Financially Free at 32…Again

It’s been a little while since I’ve recorded a video but I’m excited to announced that I’m financially free…again

0:00 – Intro
1:09 – My first time experiencing financial freedom
3:08 – Struggling after losing financial freedom
5:30 – Sacrifices were required
6:30 – I now consider myself financially free
8:05 – What’s next for me?
12:15 – No one really believed in me
14:50 – I’m proof that you can do it too

Recommended Videos:

5 Stages of Financial Freedom

Transcription

it’s been a little while since i’ve recorded a video but i am excited to announce that finally i am financially free again i’m 32 and i’m now financially free for the second time having lost my financial freedom and now regained it now i call this pseudo financial freedom because i have income through online businesses that occurs automatically and so i don’t technically need to work but if i just leave it and don’t work in a couple of years i won’t be financially free anymore so it’s not the long-term financial freedom that you get through things like investing in shares or investing in property where you’re financially free for your entire life but it does open up a lot of choices and it is really exciting so in today’s episode i want to share a bit about my journey a bit about how i got there and what i plan to do now that i’m financially free for the second time at the ripe old age of 32. so hey i’m ryan from on property helping you achieve financial freedom and this has been something that i have been working towards and working really hard for over the last couple of years if you’ve been following my journey for any period of time you’ll know that at the age of 28 i achieved sudo financial freedom for the first time having online businesses that earned in the low six figures where i didn’t need to work i would work a couple of hours a week i would record some interviews and kind of just work for fun and work to maintain things a little bit so i had about two years where i didn’t need to work so from 28 to 30 i hardly worked at all and i went on a massive journey of exploration during that time at 28 having achieved financial freedom which had been my you know life’s ambition and life’s goal i got really depressed because i’m like oh financial freedom isn’t the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow it doesn’t make me magically happy in all areas of my life yes it takes away some level of stress but i need to find my happiness and so i went on a journey about 18 months or two years of actually finding out who am i what is it that makes me happy and what is it that i want to do with my life now i worked that out got to a place where i was happy no longer feeling depressed i’d suffered with depression throughout my life so really great mental position to be in but then at the age of 30 i went through a separation and i also went through a business downturn so remember i talked about how if i don’t work for the next two years then i won’t be financially free anymore well that’s exactly what happened to me is that i at the time that i was going through this separation and i had increased my outgoing so increased all my expenses paying for two houses and things like that at the exact same time that happened my business went through a really big downturn and so i ended up in a whole bunch of debt and i didn’t have the income to service that debt so that was two years ago put me in a position where i was you know struggling to get by and for the next year to 18 months i really struggled to get by and to pay my bills i picked up a part-time job in a cafe just to i guess keep things going and to be able to buy food for the week while i built my online business see i still had some passive income coming in and if i didn’t have three kids if i didn’t have debt and i didn’t have many expenses in my life if i was just a single person living in my van i would have still been financially free at that point i still had probably you know thirty to forty thousand dollars in passive income coming in around that point that i didn’t really need to work for and but i wasn’t financially free because my expenses were higher than that and so i spent it’s hard to remember the timeline off the top of my head but probably six to 12 months where i was really drowning to the point where i had expenses that were higher than my income so i was going backwards kind of robbing peter to paypal so to speak so using debt in order to pay my current debt repayments that i had so i’d cut my expenses to the bone and i was working on my online business now i knew that this wouldn’t be long term because i knew what to do in my online business to build it up again and to build the income up again but i also knew that it takes time because the businesses that i create which are niche websites or i write articles and make videos when you’re working at it and you’re writing the articles you don’t really make any money in the first month but once you’ve written that article it’s then out there takes about eight to twelve months to rank in google and start making money so it’s about a year before you make money but then it makes money perpetually for multiple years after that so i knew that in the first year first two years i wasn’t going to make a lot of money but if i could just get by for those two years then i’ll really set myself up so at the time everyone was telling me ryan you’re crazy go ahead get a job in marketing just get a high paying job and go ahead and do that but i had a vision for my business i had a vision for what i wanted to do with my life and i pursued that i had to cut expenses in my life