Category — Life Hack

Financial independence is when you are able to live indefinitely without having to worry about money.

I’m sure we can all agree that Financial Independence is a worthwhile goal. Imagine having the time to work on things we value. Work toward things we want to achieve as individuals. Basically, work on things we want, when we want, and where we want.

But how do we gain Financial Independence? You need a plan of attack. I have been reading a lot of books and blogs on Financial Independence lately particularly Your Money or Your Life (one of the best books you’ll find on the subject) and The Millionaire Next Door. What I discovered is that it is actually very easy to achieve. And once you get the hang of it, you will achieve financial independence.

Here a few ways to jumpstart the plan to become financially independent, so you can afford to live a happier and purposeful life.

1. Value Your Time. Your time is the single most precious thing you have. You cannot get wasted time. Don’t waste your time on things that fulfill and are not aligned with your central values, drop it. Instead, create things that will benefit you. Use your time for personal development (increase skills), exercise (walking) and building relationships (networking).
2. Eliminate useless stuff. Useless stuff or clutter is signifies wasted time and money. Clutter are things that distract us from what is important in our lives. Clutter uses our time. We arrange them. It is more difficult to find things. Eliminate them from your life.
3. Simplify Free yourself from consumerism. Buy what is necessary to live comfortably. Realize that you already have enough of the necessary things.
4. Live Frugally Frugality isn’t about being cheap. Frugal people value their resources (time and money). They live efficiently by curbing costly habits and enjoy spending less. This is a key to the next point.
5. Lastly, determine your number By number, I mean the amount of money you need when you retire. Calculate how much you need and start making steps towards it. My number is about Php 6.3M. Calculate yours and find your number

As soon as you achieve your number, you can start living the life you want. Living a life, true to your values and purpose.

Photo by Wolfgang Staudt

We all have stuff. Useless stuff. Necessary stuff. I have decided to take up on Dave Bruno’s 100 things challenge. To participate, you need to reduce the amount of stuff you have and limit them to 100 or lower items. Dave adds additional rules like: things that would be reduced would be mostly his and books aren’t included.

This also a response to Adam Baker’s stuff page. His challenge goes over the notch and will be limiting their family’s (his wife and daughter) stuff to 100 items.

I will follow David Bruno’s path and list my items and limit them to 100 on a separate page of this blog. I will live with these 100 items for a year starting today, September 30, 2009 until September 30, 2009. This may or may not help me with a better lifestyle change but it would sure save me time and money on have just a few items to clutter my life.

Here are a few of my rules:

• Socks are considered a group and considered as 1
• Books are considered a group. I love books and I own a few books
• Underwear is considered a group and considered as 1

Note: Most of my stuff were ruined when typhoon Ondoy flooded our area. I lost my laptop, most of my clothes, my toys (happy meal toys, shell ferrari toys), and many more.