both me and simon are on our ways to achieving financial freedom and we’re going about it in very different ways to each other with me i’m focusing on online passive income growing my income streams through there getting what i call pseudo financial freedom first and simon is focusing on building up his property portfolio and he’s working for someone else or working with his brother and part owner in the business over there so we thought we would share some of our best tips on how to become financially free and things that we’ve learned on our journey along the way so hey simon thanks for coming on and sharing today yeah yeah really excited about this one one of my favorite topics as we all know yeah both you and i have been very passionate about financial freedom i think your rich dad poor dad and those books really started it for me what about you what got you passionate about financial freedom over other investment goals the funny thing is it wasn’t something that was really talked about in our family until sort of recent years so i never really knew what financial freedom was and every single person in my life was still working and nobody actually had any level of financial freedom that i was aware of um so it was only really when i started to kind of actually start taking action and start creating my plan where i realized oh financial freedom is something that we can all achieve yeah and so just so people know as we get into this each of our stories simon has purchased three investment properties in the last 18 months massive achievement congrats on that two of those being investment properties one being is own home so that’s kind of his plan is i guess working in a job using that money to invest in properties and achieve financial freedom that way i’ve achieved what i call pseudo-financial freedom through my businesses so had businesses that kind of just worked for themselves and i didn’t really have to work much i then ended up in a bunch of debt and wasn’t financially free anymore and i’m pretty happy to say that i’ve worked myself out of that situation and i think if i stopped working today my businesses would again run themselves for multiple years and i wouldn’t have to work so i’m not financially free yet but i’ve kind of built up that passive income stream online and then eventually i want to invest that into property as well so i’ve achieved it lost it and then kind of achieved it again and now i want that long term so we’ve both been on the journey we’re not completely there yet but we’ve learnt a lot along the way and we want to share that and so do you want to go first simon with one of your tips for achieving financial freedom and moving towards that yeah definitely
1: Have a Clear Plan
i think this is you know on both of our lists no doubt about it so maybe i can share my thoughts on um on this and then you can talk a little bit but it’s having a plan and having a clear plan at that as well so that is the number one way to achieve financial freedom because the reality is there is so many different ways that we can do it you know you’re going through the business avenue i’m going through the investing avenue there’s so many different ways to achieve the same thing so rather than trying to pull lots of different pieces from all of these these different places um you know honing in on one and creating a plan with that one in order to to get to where it is that you want to be so for me it’s kind of thinking all right well where do i want to be in the future or where am i going to be happy in the future and there are then reverse engineering and back from there so right now for me it’s kind of replacing the average australian household income somewhere between 80 to 100 000 because that’s going to give me options that’s going to give me choices to do what i want when i want and all i need to do is reverse engineer that back utilizing my plan which is focusing on investing in properties paying off the debt from those properties and then living off the passive income for life but without a plan it’s impossible to you know continue moving forward because you’re gonna chip and change and you’re gonna you know focus on all these different things and when i have strategy sessions with clients i i hear this all the time with people jumping from strategy to strategy plan to plan and you’re just never going to get there with that you need to be super specific with your plan and you need to you know have an understand the big picture goal as the plan where you want to be then reverse engineer focus on each step at a time and just you know get the best possible results at each step yeah that was one of my tips as well is to have a plan and then work the plan and i think as you said it’s really important set your goal up front for financial freedom i want this amount of income per year if you don’t know how much that is we generally just say well look at what you’re earning through your job right now you’re probably living a pretty good life set that as your goal your first goal to replace your job income and then go from there and then reverse engineering it back using data using quantitative data i think to work out okay how many properties do i need to own or for me in my business it was looking at okay how much does this article earn that i write or the videos i put out earn and then actually creating a number from there how many do i need to have and then working that plan is super important so then saying okay how much work do i need to do each month or whether it’s buying properties saving those deposits and actually buying the properties a lot of people when it comes to financial freedom are just like oh i want to be financially free as quickly as possible and they go on these like highfaluting ideas of you know get rich quick schemes and we’re not about that sort of life we’re about the okay this is a concrete plan yes it’s going to take time but it actually financially makes sense and we’ve got the data to back it up so for simon when his properties are paid off he knows how much rental income he’s going to be having in so he knows how many properties he needs to own and so getting as specific as that is really good
