Do you still work in a corporate environment? Have you just left school where others told you what to all all the time? If so, do you know what Freedom is?
For me Freedom is being able to choose who I work with and under what conditions. I choose my schedule. I choose what I do every day. I choose where I live. I could do none of those things when I had a real job. Of course on a project I have to meet the milestones but how I do that is my choice. The larger areas of choice still remain mine because I can negotiate my role. If I don't like it, I can choose to not do the work.
So how can I do this as a Freelancer and not as a SVP of a big organization who made much more money? The answer is that I have designed my life so as not to be financially dependent.
The key to freedom is not to maximize revenues but to minimize costs!
If I don't need to make lots of money all the time - I can be free to chose many things that I can't if I spend all my paycheck or I have expenses that drive large amounts of debt.
This is the key to freedom. No debt and low expenses. It also helps to have a "Fuck You" fund. Savings sufficient to keep me ticking over for a few years now. Again this is only possible with a low expense rate.
How do you do this?
I bet that the answer is different for all of us. So I can only talk about me as a general rule.
I used to live in downtown Toronto with a big house and a really big mortgage. Where you live is a key issue. I chose to move to PEI. Where I have a much nicer place and no mortgage. But the trade off is that a lot of work is in Toronto. But not needing a lot of money now, I don't need a lot of work anyway. I can choose the work that I like the best. My only expenses are property taxes and food, drink and energy.
I have invested in energy saving. Insulation, wood heating, solar water heating. All of this reduces my need for cash.
We used to have 2 really nice cars. We have one very small one now. If I need another car, I rent. It's much cheaper.
I used to commute and have lots of really expensive clothes. I work at home - have found 2-3 hours of my time back and have worn a suit once in 14 years. I also co work out of the Queen Street Commons where I have a full office, access to a cool boardroom, wifi, Voip, nice colleagues for $50 a month!
I am incorporated - I have much more financial flexibility than a wage earner. I run a rental business at home as well. As a wage earner you have no flexibility at all.
I save and I have saved all my life. We don't get rich in the stock market. We can save though. Both my kids went to university paid for by savings and left with no debt. I was able to do this while I was a Freelancer because I had saved since they were born just for that.
I sleep well at night. Why not. My contracts with my clients are based not on a power dominance but on a partnership. I am in control of my work. We speak as partners not as child to parent.
I wonder if this economic crisis has shown more of us that how we choose to spend our money can make us either slaves or free?
The day after I was fired, Robin and I had a strategic planning meeting at a pub. We ended up with a one word plan "Freedom". What this meant in practice was that every decision that we would make would be filtered through the ideal of gaining more freedom. If the decision meant less freedom, we usually said not. If it said more we usually said yes. We do choose less sometimes, such as having dogs, because there are offsets. Dogs bring health and love and in that case the loss of freedom is worth it. But always we make a conscious decision.
It's a simple plan. It took us about 4 years to unwind our old life. In the last 10 years, our freedom has only increased. So as our security. So has our health. So has our happiness.
Your path will be different. But is you make freedom your goal, all else will follow.
