What is financial freedom? It’s when your nest egg grows to the point when you can undoubtedly live off it for the rest of your life. It’s when work becomes optional and you’re free to do whatever you want with the means to do so. How do you achieve it? Through long term investing, ongoing financial planning and working with the right advisor.
Many people go through their career without a proper focus on their finances. Maybe they’re so busy at work, raising their kids, hobbies, social life etc. It could be many things. Maybe they don’t understand or were never taught how important it really is. Investing early on with a long-term time horizon is the absolute most important thing for your financial future. It raises your probability of financial freedom immediately. By investing I don’t mean lazily allocating money towards whatever looks good, you need to prudent. You need asset allocation, diversity, and patience. You need to actively manage your investments and be proactive instead of reactive. You cannot be emotional and let the corrupt media shake you out of your long-term strategy. This puts you at a distinct disadvantage. It’s impossible to time the market perfectly – and those that say they can beware! With a healthy balance between equities, fixed income, real estate, precious metals, and alternative investments you can set a long-term strategy that aligns with your long-term financial goals – and this is achieved through ongoing financial planning.
If you went to your doctor saying you’re having chest pains, and he/she immediately laid you down on the operating table and cut you open wouldn’t that be alarming? The doctor needs to perform tests, run an analysis, and decide on the best possible route to take for your health. The same thing goes with investing and financial planning. By running the tests (financial planning) and figuring out exactly what needs to be done for you to achieve your goals, the proper investments can be chosen that align with those goals. Without the testing it would be blind investing – but don’t do the testing just once. Update the plan annually or when something big happens that changes the picture. See how it affects your point of financial freedom and figure out what needs to be changed to get you there. If you have a good advisor, he/she should be doing this for you.
At DDIMG LLC, financial freedom is our mission for every client. We want every client to know exactly what needs to be done to have a stress-free retirement – Afterall, isn’t that the point of investing?