2: Create Passive Income Streams
for me my tip number two would be to actually look at creating passive income streams and so for me this was actually creating income streams from scratch online creating websites adding youtube videos all of that sort of stuff but actually looking at the world in different in a different way and saying okay how can i actually create an income stream whether it be from scratch or how can i actually maybe purchase an income screen income stream and then achieve it that way for sure i i love that as well and you know there’s going to be multiple income streams throughout the journey you know i look at it and i follow the rich dad poor dad method which is just acquire income producing assets that’s why i’m focusing on property because you know i get paid rent rental income from those properties i if for my particular strategy i can get depreciation benefits another income stream i also get capital growth from that property so a few different there and then i’ve got my job as well where i get paid a salary but then i’ve also negotiated to become a part owner in the business as well so i get profit share from the business as well which you know can really help with that saving and fortunately now i’ve also got a partner as well and she’s on a full-time income and we can couple all of those together and basically our plan is to until we’re where we need to be continue reinvesting all of that income no matter where it’s coming from to get to where we want to be as soon as possible yeah and so for me with creating those passive income streams in the business i rather than looking at a business and designing a business to make a lot of money up front i was very specific in the way i made money so rather than like taking on clients for example where they pay you an upfront fee to do work i always focus on my business okay how can i do work up front that is then going to continually pay me which is how i ended up with the business that i had and it’s a complicated business because you earn nothing in the beginning but as you do more and more work the passive income starts to build up so yeah i think creating those passive income streams whether it be through the work that you do or as simon said you know purchasing income producing assets and then also reinvesting and continually investing and reinvesting the profits of that as well to build up that asset base that’s continually generating you more and more passive income
yeah i guess that’s sort of a a pseudo tip if if that makes sense because yeah you definitely to get to financial freedom you need to continually reinvest that that’s those earnings um so that’s a good one there um
3: Be Realistic
the next one for me is is a big one and it’s be realistic um you know you’ve got your plan um when you’re creating your plan be realistic a lot of people that i’ve talked to just like you were saying before they want to get rich quick they want to get out of their old life and into their new life and sometimes i talk to people that are in their mid to late 40s or early 50s and they’re trying to create a plan to achieve financial freedom in five years even 10 years and it’s it’s like okay well you know you’ve been working full-time for 20 years maybe more and you don’t have any level of financial freedom yet maybe be a little bit more realistic with either the type of money that you’re trying to achieve when you’re financially free or the amount of time that it’s going to take you to get there um so you know really look at your past when creating this plan and go okay well how realistic is this can i generate hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of passive income in a short period of time when i haven’t been able to do anything to date you know that can be difficult so that’s why for myself i’m at the start of this journey and all i’m doing is trying to replace the average australian income which is which for me around 80 to 100 000 this is my base level of financial independence that’s going to give me choices and i know that things are going to change over time and what by the time that i get to that point i’m probably the goal posts are probably going to shift but i’m starting at a lower level knowing that that’s an extremely achievable and realistic goal and then once i’ve got to that point you know potentially look at going further from there depending on what i want my life to look like then yeah and i’m gonna do
4: Create a Life You Enjoy
tip number four as something to i guess kind of help people to make realistic goals and that’s a really interesting tip but it’s to actually enjoy your life as it is right now because we both talk to so many people who just want to get out of the situation that they’re in or get out of the job that they’re in or the life that they’re in and financial freedom is really an escape for them whereas with i know with you and i we both love working we love our life as it is at the moment sure we’d love to be richer and have more financial freedom and more passive income but we’re enjoying our lives and enjoying what we do so the idea that it’s going to take us 10 years 15 20 years to reach that ultimate level of financial freedom that we want that’s okay for us and it’s okay for us to have those realistic goals because we’re actually enjoying our life and we’re enjoying the journey you know i’ve been um listening to one of my favorite books at the moment and they say in this book that ultimately our destination is all the same we all have the same destinations that we’re all eventually going to die and pass away and so life is about the journey so rather than being okay let’s just focus on the destination being financial freedom enjoy the