits are diverted into payouts for the employee. If you can join such a company that is profitable, then it will be very good for your pocket book. My whole point is that your efforts has value and you are only getting a fraction of it because you traded a majority of it for stability of a paycheck and greatly reduced risk of not starting your own operations.
Even if you enjoy your job, there will be things you do not like to do. Like, some yearly ethics training or fire drills. Being retired is cutting out all crap you hate and fill it with things you like. Being financially independent would still mean doing some things that you do not like but at least those efforts are not consumed by the shareholders.
It's true, this can happen but my experience says it only lasts a year or so. The work becomes mundane and repetitive. You can try to jump puddles by moving to higher and higher positions but in the end of the day, the fact is, you MUST do it. You MUST keep your appointments or you loose your credibility at work. You MUST keep your deadlines, etc. These are the basic responsibilities of an adult. I would have to qualify that as the responsibilities of a <i>typical</i> adult. Everybody has to answer to someone but the typical adult has to answer to others at a typical amount.
I have 10 personal projects I would like to do and they are proceeding at a snails pace. Why? Because I give my day job a priority. It must have the top priority because it is financially the most important unless I want to get fired. I show up to work 8-9 hours a day and this takes priority over working on some random project during the weekday. When I have left over time, I work on the other stuff.
Okay, so what if these side projects ARE the things you work on at work? If that is, you're in a great spot but I'm sure you have other projects that are not work related right? Even if you work on things you love at work, your efforts are being monetized and put back into the company and distributed back to the shareholders in the form of stock appreciation and dividend payouts.
Can you imagine a fictitious company that is large and promises to grow slowly so they are not reinvesting most the the profits? Instead, all the profits are distributed to all the employees evenly? Lets look at Apple (even though they are not growing slowly at all) as an example:
AAPL:
2015 Profits $54 Billion
Employees: 111,000
Profits per employee: $490,000
There you have it. In one year, each employee makes the company half a million dollars. This is the value each employee is contributing to the company and money that should be going to you.
Now, I think it should not be distributed completely evenly since each employee's value contribution will be different. If one employee was the key to a huge financial gain show said person get those profits? It's really hard to measure. If the profits are to be distributed, I think a good starting point would be to distribute it by weighting it to your salary. However, we do know executives might be overcompensated so something in between weighting by salary and HOURS worked might be a very rough starting formula.
This sounds very much like a socialist scheme and it is but we all know this type of thing will never fly. No one would want to buy the stock if all the profits goes to the employees. Instead, sometimes a company may have a profit sharing plan where some of the profits are diverted into payouts for the employee. If you can join such a company that is profitable, then it will be very good for your pocket book. My whole point is that your efforts has value and you are only getting a fraction of it because you traded a majority of it for stability of a paycheck and greatly reduced risk of not starting your own operations.
Even if you enjoy your job, there will be things you do not like to do. Like, some yearly ethics training or fire drills. Being retired is cutting out all crap you hate and fill it with things you like. Being financially independent would still mean doing some things that you do not like but at least those efforts are not consumed by the shareholders.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
How always doing something new relates to financial freedom.
I'll have to admit, this post is going to be a bit meta but it's actually what I think is the very essence of obtaining financial freedom.
When you do something new, it often times feels unfamiliar and thus uncomfortable. You stumble often and it is actually very frustrating. When I do something new, I can literally feel my brain open up while trying to form the synaptic connections between neurons. Its hard work and stressful but one can gain a lot by putting your mind in that state every once in a while. Better yet, as often as you can tolerate.
When you are a master at say being a top surgeon, you already mastered your trade. You spend little effort in processing the things you need to do to do heart surgery unlike the trainee shadowing for the first time. I am talking about doing something so foreign that it makes you feel like you have two left hands or feet. Do stuff you like but crappy at, that's what I'm saying.
Take mastering a new motor skill as an example. I've been playing with this 125 level blue and white Perplexus ball for sometime. I have yet to conquer all the levels in one long streak but that's my goal. Every time I fail, I yell in frustration: 'GAHHHH!!! WHY!!! WHY!!!'. But something happens when I fail, I learn. Do I doubt I will one day be able to do it? I know I can but I'm not sure when. Playing with it is actually just giving my brain a chew toy to learn a new skill.
