In our society, the vast majority of people place a major emphasis on making money. People will give up their health for it. People will give up their family time for it. People will give up their reputation for it. People will give up their happiness for it. People will give up their freedom for it.
Making money has become a right of passage or badge of honor in our society. People brag about their six figure or seven figure annual earnings. The follow up question after you introduce yourself to someone is almost always “What do you do for a living?” People identify themselves based on their occupation.
While making money is necessary, it is not the end all be all. We at The Freedom Society see making money as a means to an end. We encourage people not to give up their health for it. We encourage people to use money to create more time for themselves and their families. We believe that maintaining your reputation always takes precedence over the almighty dollar. We think money can be utilized to buy peak life experiences but not happiness. And above all, we encourage our members not to trade freedom for money and help them understand that they can have a life with both freedom and money.
But there is one hidden reason that many people are not free that happens to be right in front of them. That reason is expenses. You see, while it is necessary to make money, it is not about the money you make, it’s about the money you keep.
So many people that are making decent money in our society are not free. Why? They’re not free because they have residual bills, every month, that need to be paid. Rather than being in control of their expenses, their expenses are in control of them.
Expenses come in many forms. Some people are paying much more for their rent or mortgage than they need to, for no other reason than caring about how they are perceived by others. Many people will give up time with the people that love them to work to buy clothes, or cover a car payment on a vehicle way out of their price range, simply to impress complete strangers.
Let me pose another idea: Do you really need all of those streaming services for music, movies, and shows? Just about all of the streaming services for music serve the same utility. Additionally, most of the streaming services for movies and shows serve the same purpose which is escapism from your real life.
So how do you take back control of your expenses and ultimately your financial destiny? Discipline and delayed gratification. We live in the instant gratification generation. We expect our food fast and our deliveries within two days. Whatever we want, we want it now.
Therefore, we’d like to propose an exercise that can help you practice discipline and delayed gratification in order to reduce your expenses and eventually create more freedom in your life. Next time you are thinking about making a questionable purchase (you should know a questionable purchase in your gut when you come across one, but for example, choosing the vehicle that has a $600/month car payment instead of the $300/month car payment when you’re really only going to use the vehicle to get from Point A to Point B), write down what you are planning to buy. If you want to write out a list of pros and cons for the purchase you can, but we’re just encouraging you to write it down. Then, don’t make the purchase for 30 days. You can even set a notification in your calendar once the 30 days is up. Once the 30 days is up, revisit the idea of the purchase and see how you feel. Do you still have that “I gotta have this” feeling? I’d bet you’d be surprised. Give it a shot. You have unfounded desire to lose and money and freedom to gain.