All I Want For Christmas Is... Financial Freedom

2020 has been a crazy year for me like it probably has been for most of you as well. While I already got involved with cryptocurrency back in 2019, I didn't interact much with anything else in the blockchain world. I bought some BTC every month and that was about it. It was only thanks to Covid-19 that I started to dig deeper. I found my passion for blockchain gaming, started to author articles on Publish0x and later Hive and LeoFinance. What was a trickle of tiny income at first has compounded to a sizable stream of daily earnings.

I've learned something else this year though. I'm 37 now. I've been working for almost 15 years and at the current rate, I'd be looking at working another 30 before I could retire. Had you asked me a year or two ago, I would have told you that I'm pretty happy with how things are going and that I had no intention to retire early. Well, things have changed. Fundamentally. It's only a vague feeling now, but it's growing at a fast rate. I don't want to stay trapped on the hamster wheel. I want out!

Image by Basil James

The somewhat fun truth is, it's not that I hate my job. Quite the contrary, I like it. Who wouldn't? I work in lower IT management, my job is as safe as it gets to be and if I don't quit or do something really stupid, chances are I could work that job until I retire. It's extremely well paid to the point where I don't really have to worry about money much in my everyday life. On top of all that, I'm pretty good at what I do, I'm a respected expert in my field of work, people seem to enjoy working with or for me. And yet, I feel like I don't want to stay in the job for another 30 years. Why is that? What happened?

I really can't put my finger on it exactly. I think it has a lot to do with all that Covid-19 nonsense, the confinement at home, the lowered social interactions. These things will pass and, to tell the truth, during the summer months I didn't really care much for any of the restrictions imposed on us anyway. But still, it taught me how meaningless our everyday life is if it's only focused on working your daily job to pay the bills to keep working your daily job. It just seemed like that whole stuff was lacking in purpose.

Don't get me wrong here - I'm no idealist, I don't want to change the world. To tell the truth, I'm way too lazy to care for all that. There are a lot of things I'd love to see changed but that's the point - I'd love for others to change them but I won't leave my comfort zone to get it done myself. Yet, the definition of my comfort zone seems to be changing rapidly. A year ago, it was well built around my everyday work routine. By now, it feels more and more like my comfort zone and my daily work life don't have too much in common any more.

So where am I heading with all that? To tell the truth, I don't know yet. The feeling has grown urgent enough that I can't ignore it any longer. So I'm going to act on it. I'm not a person that's acting on the first impulse, though. These things need some consideration and I'm willing to invest quite some time into really thinking things through and coming up with a plan.

If you take a look at the stuff I'm writing about, it becomes rather obvious where my priorities have been so far. This whole crypto thing has been all fun and games to me. Sure, the earnings are nice and they certainly add up, but then I'm earning ~3,500€ after taxes every month from my normal job. That's a long way to go before these earnings could get even close to that. Also, I don't intend to change things entirely in that regard. I naturally enjoy writing these articles and I really enjoy crypto gaming. I really believe it to be the future and I certainly want to be a part of the journey. That said, a 0.5 Hive per day share from Rising Star's rewards pool is not going to make too much of a difference on its own, is it?

So I believe it's time to take a step back and take a look at the larger picture. What would I need to do in order to really reach financial freedom? The great thing is, I'm not in a rush. At all. If I have to, I can just keep working my job and never get into any financial trouble. But I don't want to, so things will have to change gradually. I want 2021 to be the year I set course towards financial freedom. It probably won't be the year I reach it and that's okay. But some years down the line, I want to look back at these days and go like yes, that's when you finally got it right!.

So what am I going to do? Short term, get some transparency on where I'm standing. As I've written above, money is not too much of an issue thanks to my salary. It's not that I'm just wasting it, but I also don't really pay too much attention to what I'm spending for what. So the first step will be to get a better idea of what I'm spending my money on. How much am I paying to satisfy what needs? Do I have to spend that much? Can I save some of that money, can I just quit spending it in certain areas? To achieve that, I'm going to document everything I spend money on starting January 1st - and I mean everything. No matter if it's 500€ or only 0.30€ to use a public toilet. Without transparency in that area there's no telling how much money I'd actually need and how much I'm just wasting for no good reason right now.

The second part that I need more clarity on is the question of what I'm actually earning outside of my normal job already. This is going to take a lot of dedication as well because there are micro earnings everywhere. Staking rewards, author and curation rewards, earnings from games, interest on savings, and so much more. So starting January, I'll dedicate the needed amount of time to keep track of all of that. If all goes well, by the end of January, I should end up with two somewhat resilient numbers - how much money am I spending each month and how much money am I earning outside of my everyday job each month.

With these numbers in mind I'll then start to work on both - decrease the amount of money I spend (and I'm sure there's a huge potential for that) and increase the amount of money I make without working my normal job. I really have no idea yet how far these numbers will be away from each other but I'm confident that we live in a time where it should actually be possible to bring these together or better yet, even get to the point where I make more money than what I'm spending.

This is going to be an interesting and hopefully fun and satisfying journey for me and I'm certainly going to do a lot of articles on it. Don't worry, though. I'll still be LeoFinance's crypto gaming guy, as I have no intention to quit that hobby. But next year, it's going to be more than only games and fun. It's going to be games and fun and financial freedom. I also want to give a huge shout-out to @revisesociology who inspired a lot of the thought process I'm going through right now. In case you don't follow him yet, check his articles about his journey to early retirement, they are well worth your time!

And that's all from me for today. Thank you all for reading this somewhat differing article from what you might be used from me. I'll be gone for a day or two now to celebrate Christmas with my family. And by celebrate I mean repeatedly eat more than any healthy man should. To those celebrating it - Merry Christmas and to everybody - See you all next time!

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