While the meaning of financial freedom might differ from person to person, they all still have the same basic concept of having enough investments, savings, and cash at hand to comfortably afford the kind of lifestyle we want.
Attaining this financial breakthrough is for a fact on everyone’s mind,
“Think about all the amazing things you could do with your time, with your life, and for your family if you had the ability to live the life you wanted without a constant need to work nine to five in order to pay for it.”
That is the true meaning and power behind financial freedom, and I believe that it is a lifelong goal worth pursuing.
But the reality of the matter is that: While they are many that wish to attain this status, only a few actually do. Some of the problems that people face include an ever-increasing burden of new financial responsibilities, financial emergencies, increasing debt and more.
Sometimes it just feels like different problems keep on rearing up their heads every time you take a step towards saving for your financial goals.
Well, the truth is, these kinds of issues are not unique to you alone, it happens to everyone, but there are ways to manage it and important habits you can begin implementing in order to prevent it from stopping you on your journey to financial freedom.
And in this article, I will be giving you those eight must-have habits to make money, keep money and grow your money in order to attain a financial breakthrough.
Table of Contents
1. Set Goals towards financial freedom
Getting into the habit of setting clear financial goals is the very first step you need to take to attain a financial breakthrough.
By incorporating this habit, you begin to have a very clear picture of exactly where you want to get to in your finances and the various changes you need to make to get there. How do you set these financial goals? Well you can start by providing honest answers to the simple questions of:
- What does financial freedom really mean to you? And
- How do you plan to get there?
The answers gotten from these two questions will help you put your financial dreams into perspective. It also provides you a very clear route to take to achieve your goals, a time frame to work towards and it also helps you quantify how much effort that will be needed.
This is important because you can then begin to see the flaws in your plans, maybe you were being too ambitious or your chosen time frame is too small to accomplish all your goals.
Not only that, but a clear financial goal also provides you a simple but yet effective way to monitor your progress all through the way, so you know when and where you are falling behind and how to fix it.
2. Create A Budget And Stick To It
When it comes to wealth building, living below your means is one of the most important habits you can begin practicing and to achieve this, budgeting is one of the most important tools you can use.
With the right budget, you can manage your money out flow, track down and cut off unnecessary expenses and remove emotional spending.
Not only that, budgeting is also a very important tool that helps you efficiently allocate your financial resources properly. This way, you can increase your savings and invest spontaneously in order to achieve your financial goals and get closer to financial freedom.
However, creating a budget is just one step; you need to have the discipline to stick to it at all times. This is where your extra effort and determination are needed for you to fully pull this off.
One step that can help you this and also reduce the temptations of dipping into your savings or investment funds is by physically separating the funds to your investment, savings, and expenses into different accounts.
There are so many money-saving apps that can help you nowadays. Read more on Saving money apps that you should have.
It’s hard? Not having financial freedom is much harder.
3. Pay Off Your Debts
There are basically two types of debts:
- The Toxic High Interest Debts: These debts have very high interest rates and include credit card debts and consumer loans. These types of debts are very toxic to wealth building and should be paid first and as fast possible.
- The Low Interest Debts: These types of debts have very low interest and do not need to be paid off urgently. These types of debts include student loans and mortgages.
By paying off the high-interest debts, you are basically cutting off your expenses and setting yourself up on the right path to financial freedom.
4. Automate Your Savings And Investing
Now that you are done with creating a financial road map, budgeting, and paying off debts, it is now time to really begin working on your saving and investing culture.
By automating this process, you automatically remove emotions and the temptations of procrastinating or using the allotted money for savings or investing for something else.
You can find numerous apps that can help you with this or you can simply issue a standing order to your bank to automatically carry out the transfers to your savings and investment accounts once you receive your paycheck.
5. Find Ways To Make More Money
Having a high paying job and a good career is good when it comes to generating enough income to save and invest substantially. However, in order to fully break away from the 9 to 5 rat race, become a boss of yourself, and fully attain financial freedom, you need to find ways to make more money.
This could include switching your job or carrier to a higher paying one, taking up side gigs in your free time, starting a business, or creating numerous passive income streams that keep making you money over time.
No matter which path you choose, the goal is to increase your income while reducing or making sure your expenses remain the same. This way, you have more money to save, invest and risk in order to gain higher returns.
You can even do freelance jobs just from home through services marketplace for businesses like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer.
6. Get The Knowledge And Start Making Smart Investment Decisions
When it comes to achieving a financial breakthrough, one of the most important skills you can acquire is “learning how to invest”. You can learn it from these online video courses. This skill has been tested and trusted by so many others and helped them achieve their financial goals.
The magic of compounding interest helps you grow your money exponentially. However, before you start throwing money at the market, it is important you equip yourself with the proper knowledge of the risks involved and how best to invest in the market while minimizing these risks.
At this point in time, the most important decision you can make is to invest in yourself and your education in order to gather all the knowledge required to manage your portfolio and make smart investment decisions.
It is also important you invest in the right professional financial advisor for you; this advisor will be a guide and help you ensure you are making the right investment decisions and staying on the right path to achieving your financial goals.
If it is hard for you or you just don’t have the time, there are so many Robo advisor investment tools that can help you to start investing, such as Wealthsimple, M1 Finance, and Wahed Invest (you can earn $10 bonus by entering my referral code: abdabd55).
7. Take Care Of Your Health
Creating a habit of constantly monitoring and maintaining your health is very important when it comes to achieving your financial goals.
This could include things like having a health insurance plan, constantly going for medical checkups, ensuring you are getting proper sleep and exercise, and not over-stressing yourself.
The role good health plays in your journey to financial freedom is very critical because, without health, you won’t be able to work or function properly thereby limiting or totally eliminating your means of generating the much-needed income stream that will take you to your financial breakthrough.
So, develop a good health habit and stick to it.
8. Patience
This habit as been neglected by many but it still remains one of the most important attributes for building wealth and sustaining it over a long period.
If you don’t have the patience to grow your wealth or watch your investments, financial goals, and investment decisions blossom, then you will make a lot of mistakes. These mistakes will hurt your finances and set back your growth rate financially.
So, create that habit of looking at your investment long-term and having the patience of waiting for it to play out. This will help you stay on your path to a financial breakthrough.
The road to financial freedom can be a very rocky and tedious one but the final outcome and the total freedom one gets is totally worth it.
And though many might fall by the wayside without achieving this dream, you are more favored to do so if you can incorporate these 8 habits listed above into your daily life and your finances.
By following these rules, you will begin to see your savings and investing turn for the better and though it might seem hard to start at first, it would only get easier along the way. Why not share your comments, thoughts, and questions by hitting the comment button?