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Desire To Want More

People are designed to want to live a better life - always. If you have a salary at a certain level, you learn to live with that salary by developing certain habits of spending money. At the end of each month, you may end up spending all the money you’ve got for the month and think that it would be great to have a higher salary. You make plans in your head what you would buy if you had a higher salary, you can find many ways that your money can be spent to improve your life. This is quite natural, everybody wants to have more than they currently have. So in fact, most people end up spending all the money that they got for the month, having exactly the same bank account balance they had before they got their last salary.

So what happens when you actually get a salary rise? Usually, nothing changes. You immediately start spending the additional money you got. You buy the car that you wanted, you get a bigger house, perhaps you start buying a better quality food. Your monthly expenditures increase and at the end of the month, you are exactly where you were before - thinking how great it would be if you had a higher salary and how you would like to improve the quality of your life. You are still driven by a natural desire to have more than you currently have. And again, you end up spending all the money that are available to you for the month.

The above situation may repeat itself no matter how high is actually your income. Many people feel that their income is just not high enough to be able to do and buy what they want - no matter how high their income is.

Sometimes, the desire to have more drives people to debt. They start getting things that they cannot afford. They get used to a certain standard of life and they want more. They get used to being in debt and as long as they can repay the interest, they think they are fine. Getting into such situation should be avoided as much as possible. When people get into debt, they develop a certain habit of being in debt and because of the way people think (the law of attraction) they start attracting even more debts. The more debt you have the more difficult it is to get out of the debt. The debt can start affecting other areas of life as well, for example, cause relationship crisis. Sometimes, the consequences can be quite tragic.

Financial Independence

Financial independence means being able to do what you want to do, without having to increase or create a debt. All rich people are financially independent. They managed to save money to achieve financial freedom. They don’t have to ask anyone for money, if they need it.

If something unexpected happens, financially independent people have money available to sort out the problem immediately. Because they have the money always in hand, they don’t stress about the situation that they have to solve and it is not such a problem for them. For example, if they have to pay for an unexpected repair on a car or house, they can pay it without having to worry too much about it. They don’t stress about it, therefore, the law of attraction works in their favor and they don’t end up attracting debt or financial instability.

Financial independence also means being able to respond to a sudden opportunities that require initial investment of money. Most opportunities in life require some initial investment.

I can hear you thinking - “What if such opportunities are not meant for me? Not all opportunities require a huge initial investment!”. Of course, there are exceptions, for example, if you want to start blogging for a living, you can do that with zero investment if you use a hosted service or a minimum investment if you buy your own domain and web space from a service provider such as WebHostingPad. However such type of business requires a significant investment of your time and the initial returns are very low, it takes long time to be popular enough to get traffic that would earn enough for the living. I am talking about opportunities which could give you immediate returns. Financial independence would allow you to react on any opportunity, as it occurs. Right now, if you are not financially independent, there may be opportunities that you don’t even see consciously, but once you achieve financial freedom, you will have much more to choose from.

I also find that being financially independent can result in a huge self confidence boost. It may help you to be more confident in your current job, even to be ready to take on more responsibility. The more in debt you are the more dependent you are on your current job, which can result in a fear of loosing that job. Such fear would lead to a lower confidence and being overly cautious as you do things in your job and as you make decisions. All of that could be blocking you from your career progression and eventually from having more money.

If you are not financially independent, it may became more difficult for you to leave your current job, because of your dependence on it. For example you may come across a very good job offer, but the job would be for a startup company. Obviously, working for a start up is a significant risk, no matter how good an idea the startup has. On one hand, you may think that the company has got a really good idea, and that the company may be very successful in the future. Usually, successful startups offer good career progression for its employees and if they offer shares as part of its incentive program, you could end up making loads of money, in addition to your regular salary. On the other hand you may be cautious, asking yourself “What if it doesn’t work out? What if their business plan is wrong? What if they go bankrupt? What if they don’t secure enough orders to be able to pay my salary?”. Obviously, questions like that may be on your mind, because in the end you want your job to be secure as well - it is quite natural. The thing that will affect your final decision significantly is the level of your financial independence. If you had some emergency money available, you would be more willing to take the risk, because if it wouldn’t work out in the end, you would still have money to keep you going for long enough to find another job. So, being more financially independent will allow you to notice and follow an opportunity that may be associated with higher risk, but which may bring you higher yields later.

The same can be said if you want to start your own business if you have a great idea, it is not just the idea that counts, you will need some initial money as well. Of course that you may need a loan from a bank as well, but it will be much easier for you to get a better deal from your bank if you already have saved some money. Also, the initial money can help you finance some of the activities and can serve as a financial backup if times are tougher. Again, the more financially independent you are, the more risk you will be able to take, the more confident you will be and the less you will have to worry about anything going wrong, which will make the  law of attraction work in your favor.

If you meditate, try to “feel” what it would be like if you were financially independent. I am sure that you will have a great feeling. You may experience a feeling of relief, a feeling that a huge burden went away. If you feel that, you should start working towards being financially independent, because good feeling is a good sign that your body and mind are aligned with the financial freedom that you were meditating about.

How To Achieve Financial Freedom

The law of attraction says that you have to think and feel rich if you want to be rich. That is why taking steps towards financial independence will help you on your way to have more money - you will think and feel right so that you will attract more money. So how do you achieve that?

The key is to create good habits, mainly a habit of saving money. Everybody should put a certain part of their income aside and save them, which will over time manifest as the desired financial independence.

You may ask: “How can I save any money if I already spend all I earn?”. Well, you can always save money, if you choose to do so. It doesn’t matter how small the amount you decide to save initially is. Even if you decide to save only 5 dollars per month, it is still worth starting doing it. Saving money is a habit - you need to start doing it and you will get used to doing it. It is a habit well worth building. And because the law of attraction works all the time, you will still have money for what you need, even though you start putting some of the money you earn aside with a goal of achieving financial independence.

Let’s say you start saving 50 dollars every month and let’s assume an annual savings interest rate of 3 %. After 5 years, you will have 3,232 dollars. You may argue that it is a long time and that 3,232 dollars is not a lot of money. But actually, if you keep on going without building a habit of saving, you will have nothing at all in 5 years time. I think having 3,232 dollars compared to nothing is much better. In addition, during those 5 years, you will have built up a habit of saving, shifted your thinking from debts towards financial freedom, which on its own can start attracting more and more money into your life.

Should you start saving even though you haven’t repaid all your debts yet? Absolutely yes! I think it is important to start saving, even though you still have to repay debts. Of course the amounts that you will save are probably going to be smaller than if you saved and had no debts, but it still helps your mind to switch from “All I do is repay debts” to “I am becoming financially independent” - and the shift is very important. Make sure that you start repaying your debts, if you haven’t started yet, but save some money as well. Both not having debts and having some money available in case they are needed is very important.

I am going to end this article with a book recommendation. Napoleon Hill wrote a book called The Law Of Success In Sixteen Lessons.  The book motivated me to write this article. He wrote a whole chapter about habits and about the habit of saving money in particular. The chapter has plenty of real life examples about why the habit is very important. Napoleon Hill suggested that everybody should build up a habit of saving and save about 20 % of their income.

Radim personal development