The dream of early retirement is but a dream for most people, yet there are a few willing to do whatever it takes to make their dream a reality. Yet, we often adopt the attitude that in order to do “whatever it takes” we must work every hour of the day – which is not always the case.
Indeed, if you were to be working every hour of the waking day, it suggests you are stuck on a treadmill of trading time for money; which is inherently restrictive as there are only so many hours in each day, week, month or year and there’s a ceiling on what anybody can charge for a unit of their time.
In this sense, if you are wanting to fund an early retirement then you are going to need to use the concept of leverage. Just like how a wrench utilizes leverage, you can leverage your financial resources and time by creating systems that generate passive income. For instance, if you were to look at online cryptocurrency trading, you already know that if you had leveraged, say one thousand dollars a few years back by investing in bitcoin you would have leveraged this financial resource many times over as your initial thousand could today be worth tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. Crypocurrency is only being used as an example, there are other alternative leveraged investing options. As we all know, any high-risk high-reward investing that goes up quickly can also fall just as fast. Timing is everything so be cautious and learn as much as you can.
That’s the beauty of financial leverage – you’re not having to trade your time for money, you are letting your money work for you. There are other options, such as putting your money in a high interest savings account.
Admittedly, with the low-interest rates of today, this might not seem a very lucrative opportunity, yet over time, with compounding your savings grow and grow – like a snowball getting bigger and bigger. Furthermore, there are some countries that are offering very attractive interest rates for savings; meaning you could make between ten and twenty percent interest per year!
Taking some risks in investment markets is a balanced approach to fund an early retirement. Building a well diversified portfolio over time of quality stocks and bonds will offer a very good chance of growing your money without relying solely on high-risk/high-reward or low paying savings accounts. You don’t have to be a financial wizard either to pick the right companies as there are many stock and bond funds that will do that for you.
In a nutshell, if you’re looking to fund an early retirement then you need to shift your paradigm from the ‘employee mentality’ to that of the investor or business owner. Indeed, many people that have small businesses are still trapped in the worker paradigm, where they are still on the financial treadmill of trading time for money – just with a little more control and flexibility in terms of what they offer, who they offer it to, and when they work.
If you’re looking to retire early then you need to create a business that leverages systems, other people, and automated processes to generate revenue. For instance, let’s say you develop an online course in an area of interest and expertise, that you go on to sell for $100… assuming you set up a targeted ad campaign on a platform such as Facebook, that leads people into a marketing funnel where you sell them the course via a free video training session (that has already been recorded and is thus leveraged as an asset)… this is an automated stream of revenue, where, after the cost of advertising (say $20) you would be left with a gross profit of $80 which, after payment processing fees is likely to be $75.
If you sold 10 courses a week ($750) or 100 ($7,500) the amount of time and effort you have to expend remains the same, as the process is automated, thus you can fund an early retirement with great ease.
Disclaimer- Leisure Freak is in no way advising readers to invest in cryptocurrencies. Invest at your own risk. Crypto is a high risk investment scheme. This article is for information purposes only.