move back with family i my car broke down at the start of coronavirus and when all of that hit so i didn’t have a car and was fortunate enough to be given a car by my partner’s brother and so i was so grateful for that but in a situation where okay if i hadn’t had a job i would have been able to buy a car like living with family not being able to buy a car but i’m doing all of this work that i know is going to pay off in the future so i was poor in the moment but i knew that i wouldn’t be poor in the future and it was buying me time to do the work and i could have gone and got a job but it would have made it harder to work in my business because when you put all your creativity into a job it makes it harder to make videos and to write articles after work especially looking after my kids half the time dealing with debt dealing with life in general so yeah so i spent you know the last kind of two years working on my online business and building that up and i’m now happy to say that i’m at the point where i would consider myself financially free so if i stopped working now my business would generate low six figures for the next couple of years without me having to work and actually the situation i’m in now i would consider to be more stable and more evergreen and long-term than the situation i was in when i was 28 so i put myself in a better position interestingly though i’m not debt free yet i haven’t paid off all of my debt yet i’ve definitely whittled it down and got it down to a smaller and much more manageable figure but i’m not completely debt free so it’s interesting because i’m financially free without being debt free but the income that i’ve had and this is why i talk so much about okay focus on increasing your income because i was able to increase my income my income is now enough to service the debt and to pay off the debt as well so the passive income i got from my businesses is paying for my bad debt and paying off my bad debt and eventually that will be gone within the next six to 12 months i should be in a position where i’m debt free if all goes well so it’s been a big journey of a couple of years i nearly went bankrupt in there which is a story for another video but i’m excited to announce that i’m in a position now where i would consider myself financially free so if i was to stop working then i would be okay but i’m not going to stop working so what’s next for me what are my plans for the future well the problem with being pseudo financially free is what i call it’s just the term i made up because there’s there’s no real term out there for i guess the lifestyle i have in the business that i have so pseudo financial freedom is what we’re going to have to deal with but one of the problems with it is that you don’t have that long-term financial freedom so there’s not that security of okay if i owned multiple properties outright and was getting income from them and living off them it’s like i don’t need to worry people always going to need to rent even if there’s a housing market collapse and rents go down if you’ve got a lot of properties you don’t have to worry about mortgages and properties are still going to be rented probably not for as much but you’ll still be fine so that security is a different type of financial freedom so i don’t have that and i’m still pursuing that so i guess for me i will be pursuing the longer term financial freedom is really important but something that’s been super valuable to me is the last time i went through this at 28 to discover that okay financial freedom doesn’t make you happy what does make you happy and i actually had the time to look at my life and to explore okay what is it that makes me happy and it was like okay relationships in my life make me really happy like the relationship with my partner the friendships that i have my family is really important so the relationships i have with my kids and the time that i spend with them and the things we do together that’s really important and then also for me working is really important and actually pursuing things that i’m passionate about constantly learning constantly challenging myself is also important and so in the past when i achieved financial freedom my work had stopped being challenging and i didn’t know what to do and i went on that exploration journey but now i’ve found the things in my life that make me happy i’m not perfect i still have my down days but i’ve found the things that make me happy and i’ve also found the work that makes me happy and i’ve got this business now that i am loving running that i’m loving working on every single day and i have plans to grow that business and to expand that business both by writing more and producing more content myself as well as hiring people and growing the business that way as well so while i could stop working now if i wanted to i’m definitely not going to and in fact i’m probably going to ramp things up the goal to ramp things up is to if i can grow my income quicker i can pay off debt quicker i can save house deposits quicker invest in property quicker and get to that long-term financial freedom quicker so that’s the next stage of the journey for me is to keep doing what i’m doing in my business keep growing my income throughout the next year to three years keep working on that or maybe indefinitely and then to pay off my debt and then to save and invest in property and maybe down the line also invest in shares and look at cryptocurrency as well in the future and so it’s like my life has changed from really struggling to get by not having enough income to pay for things to now where okay i’ve got i’m like financially free but i got