Before you complain that this activity is useless, I want to say that this thing is an enjoyable activity for me. I am absolutely delighted in playing with this 'toy'. I might only do 4-5 runs a sitting before I feel bored but I keep it around because it makes me happy.
Okay, let me get to the point of this post. I'm not actually advocating playing with puzzles to get your way to financial freedom. What I am advocating is that you need to put yourself out there to learn new things at all times. If you're not challenging yourself, you are just rotting your brain. It sure feels comfortable and you can live the rest of your life that way collecting a salary doing what you're already good at.
But the good stuff rests in constant absorbing new methods and skills. With it, your mind expands, feels sore, and becomes a part of you at which you can deploy to earn you more cash. The cash of course is the road to financial freedom.
Want to get that Perplexus ball I was talking about? It's here:
When you do something new, it often times feels unfamiliar and thus uncomfortable. You stumble often and it is actually very frustrating. When I do something new, I can literally feel my brain open up while trying to form the synaptic connections between neurons. Its hard work and stressful but one can gain a lot by putting your mind in that state every once in a while. Better yet, as often as you can tolerate.
When you are a master at say being a top surgeon, you already mastered your trade. You spend little effort in processing the things you need to do to do heart surgery unlike the trainee shadowing for the first time. I am talking about doing something so foreign that it makes you feel like you have two left hands or feet. Do stuff you like but crappy at, that's what I'm saying.
Take mastering a new motor skill as an example. I've been playing with this 125 level blue and white Perplexus ball for sometime. I have yet to conquer all the levels in one long streak but that's my goal. Every time I fail, I yell in frustration: 'GAHHHH!!! WHY!!! WHY!!!'. But something happens when I fail, I learn. Do I doubt I will one day be able to do it? I know I can but I'm not sure when. Playing with it is actually just giving my brain a chew toy to learn a new skill.
Before you complain that this activity is useless, I want to say that this thing is an enjoyable activity for me. I am absolutely delighted in playing with this 'toy'. I might only do 4-5 runs a sitting before I feel bored but I keep it around because it makes me happy.
Okay, let me get to the point of this post. I'm not actually advocating playing with puzzles to get your way to financial freedom. What I am advocating is that you need to put yourself out there to learn new things at all times. If you're not challenging yourself, you are just rotting your brain. It sure feels comfortable and you can live the rest of your life that way collecting a salary doing what you're already good at.
But the good stuff rests in constant absorbing new methods and skills. With it, your mind expands, feels sore, and becomes a part of you at which you can deploy to earn you more cash. The cash of course is the road to financial freedom.
Want to get that Perplexus ball I was talking about? It's here:
Financial Freedom and Sickness Recovery
I got sick last week and it takes about a week for me to fully recover to 100%. It takes most people that long. You usually may take one or two sicks days but the rest you end up going to work being 85% well.
I would certainly much prefer to work from home if I could and I might be able to if I request it. The thing is, I'm rather lazy in setting these things up and I much prefer to just go with the flow. It's partially my fault.
Anyhow, this post is about what would have happened if I had financial freedom. If I had as much income as needed flowing into my bank account to pay for all my expenses while I do nothing. If that were the case, I would be able to just stay at home and likely recover in 3 days rather than 7.
I have this gut feeling that prolonging your sickness is not actually good for your health in terms of your total life expectancy. Prolonging your cold KILLS you. Maybe it takes away a few days of your life who knows but I do know it does have a non-zero effect.
In summary, being trapped in a cubicle and being required to work when you are still partially recovering is not good for your body. Its just another way our dependence on a salaried job is killing us little by little.
I would certainly much prefer to work from home if I could and I might be able to if I request it. The thing is, I'm rather lazy in setting these things up and I much prefer to just go with the flow. It's partially my fault.
Anyhow, this post is about what would have happened if I had financial freedom. If I had as much income as needed flowing into my bank account to pay for all my expenses while I do nothing. If that were the case, I would be able to just stay at home and likely recover in 3 days rather than 7.
I have this gut feeling that prolonging your sickness is not actually good for your health in terms of your total life expectancy. Prolonging your cold KILLS you. Maybe it takes away a few days of your life who knows but I do know it does have a non-zero effect.
