10 Things I Did DIFFERENTLY To Become Financially Independent

hi guys we started this new decade with the biggest commitment of our lives something would never ever done before and something we're so excited to be doing in our lives and that commitment was that we decided that for this decade the big core goal of our lives would be to help 10,000 families work towards becoming financial independence in this decade okay this is the biggest thing that we had ever done in our lives and what was interesting about making that commitment and some of you will know that I'm one for commitment in my life in fact I wrote a piece recently about the case for commitment which I'll put in the link below or above if you're interested in reading now one of the big things about commitment is that it just sharpens your mind it just gives you something to hang on to to wake up to focus on so for example I'm shooting this at 5:00 a.m. in the morning so we have a commitment to something it becomes the thing that guides your life and going through this process and building something that will help people work towards this big goal of finishing villains we asked everybody waiting for our membership offering to complete a personal survey what's been very enlightening about going through the responses of the survey bear in mind the people completing these surveys are people who have dreams they have goals they have frustrations in life these people have completed these surveys with a very very personal intentions this struck me was reading the answers that people have put into their surveys that we have done a lot of things very differently on this journey its financial independence a lot of the things we've done are things that I just stay for granted and whilst reading through they survey responses it just really occurred to me that perhaps it might be worth just making a video there just shares softer things that we've done differently and these ideas meant to just help you have a thought reflection about your personal circumstances and help you potentially move from seeing financial independence as just a good idea to actually activate in this goal as something that you practically wants to achieve in your life so today I'm going to share with you 10 things I did differently to become financially independent when I say I I really mean me and my wife Mary my name is Ken of the humble penny and financial Academy what we do on this channel skew the tips the insights the practical hacks help you work towards a dream life or financial independence and money joy right let's dive straight in now and start to look at 10 things that we did differently in order to become financially independent this is just random ideas but 10 of them that I believe will just give you something to think about but more than that they'll help you to begin to do what most people must do in order to become financially independent becoming financially independent goes beyond just learning how to do things like how to invest your money there are lots of mindset shifts they need to happen and people need to be inspired on the journey to be motivated under journey to be to have accountability on the journey there's so many things that can I have to line up and change over time because remember this is a long-term goal for this goal to gradually start to become a reality in your life okay so I hope with today's videos some of these things start to come to the forefront of your mind as things that you need to focus on okay right let's dive straight in and look at these 10 different things the first one is that I embrace a new attitude okay well tell you bit of his story so back in 2006 when I started training as a chartered accountant I chose to work for a firm that had the slogan attitude changes everything and I remember when I think about it now one of the big kind of feelings that came out of thinking about that slogan I'm working for that business was that had a certain element of fearlessness to it at that very early stage of my life I understood that I could live a potentially very different life if I approached life very differently something about that particular slogan about attitude changing everything felt very very positive at that early stage of my life I understood that life could be done very differently if I began to understand who I was and what power I possessed it will lead me towards creating a very different life myself and this idea about embracing a different attitude came back to me almost as there was written in the skies when I got out of my training station recently and it was pouring down with rain in fact there was so much rain and the wind was so strong that that large umbrella honour had had no functionality at all there's just no way I could use the umbrella and I still had another 15 minutes or so to walk before I would get to my house and it dawned on me when I came out of that train station and everybody was just standing there unsure what to do and I remember I had my umbrella I thought you know what she's gonna go for it and I got off and started walking up the hill and as I kept walking up that hill I just saw that very slogan about attitude almost flashing to my life because what do you made me realize was there at that very moment the weather was trying to completely break me down in there literally that's being smashed left right to the center by the wind my brain and whilst the rain was smashing me up of walking up this hill and I just stopped because it was so heavy the rain I can use umbrella and the winds and I literally just stood there and just stared into the sky away is this all you've got literally I didn't care what anyone around me was thinking I was literally I couldn't contain my frustration internally anymore I just verbalized it into you know the atmosphere or into the skies and for me that was me fighting back I'll say to myself this weather this whole thing that's happening right now will not break me this evening because I know what mission I'm on I know the thing I'm trying to achieve this evening and I know how that connects to the rest of my week right so come any come rain or shine this thing that's happening right now will not stop me and for most people at that very moment you'd be thinking to yourself oh I can't wait to get home make myself a cup of tea get into my duvet and snuggle up and call it a night but for me us thinking nah it's whether it's not going to have me I've got a lot of work to do I actually got to get home watch to edit off my youtube videos have to go another two hours of work to do things that I actually quite critical to me to get done I'm not going to get stopped by the weather and at that moment I realized that deep within there