Freedom Is Important

Freedom to go anywhere you want, whenever you want is important. I believe it’s one of the main ingredients for a fulfilled and happy life. Consider this: given the same health and money, would you prefer to have more options in life or less?

Answer’s obvious.

This post shows the high-level framework that I think is important in achieving max freedom.

Framework > Results Only

People have grandeur plans of financial freedom (FI). They’ll be financial Jesus and perform a set of impossible miracles and they never have to work again. It’s possible, sure, but not practical. The probability of making a unicorn business to achieve FI, or trading your way to 10 million in 3 weeks is almost 0.

As freedom is one of the key ingredients in a fulfilled life, it’s far too important to gamble on a single opportunity. Thus, I believe instead of trying to achieve some unicorn result, you can just follow a process to achieve freedom in parallel. The requirements for freedom are simple:

  • Have good health (not covered in this post).
  • Be able to go anywhere you want, whenever you want.
  • Have enough money (marginally touched on in this post).

You may not enjoy travel. And after working remotely in the EU for a month, I can tell you I also don’t enjoy travel as much as I used to. But the optionality to go anywhere I want, whenever I want is far more important than me exercising the option. The reason’s because I might just be in a bad mood for a week. But I might want to escape to somewhere else next week. Achieving location optionality is simple:

  1. Find a job that pays decently to cover costs.
  2. Work 100% remote, or apply to.

This implies you need to be a digital nomad, or do work where 100% remote is a possibility. This rules out career options like doctors, lawyers, etc (until those can be made 100% remote).

Having your cash flow be location-independent means you’ve got a framework that 1) pays your bills, yet 2) allows you to be anywhere you want, whenver you want. Sick parent you need to visit? No problem. Want to visit that one country in your bucketlist? Done.

Or maybe you just want to stay home? Trivial.

Tactics to Achieve Remote Work

  1. If your work can be done 100% remote reasonably and your company does not let you work remote, get competing job offers that offer remote. Use the job offers as leverage to get 100% remote approved.
  2. If your work can’t be done remotely (you’re a doctor), consider using weekends and spare hours to start a side hustle that’ll eventually give you enough income so you can be anywhere you want.

Other Benefits Of Remote Work

  • You can concentrate on your work better, which means you’ll finish more work in a shorter amount of time. Slack off rest of the time. This increases your $/hr if you’re salaried.
  • No commute = no risk of car accidents and no wasting your life in traffic. Less wear and tear and gas costs on the car means you save tons of money long-term.

Endnote

Earning max money is pointless if your freedom is limited. Better to earn a good but suboptimal amount of money and in exchange for the optionality to enjoy life more.