I have a very simple definition of financial freedom;

You have achieved financial freedom when you can spend your days doing work that you love without worrying about how you will pay the bills.

I think of this as my mission statement for managing my money and my career. I don’t want to retire. I want to keep working possibly forever. I just want to be in a position where I can choose;

• What projects I work on.
• When I start and stop working.
• Who I choose to work with.
• Where I do that work.

Most importantly, I want all…

Money

In a recent article, where I discussed how I have used debt at various points in my life to achieve my financial goals, I reveal my lifelong financial goal;

Building enough wealth before I die so that my son or his children never have to worry about money.

A reader followed up with a great question asking how much money is needed for generational wealth?

The short answer; Generational wealth is achieved when you’ve accumulated enough investments to pay for your families living expenses in perpetuity without touching the principal.

If you’re looking for a specific number like “$10 million,”…

Money

The highest level of financial freedom is having enough passive income to cover your living expenses. If you manage to reach that point, you can spend your days doing whatever makes you happiest.

If passive income is the key to financial freedom, then anyone who can enable others to generate passive income will be able to wield massive influence and make themselves wealthy. That is why the internet is full of spammy articles and videos, promising easy solutions to generate passive income.

Here is the brutal truth about passive income.

Generating enough passive income to cover your living expenses takes…

Real estate

According to data from the Federal Reserve, the largest asset held by the average family was their house. This trend continues to intensify as housing prices rose to all-time highs in 2020.

For the two-thirds of Americans that own their own home, this is both good and bad news. On the one hand, owning an asset that increases in value pushes your net worth higher. On the other hand, housing equity does little to move you towards financial freedom.

In this article, I explain the housing paradox and how to diversify your wealth away from your house and into assets…

Money

Tell me your savings rate, and I’ll tell you where you’ll be financially in five years.

Your savings rate is the most important number to monitor when pursuing financial independence because it’s not your total wealth that matters; it’s your welath relative to your living expenses.

The higher your savings rate today; the more wealth you will have relative to your expenses in the future.

In this article, I drill down into the importance of increasing your savings rate and how you can do it.

How to calculate your savings rate

We need to start by establishing a shared understanding of what your savings rate means…

I am excited to announce that we have officially launched the Making of a Millionaire Podcast.

It’s something we have been planning for a while now. We were waffling on whether to make this a subscription-only podcast or free for anyone to listen to.

Ultimately we decided to make it FREE to listen. That means eventually, we will have ads on the Podcast, but for now, it’s also ad-free as well.

While I believe subscription models are the future of content creators, that is just not a widely accepted business model in the world of podcasting (yet.)

Why subscribe to the Podcast?

If you are…

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Financial Freedom Is The Result Of Self-Discipline

Written by: Matt Lillywhite

When I first started writing about personal finance, people told me to shut up.

“Matt… you don’t have a degree in economics. Please don’t do it again. You’re not qualified to talk about money.”

Honestly, I don’t care. My personal opinion is that money shouldn’t be a taboo subject that we shy away from. Instead, it should be something we embrace and discuss more openly.

If we can share our personal experiences to…

Managing Money

Lifestyle inflation becomes more dangerous as we get older.

You’ve spent the past 25 years climbing the corporate ladder, and you’ve finally got that big promotion that comes with a corner office and a big-fat pay raise.

It may not seem like it, but this is actually one of the most dangerous financial positions you can be in. If you aren’t careful, a dramatic increase in income in your 50s can wreck your finances and blow up your retirement plan.

In this article, I discuss the dangerous trap of “late-stage lifestyle inflation” and how to avoid it.

Our earning power peaks in our 50s

According to data…