launchyourdream

The title of this entry is from a statement in an earlier post which I want to elaborate on.  So, what is freedom? One of my favorite Personal Finance blogs,  http://earlyretirementextreme.com, has a great article on the subject. Please be sure to check it out at: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/2009/01/what-is-freedom.html.  In the post, he writes about fences, internal and external. There are some great comments about the idea of freedom.

 So what makes you successful financially? Is it having the million dollar bank account? Is it being able to stay home with your kids? By defining your vision of freedom, you’ll discover what is fencing you in.

As a writer the one thing I can’t seem to get enough of is time.  With a dayjob, multiple projects going at any given time, a semi-active social life, and a relationship to sustain, finding time enough to write novels is difficult. I can’t imagine what it must be like for folks who add kids to the mix. 

I used to have time. Ten months ago, I had all the time in the world.  Things changed because I needed them to.  So, I’m left with much less time.  To that end, having a successful financial situation relieves me of the burden of a dayjob.  It’s a worthy goal for one such as me, not because I want to sit at home and watch television all day but because I have things I want to accomplish. 

Living below my means is simpler now that I’ve paid off debt. I’ve always been attracted to the voluntary simplicity ideal, to self-sufficiency as a way of life. This probably comes from growing up in the country, 30 miles from town, 13 miles to the nearest gas station. We gardened, canned our veggies and fruit, butchered the meat, and did our own repairs. To this day, I despise doing home repairs so I will always try to make enough to afford the plumber. I still hang laundry on a line in the summer even though I live in the city.

What do you want to do? To me the perfect vision of freedom is:

1. No dayjob.
2. Time to write.
3. Having time to hang out laundry because it smells so good.
4. Occasional travel experiences.
5. Time to go kayaking whenever I’d like.
6. Visiting with friends and family without feeling rushed.
7. Time to give more of myself as a volunteer.
8. Money for books and music.
9. New socks whenever I want them.
10. Enough money to pay a plumber when the pipes break.

What about you? Is it time, experiences, big bank accounts? What is freedom to you?

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