Financial Independence Should Take Max. 30 Minutes A Month
Are you wasting your time chasing money?
“Look at your cash everyday if you must, your bonds every five years, and your equities only every ten years” — unknown
Like many people, I spent most of 2020 glued to my computer — reading online news sites, countless blogs, Medium, Twitter, Facebook, anything that would keep me informed about what was happening in the world, and everything that would distract me from daily death statistics and the unknown virus circulating outside.
One of those distractions became the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) community. As I stopped commuting to an office and stopped buying lunches, coffees, and cocktails outside, I saved more money each month, and so this fuelled my interest in all things personal finance and how to invest this extra money each month. I spent hours every day and entire weekends reading different blogs, articles, and Reddit community posts, learning all about investing, passive income, yields, and historical returns. In short, I really went down the rabbit hole.
Today I consider myself an ‘expert’ in Financial Independence. I know virtually every route to FIRE and how different people have gotten there with different strategies over the years. However, despite being a self-proclaimed ‘expert,’ I have not reached Financial Independence yet, and according to my estimations, unless I win the lottery, I will not get there within the next 5 years either. I might possibly reach FI within 8 years if everything continues as is, but nothing is guaranteed.
What I have realised is that spending more time on Financial Independence now is a waste of my time. I no longer learn new ideas but rather read about the same strategies again and again, hoping that I missed something that could get me to independence earlier. I am reading out of comfort and habit and am no longer learning anything new. And I think I reached enough knowledge about 3–4 months in, and so have wasted a lot of time reaffirming what I already know, with the hope that in one final article, I will find the holy grail of investing that will triple my portfolio overnight (except I also know this can’t happen and that the holy grail is filled with patience, not a get rich quick strategy).
Knowledge is only one part of success; action and continued action across time is the key to reaching your goals.
I can keep reading, listening to podcasts, buying books about wealth, not to mention checking my investments daily, seeing stocks swing up and down (only to end up at the same value after a month of volatility), but all of this would be a waste of precious time and energy. Instead, I must trust in the process and now turn the time spent on looking at my money into something more useful or enjoyable.
After all, the goal of Financial Independence is to give you back time in your life to pursue the things you really enjoy. It is to spend your days doing what you really want to do, instead of doing something for money. But the journey to Financial Independence doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over 10–15 years of following a plan and investing each month. And 10 years is a long time to wait and watch investments grow, just to reach that fabled FI number — the number where you never have to work again.
After spending 2020 binging on Financial Independence content, one of my goals for 2021 is to no longer read about investing, to stay away from Reddit personal finance threads, and avoid at all costs the clickbait media articles about the stock market crashing and cryptocurrencies plummeting to their deaths.
Why am I no longer choosing to learn about Finance?
Because I believe I know the fundamentals of how to reach Financial Independence. I know there are 500 different ways to get there, depending on each person’s unique situation, and that I have found a possible way for myself. Now I need to simply continue on this path and go through the actions that will get me there.
These actions are simple and, for me, take 30 minutes a month. At the end of each month, as soon as I get paid, I transfer half my salary to different investment pots (I live off the other half). At the moment, I do this manually but soon will automate this to save even more time. Then, using a wealth tracker (a UK-adjusted version of Mad FIentist’s spreadsheet), I update my monthly balances in my accounts and calculate my monthly expenditures. This takes about 15 minutes to do, followed by 5 minutes of reflection.
30 minutes is more than enough time to keep track of where I am financially and where I want to be in 5–10 years.
Forcing myself to keep finance stuff in this 30 minutes on the last day of each month has given me back so much time. Time that I can now invest into other hobbies, interests, and learning projects. I am more consciously consuming news, media, and podcasts, with a focus on things that will help me reach my other goals. I feel so freer now that I don’t focus on my money so much.
My Financial Independence plan is still bubbling in the background, but it doesn’t require my attention every day.
I’ll get there when I get there, and in the meantime, I will focus on enjoying my free time as much as possible while building on hobbies that will later fill my time when I no longer need to work.
This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.
