Get Rich Now. Find Self Later.
6 ideas on how to reach financial freedom faster [The Other Side of Enough]
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The Way of Work explores stories of where we fit in the world of work. This is part of the series, The Other Side of Enough, exploring what life is like when you have enough to never work again. This is the last essay in the series…
Excuse me, sir? I’d like to know where I can sign up for those “rich people problems,” please?
Let’s say you’ve read this series. You’ve heard the challenges that people face after hitting “enough,” how it’s not the finish line, and a bunch of other fluffy-existential stuff that sounds interesting, but doesn’t exactly generate a whole lot of sympathy for these rich fucks.
You’re still thinking: “yeah… but I still want that money.”
Okay, fine. This piece is for you.
While I’ve explored some of the darker aspects of having enough, most did say they were better off after reaching financial independence. Brandon, aka the Mad Fientist, put it best:
“I still frequently catch myself thinking about how incredibly lucky I am to have this amount of freedom. And even though this new lifestyle isn't without challenges, they're challenges I feel grateful to be able to confront now (rather than at 80, or potentially never).” - from Should you put off life for the future?
And yeah, the numbers from my guests show it’s worth it:
68% decrease in Hours Worked (from an average of 54 to 18 hours/week)
51% improvement in Stress
29% improvement in Health
26% improvement in Creativity
18% improvement in Meaning
So despite the existential weirdness, financial independence does seem to make life better. But how do you actually get there? I went back to my guests to ask them one last question:
Can you share one piece of advice, based on what you did, for how to achieve financial independence?
Here’s the advice from the group:
1. Eat Your Vegetables
My wife is a dietitian. And she has countless stories of clients trying to squirrel their way out of the basics of good nutrition. Does wine count as a serving of fruit? What if I skip breakfast (but double up on lunch)? What about juicing (aka a diarrhea-cleanse)? We love to skip over the hard, important stuff for ineffective tricks that don’t require much sacrifice.
Similarly, I’ve heard it said that financial independence is like running a marathon: it’s not easy, but it’s simple. Jordan Grumet says the boring part out loud:
“Winning the money game is about the simple path to wealth: save more than you spend, invest the rest.”
How disappointing!
Here’s Brandon, from before, who retired at the age of 34 with this profoundly dull strategy:
“I achieved independence by saving and investing a large percentage of my income (>70%) during my career.”
But wait, where’s the secret blueprint that the rich don’t want you to know?!?
Unfortunately, the basic tenets of financial independence are deceptively simple:
Make money.
Keep a lot of it.
Invest it.
Do that for a while.
Once you have 25X your annual expenses, congratulations – you never have to work again.1
If there is a secret, it’s realizing how increasing your savings rate speeds up your time to retire:
Are you still looking for a financial cheat code? Or are you willing to eat your vegetables?
2. Pay the Price of Independence
One of my favorite sayings is: “you can have anything you want, as long as you are willing to pay the price.”
Yes, you need to cover your financial obligations. But even after that, most of us want a bunch of stuff over freedom. You want that new Tesla. A spacious house with an Insta-worthy kitchen. An assembly line straight from the Amazon warehouse to your front door. That stuff is all fine. Just know that every luxury is paid for with the price of your independence.
Sara Pendergast, the artist, talked about the sacrifices she made on the way to independence, by first targeting a 20% savings rate, going all the way up to a high of 76% when she was 48:
“We have used budgets to understand how we use our money and regularly scrutinize our behavior to make sure we are spending money on what makes us happiest – not on things that we buy to compensate for frustrations or stresses that we can address in a more healthful way. For example, leading up to retirement, we spent a full year not buying any new clothes and another not buying electronics.”
Are you willing to pay the price?
3. Prioritize the Most Expensive Purchase
The #1 critique of financial independence is that it’s the delayed gratification framework: suffer now with frugality, so you can be happy later.
But I’ve come to see early retirees as the opposite of frugal. In fact, they’re huge spenders. Just not on things you can see. Instead of luxuries, they’re splurging on one of the most expensive assets in the world: time.
Jeff, the exited CEO/Founder, talks about skipping over the small purchases, for the mega purchase later:
“When things start to work, it’s tempting to get a fancy office or lease a Porsche. Delaying the prizes brings compounding in the long run. Keep the money tight and focused on growth and having some reserves.
Grabbing at those prizes too early can both stunt your growth and make you and your company more susceptible to failure.”