journey along it love your life and that’ll help you to be realistic and help you to just kind of plod away because really achieving financial freedom for most people it’s not going to be get rich quick it’s going to be consistent effort over a number of years and if you can set your life up so you’re enjoying it and it’s easy to make that consistent effort then financial freedom just kind of naturally happens whereas if you’re just trying to escape then it can be really hard to set those realistic goals and continue to work towards them when you hate your life so that’s tip number four for me what’s your next one simon i love that bro like that is you know so true and you can always create your plan that’s going to give you choices throughout that time as well so maybe that’s you know cash flow producing assets positively geared portfolio so that you know you can do those things that you really love whether it be travel or whatever i love that
5: It Takes Time
um the next one which we kind of just touched on there is it takes time uh it’s not gonna happen overnight it’s gonna take a long period of time so yeah it’s super important to understand that it’s going to take a number of years to reach any sort of level of financial freedom unless you’re already extremely well off and earning super high income so just understand that it’s not going to be tomorrow not going to be in five years time from now for the average person at least sort of 10 if not 15 years for some even 20 so it’s super important to create that plan that’s still going to give you choices it’s still going to keep you motivated and pull you through that journey uh because it’s just never gonna happen overnight
6: Increase Your Income But Don’t Increase Expenses
my next tip which would be tip number six is to focus on increasing your income but don’t increase your expenses at the same rate a lot of times people are looking at okay how can i become financially free on the income that i’m currently on and while that’s a great place to start one of the best ways to actually speed up your journey to financial freedom is to actually look at ways you can increase your income so this could be through your career through getting a pay rise through moving jobs through getting a promotion or it could be through things you do on the side so starting a side hustle or a side business or selling things you don’t need or just finding out those little ways to make extra income and using that and extra income to pay off debt and to invest so often people just do their work within you know their 36 to 40 hours a week and then struggle to invest outside of that because that kind of covers their life and they’ve got all this free time that they’re spending doing whatever it is and take a bit of that spare time and look at okay how can i make some extra money and use that to invest for me i got myself into a lot of debt and me and simon would do another video on how to get out of debt and save your deposit but for me the best way out of that situation was to increase my income and so for the last two years i’ve been focusing on that focusing on increasing my income i also cut my expenses to the bone as well so all that extra income goes towards paying off that debt which allowed me to pay off huge chunks of debt in a short period of time and then once the debt is gone that money my income’s now expanded and is larger so i’ll be using that to save a deposit and invest so i think that focus on how can i increase my income and constantly thinking about that throughout your journey throughout the 5 10 15 20 years that you’re doing this constantly looking at ways to increase your income and then when you increase your income when you get that extra money don’t just spend it actually use it to invest and get the passive income from that no doubt about it and one of the common things with a lot of people that are financially free or extremely successful people is their income their expenses are really low like they’ve completely got on top of them and understand it and they never really increase until they’re where they they need to be i know from my experience growing up you know friends that started working straight out of school and they would you know earn an income then they would get an income increase and their life expenses would increase so it’s really important to figure out how to budget how to keep those expenses low when that income increases because there is sacrifices that are needed to be made in order to get to financial freedom and and this is one of those things which is just reducing those expenses so you know the barefoot investor probably one of if not the best books to figure out how to reduce your expenses and increase your income yeah so do you have another tip for us
7: Take Action
i sure do um and it’s probably my biggest one it’s taking action um it seems simple right but the funny thing is is this is why so many people aren’t financially free it is a journey it’s going to take time but the difference between the people that actually get there and the people that don’t is the action takers so people that are actually going to you know create the plan then execute the plan each and every step of the way because it’s not going to take one property it’s not going to take one year it’s going to take a long time so you need to consistently stay focused and you need to consistently take action throughout that journey in order to get to where you want to be and you know this is scary stuff for most people it’s big decisions it’s going into lots of debt so i can understand why people get hesitant or get fearful the other side of it is life’s busy you know people have their full-time jobs they’ve got families they’ve got kids they’ve got all of these different things going on that investing can sometimes fall by the wayside of periods throughout the journey you’re going to be ultra focused and at other periods you’re not going to be focused at all so um just understanding and this should be incorporated into your plan that it is required for you to consistently take action and overcome your challenges overcome your fears in order to get to where you want to be yeah and
8: Pay Yourself First
my next tip tip number eight is along that line of take action and making it automatic and that is pay yourself first and so i know you do this simon i know i’ve done this or i do this as well and that’s this idea of rather than living off your getting your pay paying your tax living off your income and then saving whatever you’ve got left over at the end of your pay cycle pay yourself first so when the money comes in a percentage of that money goes towards saving and goes towards investing every single pay cycle whether that be weekly fortnightly or monthly and what this means is that it just automatically happens and so you’re automatically investing it’s that long-term sort of consistent investing and then you’ve got to learn to live off what’s left or you’ve got to increase your expenses so you can live off what’s left so i just found in my life that allows me to take consistent action towards my financial goals and whenever i’ve done that i’ve just made consistent strides forward and when i haven’t done that tends to be when i fall backwards or when i reach the end of the month and i didn’t have anything left to save or to invest and so i wasn’t able to do it so paying yourself first is definitely a great habit to get into no doubt about it have you got any left or i’ve got two more i don’t have anything written down here that’s worth worth talking about okay well my last two
9: Don’t Get Into Bad Debt
so tip number nine would be don’t get into bad debt or consumer debt i lived a lot of my life where i just refused to get into any debt we had a credit card that was one thousand or maybe a two thousand dollar limit and that was it and whenever it came time to okay buy a new car or something like that i just remember the discussions it was like no we’re not going to get a car loan we’re not going to go ahead and do that we didn’t need it a good quality car for work or something like that so no we’re not going to get into that bad consumer debt and that put us in a position where we’re able to make a lot of choices that other couples weren’t able to make so i was able to quit my full-time high-paying job to go into my business because we didn’t have debt that we had to pay and then when i found myself in the situation going through my separation where i did actually acquire a bunch of debt man that ate me alive for about a year and has just or even going on two years now and just stripped so much of my income and my made me unable to invest because i had to pay it off you’ve got to pay the interest on the debt you’ve got to pay down the debt as well it just hasn’t been worth it and when you’re in a situation where you’ve got a whole bunch of debt and repayments you need to make and life flips its head upside down maybe you lose a job or your income goes down or we have a recession like we’ve had recently when that happens that debt can eat you alive and i was forced to sell investments at the absolute worst time because we needed the cash flow in order you know to do what we needed to do and to survive at the time so made a huge loss on some investments because we were forced to sell at the worst time because we got ourselves into a bad situation so i think not getting into debt is a good one have you ever had bad debt simon oh yeah like when you were telling that story i’m like okay cool that kind of triggers something for me i guess you know to overcome that you really need to understand the difference between an asset and a liability um simplest form of that is an asset is an income producing asset a liability is something that costs you money to hold so understand that and you know don’t get that that because it sucks um you know the only time that i’ve got myself into bad debt was when i was young when i was 20 i went to europe and went backpacking for three months and halfway through the trip i basically ran out of money um luckily i had a credit card um just a five thousand dollar credit card but it got me through um basically the the rest of my trip which was awesome but then i came back to yeah five thousand dollars worth of credit card debt um no real great job either which really crippled me and it took me such a long time to pay off and just like you it really cripples you because i couldn’t pay myself first i couldn’t do the things that i enjoyed doing at the time because first and foremost i had to pay off the debt on this credit card and if i didn’t it got worse so it’s such a compounding effect and i’m super grateful to have that experience at such a young age and such a small amount of debt as well uh bad debt and you know that’s really stuck with me throughout this time and you know i don’t i don’t even have any credit cards nowadays um you know i don’t finance cars or any of that like the only stuff that i uh finance or or you know go into debt for is for assets that are income producing so yeah the the bloody credit cards and after pay and car loans and all of that stuff you know steer clear if you possibly can yeah um i guess throughout that on uh it’s just gone sorry i had a good one but i got stuck on the bad credit stuff okay well maybe it’ll come after my last tip which is tip number 10
10: Continually Learn Along The Journey
