FIRE is the most interesting topic for me because I always dreamed of living on a farm, growing my own food, helping people, and being around good humans (without caring about earning money every month).
A short story:
I worked in the computer software industry where the salary was decent but I had no time to live my life.
I was not interested in becoming the employee of the year. I did not care how much raise my colleagues were getting.
All I was interested in getting enough money every month to fund my lifestyle. To buy things that I love. Travel where I can feel peace of mind. Order food without looking at the price.
That’s when I decided to join the FIRE movement, that is to become financially independent and retire early (before turning 40 years old).
There are many suggested ways to achieve FIRE:
- Fat FIRE
- Lean FIRE
- Barista FIRE
- Coast FIRE
We are not going to talk about any of these.
I want to share a very simple philosophy that can work with anyone who has a computer with internet connection.
You need to own a part of a business (equity) to live a financial independent life where your own time involvement is less than 8 hours a week.
- It could be your investments in the stock market.
- Your investment in startups.
- Rental income from real estate.
- Your own business that is being taken care of by your team.
- Your own business that’s taken care of by the internet.
First 3 points need money investment upfront. If you don’t have a significant money to invest then look for the last 2 options where you have to invest your time.
Convert your time into money and then invest that money to build a long lasting wealth.
You can start a business that can be handled mostly by your team. Any service agency business would qualify this criteria. Reject all the business ideas that won’t earn money if you stop to show up everyday.
The second option is to start a business that doesn’t even need a team to run. A content media business like blog, book, videos and podcasts qualify this criteria. Another qualified business is when you publish software apps or sell software as service (SaaS) where customers will pay without any additional sales effort.
I will write more about building such income streams where you put one time effort to establish the system and then make money even when sleeping.
Your comment would motivate me to put efforts in writing the next piece of content on this blog.