just enough income to pay for everything like i don’t have free money i’m not going to go out there and buy a new car anytime soon i’m still paying off debt but i can just manage my life on financial freedom so i did a video on the five stages of financial freedom which i’ll link up to down below if you haven’t checked that out i highly recommend it but i would be in stage three now which is well i’m still in stage two which is like paying off debt but i’m in that stage where things are kind of just you know even at the moment so i’ve still got a ways to go in my financial freedom journey i still want to grow my income achieve that long-term financial freedom but i’m very happy with my life i’m very happy with the way things are going i’m very happy with the work that i did i’m very happy with the sacrifices that i made like i was sitting here and you know i had one or two people that believed in me and thought that i could do this and pull it off because most people didn’t understand what i was trying to achieve and they would just say to me go and get a job what is your problem ryan go and get a job but i knew i knew the metrics behind my business i knew the work that needed to be done i even had a rough timeline of how long it would take i knew i had a vision for the future and i think it’s so cool to reach this place and to say okay like i reached this because i believed in myself i reached this because i created a plan i reached this because i put in the work to get there and i don’t say that to gloat or anything like that but i say it for you out there listening to this that is like you’re gonna have people in your life who say don’t do it or you can’t do it or don’t bother or take my path but if you know the data if you know the steps to do it if you can see the reality in your mind first before you go ahead and achieve it then you can tread that path you can go along that journey and even though people might say you should do something else which people did say to me i was like no i know what’s going to happen like i did i knew what was going to happen and i had to track my data and my statistics and make sure okay yep it’s happening according to the way that i think it is but i knew no one else knew and i couldn’t explain it people didn’t understand my business i couldn’t explain it but i knew the path and whether it be through an online business whether it be through property investing or share investing or cryptocurrency or however it is that you plan to invest and achieve your financial freedom if you have that strategy and you have that plan you know the steps you just have to walk the path when other people are saying to you you can’t do it or do something else or you’re crazy you can say look i’ll i’ll take your information on board but there’s things that i know and things that i’m aware of that you’re not i believe in myself i believe in achieving this and i’m going to go ahead and do it so whoo it’s been a rough couple of years uh financially and it’s been hard and there’s been some troubling times and there’s been struggles and throughout that time i’ve had so many times where things didn’t go my way but i just tread the path i just kept going one foot in front of the other keep writing keep creating content keep building the business keep saving money keep paying off debt keep going so i’m excited to be here now i’m really excited for what the future holds as well i wish you the absolute best out there in your financial freedom journey i guess i am proof that it can be done that it can be done it can be lost through bad choices as well but then even if you’ve had those bad choices even if you’ve been in a situation where you’re in debt you can pick yourself up you can move out of that and you can achieve the life that you want financial freedom buys you choices which is really cool but it’s knowing what makes me happy that gives me the most power in my life whether i’m financially free or not i know the things in my life that make me happy and i need to actively go out there and do that nurture my relationship spend time with my kids work on the business and work on things that i love to work on that makes me happy and understanding those things is more important to me than the financial freedom there was a one of my favorite verses from the bible in the book of proverbs and i’m gonna have to google it to look it up but i think it was proverbs 16 verse 16 and it’s like it’s better to get wisdom than it is to get gold better to get knowledge than silver something like that any christians out there um you can write down in the comments down below exactly what that proverb is but i remember reading that as a kid probably being 16 at the time and thinking that’s really cool yes i want to achieve financial freedom but what’s more important is the knowledge what’s more important is the wisdom and having gone through financial freedom nearly bankrupt and then getting it again i can say that without a doubt it is more valuable with the wisdom you can pick yourself up again faster if you do end up in a bad situation but you can also make the most of your financial freedom and your life as well so it’s been a hell of a journey i’ve had a lot of fun i’m really looking forward to the future so to everyone out there who sent really nice comments and encouraged me when i was down in the dumps when i was in my worst situation deep in debt i want to say a massive thank you and for people who are just joining me on the journey now if you’re in that situation then hopefully i can encourage you in this video can encourage you i wish you the best out there until next time stay positive