Shower Thoughts on Financial Freedom

Image Source

I’ve been having one of the worst set of luck recently. I’m on quarantine with less pay because of health protocols. It’s the third time this year accumulating to more than a month total. Only received my salary after a month of being officially hired on paper (and the other 6 months were just free service). Then mandated to take some exams I’m expected to fail at because the scope requires me to learn an entire Bachelor’s degree crunched in a month.

Despite studying all night and working the entire day even on holidays, I still end up getting the short end of the stick when it comes to performance evaluation. This is a field of medicine where only few enter and while competition as high as it used to be, this doesn’t mean the training got better. But even after all those string of bad lucks I couldn’t help myself to think I’m doing far better than what I initially thought.

I heard my colleagues working freelance physicians got their salaries on hold for months due to government funding problems. Some are having problematic reputations for pursuing general practice while taking on tasks that are supposed to be done by a specialist (can’t be helped in the rural areas). These people live paycheck to paycheck funding their vanity and vice. Being a healthcare worker in a pandemic isn’t a guarantee of financial security, you get job security but not financial security.

It’s been 3 months since I last checked what’s on my bank account. I probably should check it monthly but the reason behind is practicing discipline on not falling into the money trap. When I see my co-workers show excitement at the prospect of receiving their pay, talking about where to spend it on, what bills they have to keep paying, and what to shop for, I couldn’t helped but be curious imagining my life if I didn’t pick up and read a financial book years back. ​

I don’t want to be excited when I get paid by the system. I don’t want to have my mood turn 360 from bad to good just cause someone told me the monthly aids have arrived. I don’t want to wake up daily dreading of debt I can’t pay. I want to look at an item for sale and say I’ll buy it without looking or worrying about the price tag. That’s the lifestyle I set out for myself.

Most would be unaware of how much they are a slave to this routine. How does one really find joy in living one’s life conditioned to receive pay instead of creating opportunities where they can dictate when they want to get paid?

Before reaching 30, if one doesn’t have a business or a side gig, it’s difficult to be financially free decades from then. It also doesn’t help with the doom recession sentiments, inflation, shitty government, and uncertainty living an old age.

It’s more realistic to expect yourself living with a chronic disease brought by lifestyle now. You’re going to need maintenance medications and pay for other health care services on top of your basic needs. You also need to set aside some money to fund activities that make you happy.

I ask these questions to my peers and they think I’m crazy pondering about a future. They’re probably right if I ended up dead before that happens. But it’s going to sting a lot if I ended up depending my needs from the government, family, and friends for the most basic necessities. This is the direction a lot of Millenials from my third world country are heading for.

Living in a country with low financial literacy also means living in bliss of the financial consequences long term. In the age of information where everyone has access to the internet and cryptocurrency, it’s pretty much on you if you can’t come up with ways to enrich yourself. This is a time where a teenager with spare change can buy a meme coin and strike it rich by dumb luck or learned investing sooner as crypto slowly becomes a household topic.

I’d probably would have ended up like them if I didn’t invested more time learning the markets and finance (referring the slaves of wages). I probably wouldn’t plan ahead in months and budgeting my expenses. I probably wouldn’t have placed my ATM card out of sight because that card being visible is temptation to have nice things. Mind you I still have my own vices like buying some Hive, other cryptos and waifus but I’m getting by living in minimum spending and comfortable.

A friend introduced me to a real estate agent after hearing I am interested in purchasing a condo. I thought I was sure I could afford given how much of a cheapskate I have been to myself but nope. The deals were expensive that I had to reconsider the idea for next year. I’m only interested in owning one for a place to crash or have it rented for additional cash flow in the future. I still have much to learn.

My long term financial goals are just maintaining the strict financial discipline, minimize or do away with vices or deals that waste money, and accumulating more cash flow sources. I’m on that road and I know it’s paved with a lot of waifus.

If I’m not working as a physician, I’d probably won’t have it bad as I worked on several types of jobs that it makes it easy to get into new industries. I haven’t tried porn though, maybe I should try porn?

If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta