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Profitable For All Things - HOME
What Is The Difference Between Being Rich And Finanical Freedom?
Ask 10 people what it means to be rich and you will likely get 10 different
answers. "Rich" is a subjective opinion and frequently depends on what
lifestyle you are accustomed to. Financial freedom, on the other hand,
is a number that you can calculate and create a specific plan to achieve.
What Is Financial Freedom?
Financial freedom simply means that you have enough passive income (not
earned income such as from a job) to meet your current expenses.
In other words, a financially free person does not need an earned income
to pay their bills. In contrast, there a plenty of "wealthy" people (with
high-paying jobs)
who are, essentially, financial slaves because they spend everything (if not
more than) they make.
Who Can Be Financially Free?
I have had the privilege to visit several countries other than my own
(the United States) including Colombia, Kazakhstan, United Arab Emirates
and several European countries. Whenever I return home from a trip abroad,
I am impressed by one over-riding fact: America remains the land of
opportunity unlike anywhere else I have seen.
While the principles of financial freedom are
true and operative everywhere, there are many countries in which
the disparity in opportunity is so great that, except for a select few,
it is essentially impossible to become financially free. Most people
will spend their entire lives working and obtaining only what is
necessary to meet near-term living expenses.
Not necessarily so in the United States. While some people's lives can
be stricken with unrecoverable financial tragedy, for most Americans
the legal, cultural and economic obstacles to financial freedom
are surrountable. Those who become financially free are those
who have a quantifiable plan and exercise financial discipline to
achieve the goal of financial freedom.
Why Pursue Financial Freedom?
I believe that financial freedom is a worthy goal for five reasons:
- Most people eventually reach the point in their lives where they are physically unable to work. If you are unable to work, you need a way to pay for your living expenses.
- Assuming that others (e.g. government social programs, family, charities)
will pay your living expenses when you can no longer work is extremely risky.
They may be unwilling or (much more likely) unable to help.
- The financial freedom way of thinking provides the best defense against
poor financial decision making. Even if you never achieve financial freedom,
by pursuing it you will dramatically improve your finanical health and minimize your dependence on others.
- One of the most precious gifts you can give is time, and financial freedom
enables you to give more of your time in service to others.
Those who exercise the discipline required to achieve financial freedom
will not be satisfied
with a stereotypical life of self-indulgent luxury. Rather, the discipline
will bring perspective-changing life lessons, the foremost of which is that
freedom has a purpose and responsibility: to serve others, beginning with
your own family.
- It's more fun to have control of your time than it is to have an
employer control your time (doing something you may or may not enjoy)
simply because you need the money in order to pay the bills.
Our Mission
The mission of Profitable For All Things is to provide you with the tools you
need to exercise financial
discipline so that you can achieve financial freedom.
Our primary tool is the PFAT Planner which will enable you to:
- Calculate your financial freedom number
- Run simulations showing how long it will take to increase that number to greater than zero (freedom!)
- Track your actual progress compared with your plan
Unfortunately, most of us have never learned the financial principles
that led to freedom. It's a message that is either ignored as dull and
boring, or it's drowned out completely by our hyper-consumer culture and
the latest get-rich-quick scheme. As a result, many people fall into
making very poor, even devastating, financial choices.
So, an essential discipline required to achieve
financial freedom is to change our beliefs and money-handling habits
by investing time to
learn the fundamentals.
In the sea of financial gurus (and scam artists),
the truth is often obscured by hype.
Profitable For All Things
provides guidance here as well,
pointing you to the best (and sometimes
unconventional) financial advice, and warning you about the hype.
Explore this site.
Read the recommended books.
Watch the tutorials.
Subscribe to the
PFAT Planner.
Develop your financial discipline. Achieve financial freedom. Use your
freedom to serve the people in your corner of the world.
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