Financial Independence and Financial Freedom – Free Yourself Now
Do you want to manage yourself or be managed by someone else?
What Financial Independence Is
Financial independence means that you do not depend on someone else to fund your livelihood. Obviously you would not need a paid job and the pay check that comes with it for your survival needs. You have your own source of income to fund the necessities of your life. This basically means that you are financially and economically independent and self-reliant.
Consider Papua New Guinea as a politically independent nation that is so highly dependent on foreign aid. Each year, the donor countries pour in millions of foreign currency into Papua New Guinea’s annual budget. These donor countries now have a sense of ownership of our country and they tend to influence most of the decisions that affect us as a nation, whether good or bad. In most cases, the decisions reached at the political and bureaucratic levels in this country is in favour of the donor countries, and not the people.
In much the same way, being an employee binds you to the terms and conditions that the employer sets. Your employer tells you to come to work at 8:00 o’clock in the morning and work until your lunch break comes, where you take a brief rest and continue until 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon. The employer tells you to live in this town or move to that town or even go to live in the remotest parts of the country where vital government services are lacking (teachers and health workers fit here). If you fail to comply, the value of your paycheck will decrease dramatically.
Employees are conned into thinking that they are financially independent because they have a paid job just as our national government is conned into believing that it is independent because of the billion kina budget it passes every year. In actual fact, employees are entirely dependent on their employers’ pay check just as the national government is entirely dependent on the foreign aids.
True financial independence is achieved when you cut yourself loose from all forms of domination and control. This does not imply that you can sleep and dream and still meet your survival needs. No! What this means is that you should have the prerogative of telling yourself when to work, eat, sleep or have fun but still have an honest way of working for money or earning an income to meet the necessities of your life and your survival needs.
What Financial Freedom Is
Financial freedom simply means that you do not have to work for money at all. You do not have to be employed or be involved directly in an income generating activity. You can work if you want to but it is not at one stage necessary.
Achieving financial freedom is like living in Heaven, if such a place exists. You don’t work. You just relax and have fun and yet everything you need is provided. How good is that? To live free from all financial burdens. To be free from all forms of domination and control.
You will achieve financial freedom when you reach the stage in life where you have a several established sources of income that provide you with finance that is able to cater for your survival needs and enable you to do whatever you wish without using your own physical strength. Millionaires like Bill Gates (the founder and owner of Microsoft Corporation), Mark Zuckerberg (the founder and owner of Facebook) and Steve Jobs (the founder and owner of Apple) are a few living examples of people who have achieved financial freedom. They have everything they need for their survival and can still travel across the globe while money is being pumped into their bank accounts. They can donate millions of dollars to charities and recoup that amount within a few minutes.
Do You Want to Achieve Financial Independence and Financial Freedom?
Understanding the Difference
Putting it all together, we can now have a fair and clear understanding of what financial independence is and what financial freedom is.
We have discussed that financial independence is putting your own physical strength into earning an income without any form of domination or control. Financial freedom on the other hand is getting paid without directly getting yourself involved in any form of income generating activity.
Everyone can be financially independent and everyone can achieve financial freedom.