Where do you want to spend your money?
4. Find the Leverage
If you want something more accelerated, you’re going to need to take a bigger swing at the “make money” part of the formula. That’ll require a big financial event, whether all at once (e.g. exit) or over-time (e.g. very high-paying job).
Most of us hate risk so much that instead of doing something interesting, we’ll take the safe route — finance, law, consulting, or some other lucrative, yet soul-sucking and debatably necessary job (joking… kind of). We cling to the obvious career choices because they feel stable.
“Low Leverage roles are seductive to join and hard to leave. But they lack leverage because your upside is limited to predetermined guardrails set by others before you. [They] can be short-term high value, but long-term that value hits a ceiling.” - from Why you probably have a low leverage career
Instead, we need to look out for opportunities with less predictable upside.
“High Leverage roles are open-ended. There is no track. The opportunity ahead of you is wide, like an open landscape. [...] your work delivers greater returns over time. The returns may seem low or especially hard at first, but your input leads to an outsized opportunity later.”
Omar was one example, the founder who gained his independence through an exit, pointed out how we overestimate downside risk:
“Take asymmetric risk. Low downside with unlimited upside. Starting a company is one example. But the idea is that not many things have a lot of downside.”
But you don’t need to become a founder to find leverage. Avon and Marlo both spiked their earnings within an organization, by compounding the value they created. Here’s Avon:
“It was a combination of discipline and luck. The luck part is that I was valuable enough to the CEO that he kept finding bigger roles for me, and with those bigger roles came higher income, and income sort of hockey-sticks as you get closer to the top.”
Sure, there’s risk in everything. But once you actually spell out the worst-case scenario, it’s almost never that bad. And the upside? That’s where the real leverage can be.
5. Hire People to Make Money for You
I could just replace this section with the word “compounding,” but that wouldn’t be very interesting. YOU NEED TO BE ENTERTAINED!
Anyways… instead of just ‘saving,’ think of it as hiring employees to make money for you. You’re building your personal empire. And your employees are the mutual funds, bonds, and so on, who work for you. Every time you put away another dollar, you just hired another employee.
Khe Hy took this idea literally. He started a college fund for his unborn child—before he was even married. He kept investing through market crashes, while others panicked and pulled back. Now? His workforce of investments has grown so much that it keeps working for him, and selling (firing them) is harder than holding.
Start hiring. Your future self will thank you.
6. Minimum Viable Independence
There are two ways to plan:
One is building the impenetrable plan. Something so airtight it can never fail. So you’ll need to do the most research possible to anticipate every downside scenario (regardless of likelihood). It’s our desire to have control over this messy world and feel certain in our destination.
Another way to plan is to have a direction, but not an exact route. It’s the Agile method. It’s trusting your ability to adapt, knowing the world is too messy for a perfect plan. You’re willing to face some uncertainty because the price of certainty is too high.
Naz Avo (who retired at 32) was able to lower his ‘freedom threshold,’ by trusting his ability to figure it out as he went. Instead of waiting until every risk was covered, he’s resourceful enough to flex his spending, make a bit more money here and there, and change his plan as he goes.
He also understood his floor for living, by taking extreme steps such as living like a student for years after school, never buying a new car, sharing apartments with roommates, and living in low cost countries.
He knew that a perfect plan was just a delay tactic, and freedom favors the adaptable, not the over-prepared.
By the way, never confuse any of this as EASY. The sacrifices can be tortuous and the whole process can be frustratingly slow. There’s just no secret formula. It’s a series of trade-offs — some obvious, some painful, some worth it.
Maybe you don’t want to retire before 40 (or can’t). But what if you could trim off 5 years of work? What if you could work on your own terms a decade or two sooner?
The people I interviewed didn’t just stumble into “enough.” They made their choices, paid their prices, and earned their freedom. Is the sacrifice worth it to you?
Next up… will be a brand new series 👀:
The simple math example is:
- You spend $100K per year
- $100K X 25 = $2.5M net worth
- $2.5M X 4% annual return = $100K
The 4% annual return is debated endlessly. I have no desire to tackle it here. Short version: you can worry about it when you get closer.
Here's a calculator if you want to play with the numbers: https://www.playingwithfire.co/retirementcalculator
Interesting piece, I love the analogy you used for framing investments as employees, definitely resonated with me. Thanks for sharing, Rick :)
I would amend to say 25X your annual cash burn when you’re only doing things you actually want to do