In summary, being trapped in a cubicle and being required to work when you are still partially recovering is not good for your body. Its just another way our dependence on a salaried job is killing us little by little.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Multiple Streams of Income
If you google this term, you get plenty of pages that has great suggestions on how to get the streams of passive/semi-passive streams of income. Let me put some here as reference:
Passive
Passive
- Buy high dividend yielding stocks
- Buy CDs
- Interest in a bank
Semi-Passive
- Rental Income Properties
- Write a book/e-book, self publish
- Affiliate links via merchants like Amazon or others
- Blogging and Income via AdSense
- Endorsements of a product
- Youtube via AdSense
Active
- Mechanical Turret on Amazon
- Make an iOS App or Game
- Resale or sell stuff you don't use on Ebay/Craigslist/Amazon
- Uber
You can argue which are passive or not but I'm not going to nip pick about how much time each one really takes. If you have a million dollars in cash, you couldn't easily shove it all in high yield bonds and get 6% a year or about $60k. Passive really is passive, you do NOTHING and the money keeps on rolling in.
I've been a bit against rental income since I dread the need to service the home and dealing with vacancies. Because of the time required, I've shied away from obtaining more and more properties. I estimate that a group of 4-6 different properties would essentially equate to a full time job. If you are lucky enough to own so many properties then having a third party take care of all of them for you at the cost of some income would probably be completely worth the extra cost. This is essentially BUYING your more LIFE. WOO HOO!
Main take away with this list is that not every activity is for everybody. Of course, if NOTHING is for you then good luck, it might be hard to build income in other ways unless you are talking about starting your own company. You pick and choose and so far, I've chosen to not own rentals for the time being.
If you run a semi successful blog or YouTube channel, it comes with what appears to be passive income. AdSense income comes in as long as your views stays constant from month to month. But in order to keep the views coming, you may need to post semi-regularly. It takes time to create a good and interest post or a YouTube video. If the views are large, a single post may pay off handsomely and one would actually be want to post more regularly. Of course, getting it to that stage is on many people's minds and not a trivial matter. It requires great expertise and I stress... great persistence. I will elaborate more on this later.
Resale on merchant sites like Ebay/Craigslist/Amazon is like a blank sheet of paper. You can buy or sell pretty much anything and you are limited to your expertise. You buy some stuff in bulk that you are an expert in and sell them piece by piece for a nice profit. You can buy one from a brick and mortar store even as long as you know you are getting a steep discount. Resale is great for a quick buck but I don't enjoy it too much since it is a pretty active type of income and comes with some risk of over-paying for your products. That's where the expertise come in. If you know your niche, you wont overpay. If you ask me to go buy a bunch of beanie babies for resale, I would surely fail... at least at first.
Golden Handcuffs
When you work at a place, you are given a salary that sustains your life or perhaps even paid handsomely to let you buy all the fancy things as well. Working 40 hours a week getting 2-3 weeks vacation is a significant time sink on your LIFE ENERGY. I like to say LIFE rather than 'time' because that is what it is.
Lets estimate the life that you (or I as well) are trading for your current salary.
(8 hrs + 2 hrs commute estimated) * 5 days a week * (52 weeks - 2 weeks vacation) = 2500 hours
Assuming you sleep 8 hours a day you have a total of (24-8)*(365 days a year) = 5840 hours awake to spend per year.
Thus work is 2500/5840 = 42.8% of YOUR LIFE ENERGY
In fact, I'm guessing that it consumes more than that because you are likely too tired to do 'your own thing' during the weekday because the workday tired you out. You spend much of your weekday nights recuperating from work. I myself knock myself out of it from time-to-time using MUCH will power and make my best effort to pursue my ambitions on weekday nights even though I am crazy tired from work and commute.
Lets add in the time needed to recuperate from actually working.
(16 hours a day * 5 * 50) = 68.5% of YOUR LIFE ENERGY
Yes you may have done something worthwhile on a weekday or perhaps Friday night could be considered your time, but you get my point here. Working for a salary SUCKS ASS. You are basically consumed from head to toe and chained from pursuing your ambitions.
Now, if you are able to do something you love then you are set because you enjoy the work and you are being compensated. My beef with this is that the compensation may not be proportional to your contribution. You could do 200-300% more work and yet obtain perhaps 25-50% more in the form of bonus or salary increase. The rest? It goes to the pockets of shareholders.
