Why save cash?
There are some obvious answers to this inquiry. A common one is retirement. This is usually the response folks think of, but it’s not even close to being the most important. For many working people, retirement is so far away, that saving for it seems unimportant. This is the reason why a lot of people delay saving for retirement until it’s too late. This is a big mistake, but an easy one to make if you function like the average person. Think about it? Why might any person sacrifice a dollar of hard-earned salary for something so distant that it’s nearly impossible to picture? I believe it’s imperative to save, but not for retiring in the conventional sense. There is a far better alternative to the work save retire grind.
What is truly the biggest reason for saving money?
The key reason for saving money is that it enriches the quality of your life by enabling you to obtain financial independence. I define financial independence as being able to do whatever you fancy while not having to stress about money. In short, in the event you spend any time doing something you don’t wish to do for the sole reason of obtaining money, you are not financially independent. Of course, everybody has to acquire funds for basic essentials in life. However, when you are financially independent, how you produce those funds is independent from how you decide to spend your time. Financial independence is the thing that everyone ought to shoot for and saving money is a part of that regardless of who you are. How large a role it plays depends mainly on how you earn money.
WII: Work-Independent Income
Now that I’ve explained financial independence, I shouldn’t need to sell you on why it ought to be a serious objective of yours. The liberty to do whatever you want certainly improves your mental and physical health together with your enjoyment of life, both other elements of The Magic Trio. What you’ll need for financial independence is work-independent income (WII). There are basically a couple methods to generate WII:
1. Earn passive income (income that is created while you sleep, i.e. investment income, interest, royalties, rent checks)
2. Earn active income (income you need to spend your time to earn, i.e. a job) by spending time doing a thing you’d do anyway
You are financially independent when you earn enough to live comfortably with some combo of these two techniques. Maybe it’s 50/50. Maybe you get half this figure, your minimum required income (MRI), from working a job which you love and that you’d perform at no cost and the rest of it through interest. Maybe you earn all of it from property purchases. Maybe you get all of it through a job you love.
The majority of people don’t earn any WII.
They don’t earn any passive income and they don’t earn active income doing something they truly enjoy and would do anyway. If you’re one of the rare people who doesn’t have this concern, then you can skip this section. Otherwise, then the whole premise driving your personal financial strategy should be repairing this issue. This implies locating or building a job which you adore, bringing in passive income, or both of these. I recommend you to do both, however the former may take some considerable time and soul seeking, so while you bring this about, you should also begin to build passive income. For passive income, unless you’ve created a good or service that makes you cash while you sleep, you’ll need to have some capital. Whether this capital is used to earn interest or to make investments in real estate or other projects that make a positive cash flow, you’ll need some.
Enter savings.
The more|The harder} you save, the faster you establish capital. The faster you build up capital, the sooner you’ll be ready to start playing around with it and earning some WII. How much capital you’ll need depends upon the minimum required income you wish to finance. It’s as simple as that. The rest is just details, many of which I’ll enter into later. The purpose of this section is to focus in on the “why”. Many personal finance publications will advise you to start saving as soon as possible (in your early twenties when you begin working, if not sooner) so you have a sufficient amount of money to retire by the time you turn 65. I say begin saving as quickly as possible to enable you to free yourself from the constraints of money, hopefully some time before you turn 65! Don’t just work, save, retire old. Work hard early, save hard, and enjoy yourself!