and that’s to continually learn along the journey i cannot attest to how much this has impacted my life and how much this has impacted my income and my financial freedom throughout the journey i am a constant learner of too much really i’m always listening to podcasts or to audio books or to educational youtube videos like this one while i’m driving while i’m brushing my teeth sometimes even while i’m working and doing admin stuff i’ll be listening and learning but just little things that you learn along the way can sometimes dramatically change your entire approach your entire life and just give you a new outlook and a way to do things so a lot of the times it’s not like okay one book like barefoot investor is an example of one book that i read and i implemented a lot of what was in the book to change my finances but a lot of times i’ll be listening to things and just one little thing stands out from what the people are saying and i’m like oh my gosh i can actually apply that to my situation and do that and so yeah constantly learning along the way has allowed me new opportunities to increase my income new ways to get passive income and create passive income online for me and also learning how to budget better and how to spend less and all of this sort of stuff at all i guess we talk about compound interest when it comes to investing and the more you invest and the more you reinvest it kind of grows exponentially from there and i think i found the same with my learning as well investing into myself investing into learning has had this compounding interest effect where now for me growing a business that can generate six figures of passive income doing that within a couple of years is really quite achievable for me and quite simple because i’ve spent decades investing in my education into how to do that and i’m constantly doing it every single day and i understand and i’m humbled by that because that’s something not a lot of people can do and not a lot of people can say but because yeah because i invested in myself the payoffs have just been astronomical for me so sure and the beautiful thing about where we live in history right now is everything’s been done and recorded so you know we’re not reinventing the wheel and you’re not alone through this sort of stuff so leveraging off the audio books or hard copy books whatever your preference is and listening to the podcast and youtube videos it’s so important um to take all of these little snippets from all of these great amazing people and figuring out what value aligns with you and then implementing them into your plan to your strategy into your journey to make this easier make it more achievable and and hopefully a bit faster yeah so there we have 10 tips on how to achieve financial freedom or at least go along the journey to financial freedom did you think about that last one simon did it come back to you did it man it didn’t i’m sorry okay lost to the abyss or maybe it’ll come up in a future video but hopefully this has given you some help giving you some inspiration to go out there and to start looking at ways that you can achieve financial freedom yourself neither me or simon have completed the journey yet but we’re definitely both well on our way and doing it using different strategies so hopefully you can get a bit of information from me a bit from simon and apply it to your own life in your own way and apply it to your own plan is there anything you want to add before we close off i just would like to say that you know financial freedom is something that everybody should be striving towards um it is you know just think about it like this um we’re all we all sacrifice 40 hours a week right to earn it earn a full-time income um when you’re creating your plan to financial freedom it’s not going to come easy it’s not just going to be handed to you it does require time it does require action so just understand that you need to be putting in the necessary time in order to figure out how you’re going to do it and why you’re going to do it and then taking that action and you know i think it’s definitely worthwhile the time and the stress that it takes to actually achieve financial freedom because at some point in time ideally for myself in my early 30s i want to be financially free you know that’s saving me 30 40 years of my working life of working 30 to 40 hours per week you know it is so valuable and it is so important and it is so achievable for anybody that’s listening to this podcast or youtube video right now so um yeah make sure that you give it the time that it deserves yeah and if you are thinking you want to achieve financial freedom through property investing but you don’t exactly know what your plan should be or what are the steps to get there then simon and the team over pumped on property do offer free strategy sessions so you can get on the phone to them talk about where you’re at where you want to be or they can help guide you around that and you can look at okay what are the steps you need to take in order to achieve financial freedom you can then take that information and apply it to yourself in your own investing or if it’s a good fit you can hire the team over pumped on property as buyer’s agents to help you find those properties to invest in so head over to on property dot com dot a u forward slash strategy if you want to learn more about those free strategy sessions over there and book in a time in the calendar they’re pretty booked out at the moment um they’re pretty popular those ones but yeah head over to on-property dot com dot eu four strategy if you want to check that out we wish you the best in your journey and until next time stay positive
Watch The Video:
Both me and Simon have gone about achieving financial freedom in very different ways. Myself through passive income income, Simon through working a job and investing in property.
Here are some of our best tips for achieving financial freedom and things we have learned on our journey along the way.
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0:00 – What got us excited about financial freedom
2:48 – #1: Have a Clear Plan
6:00 – #2: Create Passive Income Streams
8:40 – #3: Be Realistic
10:27 – #4: Create a Life You Enjoy
12:30 – #5: It Takes Time
13:12 – #6: Increase Your Income But Don’t Increase Expenses
16:13 – #7: Take Action
17:35 – #8: Pay Yourself First
19:02 – #9: Don’t Get Into Bad Debt
22:58 – #10: Continually Learn Along The Journey