Preface
Like most Americans, my financial journey has been a struggle. I mostly attribute this to the failure of the American education system, that fails to teach students basic economics, much less personal finance. My goal with my road to financial freedom is simple, I want enough invested that I never have to answer to anyone that I don't want to. This is full autonomy over my life and anything less is a failure in my mind. It's likely going to be a long journey, but I kind of wanted to document it in some way and do something that I once thought was impossible.
Teens/Early 20s
I got my first job at 18 and began working to save money that I was planning on having for college. I was basically only taught that I should save my money back in my bank account and pretty much just spend as little as possible to be able to build anything up, but this tactic proved less than useless as a means of building wealth. There were random expenses that came up, and when I had no alternative I would have to dip into savings in order to try and pay for things. This was all my lower-middle class parents knew. Plus there were things that I generally liked buying sometimes like video games, etc. so things were often tight and led to a lot of stress.
Mid-20s - The Epiphany
Around my mid-20s, I began looking at life a bit differently. The concept of working hard for a boss and not having any agency sucked and I was tired of "barely getting by". I really wanted a way out of all this and that's when I finally had an epiphany. I began looking into personal finance, and discovered my favorite movement - the FIRE movement. FIRE stands for Financially Independent Retire Early. Now I'm unable to follow the exact tenants of what the FIRE community suggests due to being already married, having a mortgage, and having a child. They basically recommend living like a hermit and saving/investing up to 90% of your income to achieve financial independence faster. This is just not feasible at this time given our circumstances. So I have decided I will try a different approach: getting my debt to near zero, investing as much as I can possible, and potentially diversifying my asset classes(buying real estate, etc) when I have enough to be able to.
Largest expenses that I've paid off on my financial freedom journey
- $5,500 - student loan debt for my last year of college
- ~$6,000 - credit card debt from trying to "start my own business"
- ~$12,000 - trailer/mobile home(did get half of this back by reselling)
- ~$15,000 - my current vehicle(plan on driving it for a WHILE)
My Strategy
My strategy currently consists of 3 main sources of savings/investment:
- Low-cost index funds
- Individual stock investments
- Crypto
For the most part my strategy has worked quite well, but I think it's going to take more things like real estate investment to grow my wealth faster. Essentially, though, I believe I want to just pursue my own content creation from my streams over on Twitch/Vimm as well as posting videos on YouTube, 3speak, and Odysee, as well as posting more regularly on the HIVE blockchain to earn passive income from my posts. I also plan to try making other potential passive income sources like writing a book, but that is something that I need a lot more time away from my current job in order to pursue. That's just not feasible at this point, but something I am really passionate about since I want to build an entire brand for myself as many others have.
The End Goal - Financial Freedom
I know that I'm going to still struggle along the way. We recently took a vacation and spent much more than I would like, so I know this isn't going to be an easy journey. Although it won't be easy, I still see financial freedom as the best way to guarantee my future is the way that I want it and not doing the bidding of others for the rest of my days, which would be a miserable existence. I want this post to serve as a reminder for myself and a sort of progress bar to showcase updates as I move closer to being truly, financially free.
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It's true that they don't teach much about money in the public education system. Likely because they don't want many people learning about the inner workings of the debt-based monetary system which benefits those who got in early most.
At this point I think the fastest route to financial freedom is via diversification into low market cap promising crypto projects, as they are in the smallest bubble compared to stocks, bonds, and real estate. It's also the only asset that cannot be confiscated, and is trending towards greater acceptance by society in general.
Consumer inflation is really starting to pick up now, and you might be better off waiting to pay your debt with higher valued assets in the future. In other words, let your debt be inflated away while your investments increase in value. This seems to be the plan of worldwide governments and corporations too.
Anyways, well done on your progress so far, and good luck to you in the future.
Thanks! Yeah I'm not trying too hard to pay off the mortgage or vehicle loan really, but I am trying to keep credit card debt low while also reaping the benefits of rewards programs by paying them off quickly. All my low interest debt, though, I'm fine paying the minimum and investing as much as I possibly can into crypto projects like HIVE and others in order to have a basis for the future as fiat gets devalued due to inflation. I think that's going to be what helps in the long run especially in the event that some of the markets dip I can keep buying and that's part of the key to building real wealth is knowing when and what to buy.
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Freedom of speech should not be restricted to people who have "f--- you" money, but that's what ot looks like these days. Freedom of speech is for all of us, regardless of our backgrounds or beliefes.
Failing that, everyone should find a way which makes it possible to have that "f--- you" money so that we never have to worry about people being offended or "offended" by our beliefs and positions. Cryptocurrency is perhaps the best vehicle we have for acquiring that "f--- you" money.
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