Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of mindset and how important it is to open yourself up to learning new strategies and methods. Your financial freedom journey can have many hurdles that you’ll need to overcome so you don’t want mindset to be the one thing that’s holding you back from living the life you want.
What does being financially free mean to you? What would you do if you had more control over your time?
Financial freedom means different things for different people. However, what it all comes down to is improving financial well-being and having more control over time. Most who pursue financial freedom do so because they want the freedom to work and live on their own terms.
You want to be in control over your finances, not the other way around.
4 Proven Strategies For Starting Your Journey To Financial Freedom
As with any venture, the beginning can be the most challenging part. This is especially true for those who want to build true wealth and create a better future for themselves and their families. To help you accelerate your financial freedom journey, let’s dig into four simple, yet proven, strategies to get you started on the right foot.
#1 Read Voraciously
For anyone who’s at the start of their financial freedom journey, there’s a mindset shift and a bit of deprogramming that needs to occur. One of the best ways to aid yourself in the transition is to learn from others who are further down the road than you. You don’t have to follow their exact methods and strategies, but you can learn a lot from their personal experiences in the space.
On top of this, it’s by far the cheapest form of education. Not only will you learn from their experiences but you’ll also get to take a deeper look into the asset class you’re considering investing in.
A few books I recommend starting with include, Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kyosaki, Tax-free wealth by Tom Wheelwright, Killing Sacred Cows by Garrett Gunderson, and The Lifestyle Investor by Justin Donald. These books will truly aid you in the process of building your investor mindset and deprogramming from what has been instilled into us by our financial system.
#2 Expand Your Network
By working with a mentor, coach, or even joining a mastermind group to mentor under, you can really accelerate your journey to financial freedom. With this strategy, you’re going to obtain a ton of knowledge about not only investing in general but also specific investment classes and actionable ways to invest.
Additionally, when you work with a mentor, you get the benefit of learning from their experiences and their mistakes. This will end up saving you from making some very costly mistakes. You will also be able to vastly accelerate your growth curve and expand your network.
Once you increase your network, you’ll notice you obtain a ton of knowledge as well as access to deals and investment classes that you would have not had access to otherwise. In a very short amount of time, you can 10x, 20x…even 100x the investment you made in your mentor or coach. By working with a great mentor, you’ll put yourself on a fast track to financial freedom.
#3 You Don’t Need To Be 100% Sure Before You Decide To Invest
As physicians, we’re trained to analyze every single aspect of a situation before we begin to make a decision. While this is an important quality to have in the medical profession, it can hurt us as investors.
If you have to be 100% about every investment before you decide to invest, you’re really going to miss out on some great opportunities. Once you’ve learned about the space, understand the asset you’re considering investing in, and have a good working knowledge of the specifics of the deal, then jump in!
One thing I recommend when starting out is to put in just enough so that it’ll matter if you lost it. Now, don’t put your entire life savings into your first deal, but you want to put in enough so you’ll stay interested and learn from it.
Where your money goes, your mind will follow.
Every investment you make, whether you’re just getting started or have some level of sophistication, is going to be an opportunity to learn. Therefore, as time goes on, you’re going to gain a ton of knowledge and experience which is going to make you an even better investor.
#4 If There Isn’t Enough Cash Flow, Walk Away
A huge reason why it’s so important to have the right kind of mindset for your financial freedom journey is that you need to know the true difference between an asset and a liability. Don’t let yourself get fooled into thinking a liability is actually an asset.
For instance, your vacation home is not an asset. If you rent it out and you’re able to use your rental income to pay off the mortgages, that’s wonderful. However, it’s still a liability until you generate cash flow from it. Brokers, financial planners, bankers, and others will try to tell you these things are assets and they’ll try to sell you on “capital appreciation”, especially in this real estate climate.
If you think back to 2008, then you know that doesn’t always hold true. It’s quite possible to lose value in a property fairly quickly and it often happens during the time when you need to get the money out of it. If you depend upon an appraiser’s report in order to get that money out, you could find yourself in trouble.
If your property is cash flowing, down economies look totally different. For instance, the people that owned rental properties during the time of the 2008 recession, had cash flow as rents remained virtually unchanged and even move higher every year since.
Cash flow is what it’s all about. Only buy assets that have cash flow.
Achieving Financial Freedom And Building True Wealth
As you start your journey to financial freedom, the best piece of advice I can offer is to not do it alone! Whether it’s finding a mentor, a network, online educational materials, or conferences, it’s important to leverage others who have been there to gain a foundational understanding of the space you’re interested in.
If you are ready to take the next step in exploring the vast investment opportunities available to you in the investable universe, then click here to schedule a free one-on-one call with me. Whether you’re taking your first steps on your financial freedom journey or are a sophisticated investor wanting to learn new strategies to diversify your investment portfolio, I’d love to help you win back your time and live life on your terms!