Episode 10: How to Invest for Financial Freedom

Jan 26

In today's episode, I will talk with you about investing for financial freedom. I have been talking to many clients about financial freedom, and I think about financial freedom often. Craig and I talk about freedom often and wanted to dedicate a podcast episode specifically to how I think about investing for financial freedom.

Before I dive into this episode, I want to first remind you about my four stages of wealth building: the survival phase, the foundation phase, the growth phase, and the freedom phase. So what I'm going to be exploring today are strategies to bring to life that freedom phase regardless of where you are on your financial journey. Suppose you're in the survival phase or the growth phase; in that case, you can still listen to this podcast and start to get some ideas on how to change the way that you're currently thinking about money and perhaps even the leading narrative that you have around money in your life, because whether you're aware of it or not the way that you think about money and perceive your path forward with money has been shaped by things that you've learned from your parents, your employer, your culture, and the government. There are a variety of factors that shape the things that you believe to be true about money.

In this episode, I want to crack open all that, and I want to start to infuse in some new ways to consider using money in your life as soon as today, no matter which financial state you're in. Please stay tuned!

Key highlights

[00:00:04] Introduction to today’s topic: How to invest for financial freedom.

[00:01:34] Recap of the four stages of building wealth

[00:02:46] Debunking the standard retirement model

[00:10:03] Investing outside of your retirement accounts

[00:12:53] Assets classes for financial freedom investing:

Investing in the stock market
Investing through real estate
Investing through business

Notable Quotes

I’m not hating on spending money; I think spending money is amazing. Every spending decision that you make shapes your life, but when so much pleasure and worthiness and satisfaction comes through the process of acquisition and wealth and spending money on things, it's unconsciously reinforcing the narrative that we're being taught that's shoved down our throat: Work at this job that you don't really care about, and don't find your unique value in the ways that you love to.
In financial freedom investing, you just have to throw a bomb and all of that and think to yourself, “Okay, there have got to be more interesting ways for me to use my money and live my life today, right now, so that I'm not on this hamster wheel and I'm not prescribed this way of living.”
We have to infuse our lives and planning with resourcefulness, creativity, and entrepreneurship.
We have to start to bus some of these standard narratives around money in these cultural myths that we've all been blindly living by to start to think about, “How can I reallocate my resources today to start to create income streams , to give me the freedom that I need and want to be able to live the life that I want on my terms?”
You have to break through this idea that spending money is the path to fulfillment, and you have to start to consider that growing money in a way that aligns with my values, and my life is the path to fulfillment.
We have to break the corporate narrative and stop believing that corporations are our P/E banks. We value how we show up and exist in the world that is our money-making machine, and we have to divorce ourselves from that thought process.
One way to be very entrepreneurial in your soft market investing is to get more educated and invest actively. And what that looks like is to start to have an opinion on the direction that our economy is moving or be in touch with press releases as they come out about different companies and advancements that will give you some kind of insight or vision on what you believe is going to happen with these companies in the future.
Getting started in real estate investing does not just have to be buying a home and renting it out as a long-term rental or buying a home and renting it out as an Airbnb; you could turn your current home into a rental by renting out a room in your house.
And while I do think starting a business requires hard work, determination, and grit, I don't think it means that you have to create a product or a service that you actually don't believe you have a strong skill set around and then hustle your way to deliver that simply because you don't recognize and acknowledge the value that you already have based on everything that you already do know.