was this particular attitude within me of particular resistance and independence that had been building up for many years okay that attitude is about doing life very differently to the way most people might do to me getting yourself accustomed to being uncomfortable and that's what this journey to financial independence is partly about is about not choosing the easy path in life which is what most people would do they were ask the people who know they've got what to do who are building businesses online businesses side castles whatever no matter the weather we'll get home and get to work because they know that there's an overarching thing that they're trying to achieve and they know that it requires in particular trade off for them to achieve what they want out of life okay say this thing about attitude is a huge aspect of this journey to get towards that goal of financial independence you've got to embrace a different the second thing I did differently is that I set a North Star goal okay a North Star goal is the goal that you are aiming for no matter what it's kind of the long-range goal that thing that whenever you are thinking about what am i aiming for in life the thing that goes beyond mere resolutions and short-term goals that big goal that you're optimizing your life for is your North Star goal most people in my opinion who want to become financially independent today it just all words they just verbalize nice ideas most people don't even sit still enough to set a simple basic goal that are going to achieve today let's look at eveing a North Star goal such as financial independence okay so my question to you in this very point today is is this one what is your North Star goal what is that goal if you're saying that God is financial independence what evidence in your life today indicates the financial independence is a thing you're trying to achieve what practical evidence what are you dealing differently what steps are you taking to acquire the knowledge change your mindset to get the inspiration the motivation to move beyond generate an income from one source to acquire more I said what are you doing to make that happen okay because if you are not seeing any evidence in your life today any practical in a real evidence your life today then I'm sorry to say but financial independence it's just a phantom girl and you say to turn that around and reframe that position you have to start to take different steps and that begins by setting this as a true thoughts that go in your life next one is that I ignored my friends okay right this doesn't sound as bad as it is but in a way it's actually a really important point okay a lot of us today live what I refer to as a financially ordinary life essentially a mediocre life because a lot of our lives are driven by what our friends are doing he is a really important question for you are your friends living what you consider to be an inspiring life if they are and that's an amazing thing what I found in my life was that a lot of people who have kind of acquired as friends over many years stopped living the type of life that I consider to be an inspiring life okay and for me to break away and work towards my North Star goal I needed to kind of shed some friends over time why me biases gradually move on and meet new people who were doing things in my life people who were trailblazing and taking leaps that resonated with a type of person that I needed to become because remember who you are today and who you are when you become financially independent are two different people you wouldn't in fact you'll probably not recognize the individual you are today if you all become financially dependent one day when you look back and it can happen you would not recognize that person but a certain level of transformation needs to happen for you to start to see that change and for me one of days was letting go of a lot of my friends a lot of my friends what's your risk of us they were not prepared to take risks do not prepare to make radical decisions about it cost in their lives changing their cars for example starting businesses do in life beyond just having a normal day job now where do you get to in life if all your friends are the people doing the exact things that you are trying to get away from if you analyze your life today and find that your friends and not inspiring you I'd say do what I did do a friend's audit it's a hard decision but you must assess to what extent your friends are feeding your life and feeding your future and if a lot of them are not doing that you've got to do something about it today the next one is that I've discriminated against my employers okay I've mentioned this point before but I thought shed a bit more light here just so you can understand okay say the balance of power for most people in most places of employment instance most people think that their employers and doing them a favor by giving them a job and paying them a salary okay but this is quite a small mindset type of thinking because if you really understand who you are and what power you possess and what you bring to the table and their level of knowledge and expertise and skill set that you possess and the level of potential that you possess you realize that you are actually being shortchanged in your current employment radical idea but it's true say if you understand this very much then the question that should really be Miglin you at the back of your mind should be hmm should I now be thinking about doing something different or moving to a different employment perhaps if it serves me better to do so most people don't ask this question so when I talk about I discriminate against my employers what I mean here it is is I went to the employer who essentially did things that served me right so the balance of power wasn't just tilted towards them I was bringing a skill set and they were bringing or I consider to be adequate remuneration in order to help me work towards my North Star goal question for you today is who are you working for I don't really paying you what you're worth if not if you need to make more money on that journey its financial independence you've got to take some radical decisions today the fifth one is that we paid off our mortgage early okay so a lot of you have potentially watched my video on how we pay a farm mortgage in seven years okay now I'll put a link to it below and above if you're new to this channel you you haven't seen that video okay the reason I bring this point up is though on this journey towards financial independence for us a lot of people were saying to us why are you trying to pay for mortgage why it's a low interest it's a low interest environment it just doesn't make in a sense right a lot of these