Most people work for someone for a salary. Even the CEO works for the shareholders. A blogger works for their readers. The question lies in if you HAVE to do it or not. If you are financially independent, then you have the OPTION to not do it at all hence freeing you to only do the things that brings you joy. Having the OPTION means everything. Having the OPTION to just take off for a week or 3 to vacation in Italy is probably the dreams of many.
I have been working for 10 years already and I'm pretty much ready to call it quits. However, it is completely not currently possible because I have golden handcuffs around my wrists. I have grown accustomed to receiving my salary while spending only a small fraction of it. In order to call it quits, I would have to generate enough passive and semi-passive income in order to replace my current salary. Or at least enough to sustain my living costs.
As you may have guessed, I have protected my identity in this blog for obvious reasons. I will most likely reveal who I am after I am actually financially independent. At that point it wouldn't matter even if I did reveal it right?
One final thing I want to say is that I am not making this blog just to complain about my life. I made this to document my journey to financial independence for which I am certain will happen soon. I have taken many steps to secure MANY streams of passive and semi-passive income streams which I plan to share with you on this blog. Today, I just increased my stream from dividends socks. Slowly but surely I am getting there.
A very rough guess is that I am already generating 10-20% of my yearly expenses. Hitting 100% does not mean I'll quit my day job immediately because I enjoy the high savings rate. Quitting then would mean I am spending everything I make passively. I am actively thinking about when I should pull the trigger.
Lets estimate the life that you (or I as well) are trading for your current salary.
(8 hrs + 2 hrs commute estimated) * 5 days a week * (52 weeks - 2 weeks vacation) = 2500 hours
Assuming you sleep 8 hours a day you have a total of (24-8)*(365 days a year) = 5840 hours awake to spend per year.
Thus work is 2500/5840 = 42.8% of YOUR LIFE ENERGY
In fact, I'm guessing that it consumes more than that because you are likely too tired to do 'your own thing' during the weekday because the workday tired you out. You spend much of your weekday nights recuperating from work. I myself knock myself out of it from time-to-time using MUCH will power and make my best effort to pursue my ambitions on weekday nights even though I am crazy tired from work and commute.
Lets add in the time needed to recuperate from actually working.
(16 hours a day * 5 * 50) = 68.5% of YOUR LIFE ENERGY
Yes you may have done something worthwhile on a weekday or perhaps Friday night could be considered your time, but you get my point here. Working for a salary SUCKS ASS. You are basically consumed from head to toe and chained from pursuing your ambitions.
Now, if you are able to do something you love then you are set because you enjoy the work and you are being compensated. My beef with this is that the compensation may not be proportional to your contribution. You could do 200-300% more work and yet obtain perhaps 25-50% more in the form of bonus or salary increase. The rest? It goes to the pockets of shareholders.
Most people work for someone for a salary. Even the CEO works for the shareholders. A blogger works for their readers. The question lies in if you HAVE to do it or not. If you are financially independent, then you have the OPTION to not do it at all hence freeing you to only do the things that brings you joy. Having the OPTION means everything. Having the OPTION to just take off for a week or 3 to vacation in Italy is probably the dreams of many.
I have been working for 10 years already and I'm pretty much ready to call it quits. However, it is completely not currently possible because I have golden handcuffs around my wrists. I have grown accustomed to receiving my salary while spending only a small fraction of it. In order to call it quits, I would have to generate enough passive and semi-passive income in order to replace my current salary. Or at least enough to sustain my living costs.
As you may have guessed, I have protected my identity in this blog for obvious reasons. I will most likely reveal who I am after I am actually financially independent. At that point it wouldn't matter even if I did reveal it right?
One final thing I want to say is that I am not making this blog just to complain about my life. I made this to document my journey to financial independence for which I am certain will happen soon. I have taken many steps to secure MANY streams of passive and semi-passive income streams which I plan to share with you on this blog. Today, I just increased my stream from dividends socks. Slowly but surely I am getting there.
A very rough guess is that I am already generating 10-20% of my yearly expenses. Hitting 100% does not mean I'll quit my day job immediately because I enjoy the high savings rate. Quitting then would mean I am spending everything I make passively. I am actively thinking about when I should pull the trigger.
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