Searching Financial Independence
Is Financial Independence Just a Pipe Dream?
Are you sick and tired of your JOB (Just Over Broke)? If you’re like me, you have a job not because you particularly love it but because you have to survive.
I’m one of those guys that thought, “To do well in life, I have to find a job and work for somebody for a living. As long as I worked long and hard, my employers will take notice and reward me with higher pay. As long as I remained loyal, I will always have a job to earn my living and retire with financial independence.” I ingrained those words within myself with sincere conviction…when I was young and dumb. If I ever use those words now, it’s to be snide and sarcastic.
Now I’m not saying that working as an employee is pure stupidity. Most of us have to start off that way to learn a trade, to learn what this “earning money” thing is all about. If we’re very lucky, it’s a trade that we have an interest in and wouldn’t mind learning it well enough to take ourselves into more highly coveted positions. The purely stupid part is when we blindly accept the role of the servant for people we despise and gratefully get paid peanuts only for the hours we put in. Now I know what it feels like to be brainwashed because I wasn’t even aware of how naive that is. Financial independence? We’ll be lucky to hold on to a meager savings account while our mortgage goes through the roof!
How many of you, I wonder, actually respect your managers? What? You don’t like them telling you how to do your job? Honestly, I always felt like I was still in grade school having to tolerate the condescending brutality of these bullies. Try not to be too hard on them, though. I mean, they’re being told what to do by their boss just like us.
Financial Independence is Within Your Grasp
Someday though, some of us will snap out of it and eventually realize that there has to be a better way. Trading our time for money, doing mind-numbing, unrewarding work, is an extremely limited way of life, otherwise known as modern day slavery. Financial independence is a pipe dream… unless you have the courage to take matters into your own hands because YOU CAN start your own small business. You CAN find or set-up a system that generates income 24/7 without your constant supervision. The key is to learn everything you can about passive income. When you learn about all sorts of passive income techniques, you will generate your own ideas on investing some time or money into something creative that will reward you back many times more that what you put in.
Slapped Towards Financial Independence
I only became aware a few years ago that the life of an employee wasn’t for me. The only reason I became aware of this was because it was forced upon me when I was laid-off and I didn’t even see it coming at all. I was handed my hat just like that leaving my dreams of financial independence at the door.
But to be honest, after the initial shock wore off, I felt a sigh of relief. Even though I had to find another job to cover the bills, I knew from that point on that I was going to take steps to be able to live life on my own terms and secure my own future. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy and that it could take years before I learn enough to figure it out. That doesn’t discourage me though because getting laid-off was the slap-in-the-face I needed to snap out of it. Suddenly, I felt a sense of control in my life that I never knew existed. I was now in the driver’s seat learning “how to drive” towards financial independence instead of being taken for a ride to who knows where.
Now because it took me almost five months to find another job with enough pay, my savings was totally exhausted to cover the bills while I was unemployed. Which meant that I would have to start from scratch. I thought that by the time I saved enough to start my own business, I would have aged another ten years. I was not willing to work another ten years of my life making my boss rich.
I got down to business (and spent what little free time I had left after work) researching every night until two or three in the morning the best ways to earn my own passive income. Whenever I could afford it, I bought books from stores and downloadable books off the Internet. I did waste a lot of money on bogus information but I didn’t know any better at the time. I didn’t have a business degree and I didn’t know anyone personally that ran their own business. I realized then that this was going to take some time to figure out.
After spending about two years reading anything I could get my hands on, I was able to collect a small amount of information that looked promising and wasn’t going to cost a fortune to get started. I decided that I was going to have to start small with an online business. I’m not that technically savvy but guess what? From what I learned from these books, it doesn’t have to be hard to earn money online and although programming skills would be helpful, it’s not necessary.
One of the most important pieces of advice I learned about passive income was that it’s important to provide value for income instead of trading your time. The inspiration of this site is to share some of what I learned about gaining financial independence by way of passive income. It will be hard in the early stages. Anything worth doing always is, there’s no way around that.
In time, things will start to click and you’ll be able to connect the dots. Most people will give up just before things will start working. Just don’t give up and you will never be a failure. Stumbling along while you’re learning the way is what’s needed to succeed. Don’t fear it, embrace it. Someday, when you earn your first dollar online, it will all be worth it. Your passive income will continue to grow with less and less effort. Financial independence will become a “walk in the park”.