people were our friends right I laugh at this because this is the thing about groupthink is that most people think in exactly the same way they hear idea and hear an idea for somebody or somebody else and it connected thoughts and go yes this is exactly how I should be thinking right without actually pausing and asking themselves how relevant is this idea for my personal circumstances remember money is personal hence why it's called personal finance most people don't ask that question how is it relevant to my personal situation because if you can personalize this decision and this mortgage thing is one of them then you can make the decision that matters to you okay for us becoming mortgage free made sense beyond mere economics although you can make more money on the stock market and then use it to pay your mortgage off for some people that's the way to do it good luck to them but for us paying off that mortgage was game change because not only that it massively reduce our expenses massively a also münster would offer ourselves a heck of a lot more optionality in our lives when he came to work okay we love working with pro working as you can see I'm working right now making these youtube videos but it just means that we have more options more flexibility to do what we want and this is game changing okay if becoming mortgage free something you're interested in look at my video look a couple of others have done another one about paying off your mortgage versus investment through the stock market which I'll put again a link below and above fee to check out watch those videos and the whole point of me making this video is just kind of open up your mindset a little better just to kind of make you think slightly beyond what the masses think about what most people see as the default answer but to personalize the decision for yourself and ask yourself is this cause of action for me and if it is why have your wire in capitals does that's really what matters and once you frame what that why is take action the next one is that I looked beyond boring savings okay obviously saving money is very important and in fact makes people in this country all risk-averse and only really think about cutting cutting cutting cutting cutting to save money and that's great okay but to actually break out I'm gonna move beyond you have to kind of start to think about making more money and investing the money that you make okay yeah these are not surprises but to short-circuit this journey you have to be quite creative about how you achieve your goals again this is another reason why we are creating a membership environment because we can start to share those exact ideas for how you do that because just trying to save save save on your existing income sorry to break it to you might not be the practical reality of how you go about it okay so for us personally we started businesses that have helped us on this journey those businesses have helped us acquire assets and take steps to start to generate income from multiple other sources I came in short one saying here is is that saving money is absolutely critical but in order to short-circuit this journey you've got to be creative and take the steps to make more money whilst keeping your lifestyle at the same level the next one is that I outsource money making two SS okay so there are two broad ways that you can make money the first one is that can swap your lives energy in order to make some money which is probably what you do on a day to day basis you go to work you swap some of that life energy and you get paid a salary the second way to make money is that you can start to acquire assets instead in order for those assets to gradually start to make you some money most people refer to this as passive income in some ways okay now they think about passive income for a lot of people is that they get too excited thinking about it that they don't pause to ask themselves hmm how do I make my first passive income what is that first passive income source they don't think about the nitty-gritty details you need to think about in order to work towards achieving that first passive income is only by making your first passive income that you potentially then make a second passive income source okay to help you with thinking about that help you with taking those steps I made a video recently up a link to it below and above for how you can start to generate your first passive income make sure you watch that video because I go through the practical realities for the thought process you need in order to generate your first passive income source and begin that journey of outsourcing money making to assets next is the I focused on ownership and control okay so as an accountant I understand this principle and I know it might not be something that you might think of naturally but the one thing that you will notice with anybody who's acquired wealth over time any rich person who's done it and built wealth over time is that they have these two elements of ownership and control okay so what I mean here ownership essentially refers to you owning assets okay so you earn some property some shares some equity in companies and so on can you earn some assets next is control in simple terms control means that you are able to make actionable decisions about those assets that you are invested in in technical terms control essentially means that you own more than 50% of those assets okay when you can buy ownership in control you suddenly finally have something powerful that most people who build wealth over time also have in their hands and then thing about ownership and control is that it's a mindset thing okay you've got to be of the mindset of somebody who is an owner and somebody who believes that they can build the knowledge and the networks and what have you in order to gradually start to acquire assets and controllers assets okay a lot of people who work for other people who are employees never actually develop this mindset of ownership it's the same mindset of ownership that helps you go and start a business because you are thinking of ownership and control of the shareholdings of a business so that you can extract and value from that business over time but I talk about assets by the way the default assumption here is that I'm talking about just property assets I'd love to just say that you should try to think beyond just thinking about that kind of low-hanging fruit type of assets such as physical property but to also think about intangible property asset so for example this channel you're watching here under humble penny is part of our intangible asset is essentially okay say we owned the trademark for the humble penny we earned the blog the YouTube channel the academes all