With so many personal finance blogs in today’s world, I hope to bring a different perspective from my own experiences and learnings to hopefully be able to connect and grow with all of you following. To learn more about me, click here. The more and more I read (and trust me I read a lot of books/posts about money), the more I seem to get confused. There is such a broad knowledge base from so many people that it is hard to follow one solid plan, because truly, there is more than one solid plan. There are many ways to financial freedom. The important aspect to learn that each person’s path to financial freedom is going to be different. No two are going to be the same. Everyone achieves their freedom differently by using different saving tools, investment strategies, debt payoff methods, risk tolerance levels, conceptual understandings of money, and so forth. You get the picture.

The biggest similarity that I have come across is that everyone is chasing freedom; being able to not have to worry about money anymore to live the life they want. Ideally, that makes sense. In Mike Maloney’s Hidden Secrets of Money video series, you quickly can learn that the only true wealth everyone has is time; freedom of time. Not having to worry about going to work and trading your valuable time for money (currency which is again emphasized in the video mentioned above) is what it is all about. I will also mention work is part of life and it is valuable to most people, but the statistic that 70-80% of employees both unhappy and disengaged with their current jobs is telling me we need more people finding meaning in their lives. We all know there is so much more to life than working. Spending time with family and friends, traveling, and doing hobbies and passions (for most; I understand some really love the work they do which is amazing you found a way to match up your passion with working to generate income!). Do you see the trend in that sentence? Spending time on these things are the essence of living. We all only get a certain amount of time on this planet, and we should value that time doing the things that are most important to us.

Unfortunately, most of these things cost money. So, in its truest form, money=time. This is another common theme I have found through reading other popular blog posts and books. No way around it. If you have money, you can supplement it for gaining more time. If you do not have money, you must spend time to get money so then you can use money to gain more time.

An even deeper understanding would be to add energy into this equation. When we work, we expel energy, whether you work for a company or your own business. We use our talents and skillsets to work; a quick definition of work is “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.” In physics, “the unit of work is the unit of energy.” A great expert in understanding the addition of money being connected to energy is Michael Saylor, who is the founder of MicroStrategy and recent advocate for Bitcoin. His education is from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, science, technology, and society. He knows some stuff. Anyway, in a general sense, energy=money=time.

When you get a job, you get told how much money you will get per hour or in the form of a salary. You trade a certain number of hours of YOUR ENERGY AND TIME FOR MONEY. What is your time worth? Is it worth missing out on a family gathering? Is it worth missing that once-in-a-lifetime trip with some old friends? Is it worth coming home from work so tired that you can’t find time to go do your hobbies or work towards your passion(s)?

In a general sense, we all must work at some point to get up to the threshold where we are free from trading our time and energy for money. Everyone’s time=money ‘number’ will be different, which we will diverge into in further posts. There are ways to make more money, which is essential to gaining financial freedom faster. That can be supplemented with another job, a side hustle, or investing.

I hope you join me on this path to financial freedom to pursue the life we want and deserve without the obstacle of money taking us off that path.

To the New World and the New You, much success in finding your financial freedom.