Ever since I started work (and even before then in college), I’ve always dreamed of the day of breaking the shackles chaining me to my office chair.
“Let’s work really hard now”, I told myself, “so that I don’t have to work in the future.”
One of my early financial goals as a working professional is to be financially free one day. I never want to be beholden to my employer, the government, or anyone else for my livelihood. This rings even more true at an older age.
I never wavered on that goal – to be financially free and independent one day.
With that in mind, I worked hard at my corporate job. Year after year, I got an increase in pay and bonus. Occasionally, a promotion came my way. I continued to climb the corporate ladder – although, at times, it felt more like a crawl than a quick climb.
I focused on saving my earnings and investing those savings. Over time, I was able to construct a nice investment portfolio made up of rental properties, public and private equities, and alternatives.
After two decades of compounding, I now have a sizable financial nest egg. After running some numbers and scenarios, I can say that the nest egg is large enough to comfortably support my current lifestyle. I am financially free!
Cue Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption moment:
It feels good to be financially free. It feels even better to be able to achieve a goal I’ve set over two decades ago.
As I reflect upon my journey to financial freedom, in addition to the feeling of joy, I realize there are other benefits as I gain more and more financial comfort that might not be apparent at first.
Advantage 1: Better Hours At Work
My corporate jobs were never 9 to 5. I worked until the task at hand was done. Sometimes, that meant working 7 days a week or working from morning (8 am) to very late at night (2 am). This was especially true during the first decade of my career.
When you are paid a salary and a bonus instead of an hourly wage, employers won’t hesitate to use employees as much as possible. My employers were no different.
However, as my financial nest egg grew, and I felt more and more comfortable that I can survive with just my savings, my hours improved at work. I can attribute the decrease in hours to me not caring as much about putting in face time. Additionally, I focused only on work that I enjoyed doing.
I felt a lot more comfortable saying no. No to working on weekends, no to working very late nights and missing dinner with the family, and no to crappy projects.
Advantage 2: Increased Ability To Choose Better Projects and People
During my early days, I had less say on who I can work with. The company decides which projects I worked on and who works on those projects. Sometimes, those projects can be giant headaches, and the people on them are tough to deal with.
As I moved up in the organization and as my bank account balance grew, I dared to speak up more regarding the projects I wanted to work on and the people I wanted to work with.
No longer is the best financial outcome my biggest concern. If a project requires too much of my time and eats into family time, I politely declined the project.
Sure, maybe completing those projects might earn me brownie points with my manager, but they weren’t worth it for me once I became less concerned about money.
I also chose more freely who I wanted to work with or interact with, despite what it meant for my future at the company. I’ve been given numerous opportunities to interact closely with one of the leaders of the company. But I declined those opportunities. That executive’s approach to the management of people conflicted with my approach and I opted to limit my interactions.
I knew I wouldn’t be happy working on projects with that executive and declined to do so when given many opportunities. Was that the best move for my future at that company? Of course not. But I didn’t care anymore since I wasn’t beholden to the company for my livelihood.
I only want to work with good people.
Advantage 3: More Time With Family
Freeing up more time at work means I get to spend more time with the family.
Also, I became more inclined to take all the vacation days once my financial nest egg grew to a nice size. I cared less about how I was perceived at the company. Spending time with my family on vacation provides me with priceless memories.
My willingness to work around school events increased as my bank account increased. I got to work later in order to catch my kid’s recital in the morning. A parent-teacher conference at 5 pm? No problem, I just left work at 4:30 to make it.
The ability to spend more time with the family went up as my nest egg increased in size.
Advantage 4: Easier To Practice Stealth Wealth
I believe there are many benefits to practicing stealth wealth. In fact, I’ve written a post about it which you can read more about here.
Being financially free made it easier for me to practice stealth wealth. Quite an irony here, right?
I believe one of the challenges of practicing stealth wealth is the need to feed one’s ego. When I was younger, there was a tendency to try to impress people and put up a facade of how well I was doing professionally and financially.
As a young man, my ego needed to be fed. As I’ve gotten older and more financially comfortable, my confidence grew and my need to impress others subsided. It became easier for me to understate and downplay my financial standing.
A lot of times, I kept quiet about my financial situation. Practicing stealth wealth became easier.