these things are all intangible assets okay that's just one example so when you think about ownership and control ask yourself how can I use the money I have today no matter how small that is to start to give myself elements of ownership in control in my own life next one is that I had income goals okay right so I mentioned the North Star goal earlier okay which for me was financial independence he no longer raised for us a North Star goal now is helping other people become financially dependent which which I mentioned the number 10,000 over the next ten years that's our Northside goal now for most people who are pursuing financial independence for that intangible goal to start to become real one day okay one of the things you have to do is to start to have a tangible almost tangible income goal that's one element of that journey okay so I must think of this as part of a framework okay so goals or objectives exist after you first considered the word purpose so what is the purpose for which you are setting an objective and are for the objectives do you then look at the strategy and the potential tactics for how you are gonna achieve those goals which most people refer to as SMART goals Smokey's specific measurable achievable realistic and time-bound it's an acronym smart okay but most people don't even set income goals alone let alone those goals being smart goals and those goals being connected initially to a purpose a meaning in their own lives then why essentially okay say the thing we did differently that set us apart without a doubt is that every single year without fail we had income goals and as income goes gave us an objective and that objective was connected to our purpose okay so the question for you is what is your income goal what is that goal if you currently don't have one then my advice today would be take some time out give yourself 10 minutes and try to answer that question I don't know what month you're going to be watching this video but over the next 12 months what do you want your income to look like and I love this question because it starts to activate a great deal of creativity in your mind because you start to open your mind and your imagination up to what could be which is something that a lot of us don't do anymore because we don't give ourselves enough time to dream and think about our lives and our futures okay so this brings us to number 10 on the list which is that I stopped talking about financial independence okay so on my journey to financial independence I did not speak to a great deal of people about our journey and the reason for that is because initially we were doing that we were trying to speak to people saying look at this journey we're on what are you guys doing what you're doing your own life how are you working on cars how you working an income you know how are you working an assets and mindset and stuff like that but what you find is some people don't really like talking about stuff like that okay when you kind of get down to it okay so you will have to be quite an unusual person to be open to talking about such girls as financial independence which is why it's no surprise that only a similar thickness that's either only 4% of the population actually do achieve financial independence okay which again you know it's no surprise because most people can't even have it as a conversation let alone having other perhaps will go for their lives okay so what I'm trying to say here is we start talking about financial independence because we focus instead on achieving financial independence on taking massive action in our lives account say are you today one of those people who soon as a financial independence article comes up in a newspaper as soon as it's mentioned somewhere are you really on a blog on some forum or some Facebook group you get yourself really excited if you're one of those people that's that's okay okay it's not a bad thing to do but you've got to move beyond words okay otherwise you're just kidding yourself okay what I'd say here is is talk less about fi but take action now I can talk about it because I have my entire channels dedicate Spanish independence but my point is talking is cheap okay that's really a point it's not about talking about it it's about doing something about it and doing something radically different in your life such that you start to see a different result do you get the point here if you're doing exactly the same things in your life as you are doing them today don't expect a different result but if you want a different result start talking about it instead take radical action in your life and you will start to see gradual change in your life guys I hope you've enjoyed today's video on 10 things we did differently in order to become financially independent these are just 10 random things I've paid everything there's so many other things I could talk about but to stop this video being too long I hope these 10 ideas of giving you something to think about to ponder on in order to help you take the next best step in your life on this journey towards making financial independence become real in your life in the very near future if you really enjoyed this video please please hit that like button because it helps with the engagement on our channel I'd love to hear from you in the comments below what is your number one challenge on the journey towards becoming financially independent what is the one thing when you think about do you think ah this is the thing that's just holding me back I need to know what that thing is please comment below and let's just chat about it that's what this channel has been created to do so that we can have dialogue as a community if you're new to our channel please make sure you hit that subscribe button and don't forget to keep the notifications button because it helps to get you notified when we publish content twice a week on a Tuesday as well as a Thursday guys I'm really enjoy making this video I hope you've enjoyed watching it too thanks a lot for watching and I look forward to seeing you again on our next video take care and bye for now

Channel: The Humble Penny

Views: 13,935

Keywords: Financial Independence, Financial Independence UK, FIRE, FIRE UK, Financial Independence Retire Early, Financial Freedom, Early Retirement, fire movement UK, retire early UK, financial freedom UK, retire early, fire movement, fire movement documentary, playing with FIRE, wealth creation, money, qualities for financial independence, Ken Okoroafor, Retire by 40, minimalism, minimalism UK, passive income, passive income UK, money UK, the humble penny, mortgages UK, investing, UK

Id: aONieSpgvrg

Length: 30min 14sec (1814 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 06 2020