Financial Independence: Three Reasons You Think It’s Not Possible

If you look around the Internet even briefly, you’ll find tons of blogs and websites that collectively list thousands of ways to save money. Many more shell out investment advice.

But rare is the webmaster who dares to dare to talk about developing financial independence.

No, I don’t mean retiring at age seventy with a million dollars or two in annuities or mutual funds. Such blogs are a dime a dozen.

I’m talking about being able to leave the rat race and live life on your terms by age thirty or forty.

The reason you see hardly anyone discussing the possibility is simply this: most people – including most bloggers – don’t believe such a thing could happen for them.

You may be in the same boat. And you may give any number of reasons for not believing in personal early financial independence. A smattering of such reasons include:

1. I have kids.
2. I don’t make enough.
3. I have too much debt.
4. It’s the economy, Stupid.
5. The government won’t give me what’s mine.

While there are certain (and rare) life circumstances that can truly limit a person’s ability to build wealth in less than two decades of life, the above excuses – I mean, reasons – are not among them.

The real reasons that you don’t believe early financial independence can happen to you (besides the fact that you’re already over fifty-five) are as follows.

1. You don’t read.

You don’t read books filled with rags-to-riches stories. You don’t read articles on investing. You don’t read books on personal finance. In other words, you do nothing to inspire yourself to grow in the area of finances.

Let me ask you a question: if I told you that giving up an hour of television every night – in order to read – would eventually be worth two million dollars to you, would you do it?

2. You don’t get around self-made wealthy people.

Who you hang out with rubs off on you. So, who have you been hanging out with lately? You don’t have to start stalking your town’s wealthiest person. Just find a local successful small business person and ask them to lunch.

3. You haven’t been taught how to become financially independent.

Here is what the status-quo bias teaches:

• You have to work at a job you don’t like all that much for at least thirty years before you can retire.
• Investing is scary.
• Only people lucky enough to inherit gobs of money at a relatively young age can have early financial independence.
• You can’t take anything out of your IRA until you’re of official retirement age.
• You need to have a high credit score.
• If you don’t have a car payment (assuming you own a car), your car is too old.
• Having money is the root of all evils.

Take all three of the above reasons, and what you end up with is a mind full of negative thinking, which leads to actions that actually sabotage any kind of aggressive, non-conformist financial goals.