I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

From Financial Imprisonment to Financial Independence

The tagline on my blog for a long while now has been “From Financial Imprisonment To Financial Independence, A Penny At A Time. This Is One Family’s Story.”, which I actually got the inspiration for after reading a post from a while back on Moolanomy. Pinyo wrote a post about what he termed financial imprisonment, and I learned there was a name for the place I am, and it is that. But I’m not content to stay where I am. I’m on the road from financial imprisonment to financial independence, and it has been quite a bumpy ride.

At first, I thought the road was pretty straightforward. Figure out how to improve your life financially, understand where you want to go and what you want to do, and then set down that road and keep on pushing until you get there. All you need is a solid plan and the commitment to follow it to its completion, right? But of course, life doesn’t work that way. There are detours, roadblocks, hills, and all sorts of obstacles that you need to push through or be pushed off course by. In fact, this is maybe the least straightforward thing I have ever done in my entire life.

Financial independence is a nebulous thing for me. In its purest sense, it is when we as a family have enough money that we don’t have to work - usually there is income from investments involved that replaces your “work” income. But that seems a long long way away, so for me, the goal is a little closer. Financial independence, or at least the first stop on the road there, is when my life is not ruled by money, or the lack of it. Of course, there will be many many decisions dictated by money for just about as long as I live, but what I want is the freedom to be able to make choices about what I do with my money today, tomorrow, and beyond.

A purist will say - you already have choices! You are choosing debt reduction, you are choosing a house payment, you are choosing many many things. And that is in the purest sense true. In most things though, I don’t feel like I have a lot of choice. I’m not going to abandon our debts, so that money is already decided for me every month, at least the budgeted minimums. We did choose to stay in the midwest versus moving back to the northeast where we both grew up, but that choice was very largely dictated by money, and our lack of it. In many things in our lives, big or small, money plays the ultimate deciding factor.

For me, financial independence is when the largest factor in most decisions isn’t purely financial. Financial will always have a role and a part, but I look forward to the day where it’s not the only one.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!