I will be recommending some things where I get a small, (very small), payment if you click on some of the links within and I hope in time it builds to help pay for my effort to keep this movement going and help more people see the W+ plan.   The plan to live life SEMI-HARD.  If you haven’t yet read the SEMI-HARD MANIFESTO, I recommend starting here.     

Freedom Point

What is your freedom worth?   Take it away completely and most people would pick up arms and fight for it.  Fortunately we live in a time and country where we have the freedom to do what we want.   But so many of us grow up, borrow some money to go to college, borrow some more to buy a car, borrow more for a house, get married have a few kids maybe add some credit card debt and at some point we realize we are not very free.   We have a job working 40-60 hours a week, a job many of us hate, to support our lifestyle while trying to save for retirement.  We love our family, our house our kids, we hate that we are locked into our job.  We have painted ourselves into a corner and with regards to our freedom and our retirement we are constantly told we are behind on our retirement savings.  

So what do most of us do?   Many just bury their head in the sand and hope for the best.   But if you open your eyes to a different way of thinking about retirement you suddenly open your eyes to a brighter future, a happier one, and one that is more attainable, your worry starts to go away changing into excitement about the future ahead.  And for many it brings your retirement lifestyle closer to your near future.  IT GETS YOUR FREEDOM POINT ON THE MAP!

Your freedom point is that point in life where you can wake up in the morning and with no fear of losing what you’ve worked so hard to gain you can choose to do as you please.  It sounds so far away right?  That won’t happen until my kids are grown my house is paid off and I have FU money.    That is BULL PUCKY!   You don’t need to have fully funded FU money.  

What is FU money?  Entertainingly described by John Goodman here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI

So from this we can see that FU money can be thought of in one of two ways or a combination of both:

1. A large enough sum of savings that can drive passive income from only the interest earned to pay your bills and support your lifestyle.
2. FU money can also be achieved by building passive income in other ways. Here is nice short video about passive income:       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoOBaRqT3As
3. A combination of interest on investments and passive income.

The other side of your Freedom Point balance sheet is your expenses.   And fully funded freedom is that point when your FU money brings in enough income to allow you to do what you want without the stress and worry about affording it.  

What’s your freedom point?  Well if you embrace the Semi-Hard Life it is not very far away and   

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE AN ALL OR NOTHING PROPOSITION!  

Keep reading and I’ll prove it…………….

FU money can be thought of as your “Freedom Number” I’m not trying to sell you real estate but there is a real estate guy on the web here:    who talks about your freedom number.   Simply put it is the amount you need on a monthly basis to support your lifestyle without working.   He is selling rental houses.  And owning a few rental properties myself it is a legit opportunity.   His math is basically if you need 4k per month in monthly expenses then you need 4k in monthly income from assets that will continue to produce that income if you are not working.   Rental houses are one proven path but in this scenario you need about 12 of them so at 100k each you need 1.2 mil in FU money.  Ouch.      

So your freedom point is that point where you are free from your job but really the first step is when you see the opportunity to make a living and support your lifestyle in a new more enjoyable way.  When you think differently about what life’s plan should look like, you open your eyes to a new path…..the SEMI-HARD path.   And for many of us it is pretty much the path we have been on for years and just didn’t know it.   A way where you are not a slave to your company.   It doesn’t require taking on a ton of risk.  It doesn’t even require you quitting your job right away.   The first step is admitting you have a problem.    

Here are the steps to freedom: