After reviewing the popular financial independence milestones, I decided that I wanted to create new financial independence milestones. These new milestones would motivate, inspire and help me keep tabs on the impact that financial freedom has on my life today.
Too often the narrative around financial independence focuses on depriving oneself of purchases so that you can increase your savings rate. While I agree with the essence of this discourse, it has a gaping hole of HOW. How do you go about reversing some of the most ingrained habits and behaviors? In my opinion, there’s no better way to help you change your behavior on the journey to financial independence than to leverage gamification.
Even though I don’t want to retire early, this doesn’t mean I am no longer pursuing financial independence. It’s actually quite the opposite. I am more excited about our pursuit of financial independence because of the complexity of our journey. It’s no longer as simple as finding a balance between work and no work. It’s a journey of self-discovery, dreaming big, working toward goals, re-engineering our life, diving into entrepreneurship, and so much more.
Semi-retirement means that you have already saved enough for a traditional retirement, but you still need to cover some or all of your daily expenses through active income. Since you are no longer in the “accumulation phase,” you can usually pursue things you are interested in often on a part-time, contract, or freelance basis. Michelle is a semi-retired woman in her mid-30s from South Australia. She’s focused her career in the arts and is an avid traveler. I am incredibly inspired by Michelle’s story, and I hope you will be too.
When Corey asked me to read Your Money or Your Life in a book swap, I begrudgingly agreed (and only because he was reading a book I recommended about women in the workplace). Because I wasn’t excited to read the book, I was skeptical at first. However, once I had read a few chapters, I was hooked.
The main narrative in the financial independence space says work as hard as you can now to achieve financial independence or early retirement as soon as possible. This narrative implies that upon reaching that goal, we will then be free to live our ideal lives. Some people are trying to push against the narrative.