Advantage 5: Can Move To Lower Cost Of Living Area
I live in New York City which has a very high cost of living. Why do I live in NYC? I wanted to be closer to work. That way, if I need to attend any family function or school events, I can commute to and from work quite easily.
Proximity to work is especially beneficial given the hours I was working.
Now that my work hours have decreased, I can move further away from my office. My wife and I are exploring moving to the suburbs of New York City where we would have more space at a lower cost per square foot.
Moving to the suburbs should also lower our cost of living since we no longer need to pay for garage parking, expensive groceries, and private school.
I’m not sure if we will pack up and move but we are talking about it more and more. If we are not financially free and tied down to our jobs, then moving away from New York City would not be such a robust discussion.
Being more financially free might result in added money in our pocket if we do end up moving to suburbia.
Advantage 6: Can Afford To Splash With Investments
When I was building my financial nest egg, I was very careful with my investments. I never want to crack my egg before it hatches.
There is a reason why early on, my investment portfolio was made up of mainly S&P 500 mutual funds and rental properties.
I believe those to be very safe assets. I felt very comfortable having investments in them.
While a large percentage of my assets are still invested in the S&P 500 and real estate, I started venturing out to assets that are perceived to be riskier. Investments in individual stock names became a larger part of my investment portfolio.
Private equity investments are now a significant amount of my assets. Additionally, crypto investments and NFTs are now part of my investment portfolio.
Being financially free allows me to splash with my investments. I have excess capital to put to work and I no longer need to default to “safe” investments.
Hopefully, some of those higher-risk bets will pay off in the long run.
Advantage 7: Better Financing Rates
The Federal Reserve has been hiking up its fed funds rate. The increase in the fed funds rate has a lot of trickle-down impact on other interest rate benchmarks. It makes the cost of borrowing more expensive across the board for a number of people.
Mortgage rates have increased because of the raising interest rate environment. I’ve been shopping around for mortgages on some of my real estate purchases and those rates have definitely gone up a couple of percentage points since 2 years ago.
Some of the banks I’ve spoken to offer better mortgage rate pricing if I transfer assets over to them. Those banks have tiered discounts on their mortgage rates depending on the dollar amount of assets transferred. Open up a bank account with $500,000, and take 0.25% off the rate. Bump the asset transfer to $1,000,000, take 0.375% off the rate.
A benefit of having a bigger nest egg allows me to take advantage of such promotional rates by banks to help me lower my mortgage interest rate.
Advantage 8: Ability To Obtain More Free Things
I am reminded of an interview Ringo Starr, the legendary drummer of The Beatles, gave. He mentioned that when he was starting out and broke, all he wanted was to have enough money to buy a nice set of drums. No one would sell him a set for a penny less.
When he became famous and rich, he has more than enough money to get any drum set he wants. However, drum companies would offer to send him free drums hoping to win Ringo’s usage and endorsement.
There is certainly truth to this story, regardless if you are a rock-n-roll legend or just someone who is financially sound.
As I moved up in the corporate world, I received more and more invitations to lunch, dinner, sporting events, and other activities. Those companies wanted to win business from me.
The same can be said once we have a decent size nest egg. Financial advisers, insurance salesman, and real estate brokers hope to win my personal business or establish relationships with me.
I’ve attended an event where I met some former NY Giants players, and obtained gifts and free bottles of wine all from people who hoped to win my business.
Conclusion
There are perks and benefits to being financially free that might not come to mind at first.
Hopefully, you can find out one day all the benefits of being financially free. You never know, maybe you might come across a few benefits that you didn’t expect.
To The Audience: Are you financially free yet? If you have reached financial freedom, what are some of the benefits you didn’t originally anticipate? What does financial freedom mean to you?
Related Posts
12 Financial Truths To Make You Rich
Path To Wealth And FIRE In 20 Years On An Average Salary
Many people work hard to better their physical and mental health. What about their financial health?
I started this blog back in 2019 to help people better their financial health as well.
My financial journey began with tens of thousands in student loan debt. Over the span of 20 years, I am close to achieving financial independence.
I truly believe anyone can get to strong financial health. Hopefully, this blog can help you on your financial journey to greater wealth and financial independence.
You can read more about me here.
Thank you for visiting. Come again soon!
