Your 3-Step Journey to Financial Freedom

Your Three-Step Journey to Financial Freedom
It will make much more sense to have a visibility on your current situation and an understanding of the reasons you are where you are before setting your financial objectives. In essence, you can only know where you’re going if you know where you’ve been.

To help you get a solid grasp of your current financial situation, I am sharing a free ebook that comes with free templates and worksheets that enable you to plug in your own data and then conclude your current financial situation.

Download the eBook and Free Financial Statement Here
Starting with your own personal financial statements and looking into your ambitions in your big why list, you will need to determine your primary financial objective, whether it is security, comfort, or financial freedom.

This exercise might seem a bit tricky in the beginning, since you might feel inclined to value security and put it at the top of your list, followed with comfort in the middle, and then financial freedom at the bottom.

Most of us were programmed by our parents, school, and society to value first and foremost a good job with a steady pay cheque with good health and retirement perks. This is why most people put security as their primary financial objective.

As a logical next step, we start to seek comfort, with plans for a house, a car, and enough money for entertainment and vacations.

This keeps the financial freedom objective at the bottom of the list. Most people will attribute this stage to luck. Most of us dream of becoming rich, but we keep it as a dream or wish and never put financial freedom at the top of our financial objectives. That’s because we all find refuge in the easier objectives of security and comfort instead of bothering with the effort and education required to become financially free.

It’s no wonder that the primary objectives for the poor and middle class are security and comfort respectively. Both security and comfort are short-term thinking where a pay cheque, health insurance, retirement plan, a house, a car, entertainment, and travel all offer the feeling of instant gratification. Because the poor and middle class value comfort over financial freedom, they will never become financially free unless they change their beliefs and priorities.

On the other hand, the primary goal for the rich is financial freedom. They have developed the discipline of sacrificing short-term indulgence. They invest their capital into income-producing assets. They invest time in learning about how to create wealth from books, seminars, and mentors. As a consequence, they enjoy much better and bigger things in the future. Their delayed gratification is way more rewarding. Because the rich value financial freedom over comfort, they will get both.


This three-step financial freedom roadmap was one of the most life-changing lessons that my mentor Papa Joe ever taught me. In fact, this roadmap changed my life and made me achieve financial freedom in fewer years than I originally planned, even while being an employee. Let’s discuss each of the stages of the financial freedom roadmap, and then connect them all together.

Stage One—Financial Security
The first stage is financial security, which will be achieved when you generate enough unearned income to cover your essential expenses. Once you achieve financial security, you will feel secure against the risk of leaving your job for whatever reason. At this stage, your unearned income still does not cover your discretionary expenses, but it ensures that you are covered on the essential expenses related to taxes, home mortgage or rent, utilities, home maintenance, insurance, education, food, and clothing. Simply put, in the first step of financial security, you will need to put a personal financial objective of achieving a sum of unearned income equal to essential expenses within a defined time frame.

Stage Two—Financial ComfortThe second step is financial comfort. In this step you will be setting a personal financial objective of achieving a total of unearned income equal to the sum of your essential expenses plus discretionary expenses. Once you achieve this stage, you will have total relief. You can choose to leave your job to pursue other things in life. You may even choose to remain in a job that you are passionate about, but you will not have any fear of being kicked out of your job at any day in the future. Your income-producing assets can carry your total expenses as they are and without the need to reduce them.
Stage Three—Financial FreedomThe final step of the journey is financial freedom. This is where your total unearned income will exceed your total expenses, both essential and discretionary expenses, by at least 30%. This means your unearned income will allow you to afford keeping your life style as it is. On top of this, you will keep a 30 per cent net cash flow, which could be reinvested into more income-producing assets. This is the step where you feel your wealth is being fast-tracked and where you can start indulging yourself with things you thought you could never afford when you were at step one of your journey.


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