The journey towards financial freedom is a journey towards understanding oneself. In living the principles of living within my means, saving and investing as well as growing and protecting my means, I learn more about myself as I take each tiny step towards the ambitious goal of not having to “work” for a living.

One key lesson I continue to learn is to embrace change. Just as the President of the United States Barrack Obama came up with his slogans for CHANGE and YES WE CAN. I believe change is the inevitable part of learning and growing as a person.

While we may still be the same person in our physical skins, mentally, as we learn about new knowledge, skills and abilities, we change. And as we trade our youth and years for experience and wisdom, we emerge a slightly different person. We see things from a different perspective. We examine our past with better insights about the stupid things we used to do. We look forward to the future with growing confidence that, YES WE CAN adapt to the changes that will continually challenge us in our journey towards financial freedom.

How to Change Your Life Towards Financial Freedom

Each of us has to define our own paths towards financial freedom. The key thing is that we have to embrace change if our current lifestyle, work habits and investment approach doesn’t bring us closer to our goal of achieving financial freedom.

1. Change your mindset

This is what 99% of self-help books will tell you. And it’s because it’s TRUE. Your mind is truly what guides you in life. Targets you set or miss depend a lot on first being created in your mind. If you think this is some new age pooh-pooh, I’ll highly recommend reading Napolean Hill’s THINK AND GROW RICH.

I’m constantly amazed about how I am able to achieve the returns on investment even in brutal markets of 2008. Partly, I am fortunate to have holding power but it’s also because I come to the game with a positive mindset that I can ride out the storms and go for blue chips that have fundamental proftitable businesses to back them up.

2. Open Your Mind to New Ideas

Having an open mind is important towards financial freedom. It’s not being so open as to invest in any “too good to be true” scams that appear in the guise of “sure-win” investments which are in fact ponzi schemes.

But it’s to be open to listen to new ideas about living within your means, saving and investing as well as growing and protecting your means. You can first listen, but then you have to exercise professional scepticism to weed out the genuine investments from the koyok or snake oil.

It’s challenging to draw the line between the two but you can achieve it if you also do the next step.

3. Read Widely to Change Preconceived Notions and Dogma

Many things we learn in investing we tend to hear those motherhood statements. Whether motherhood statements hold true really depends on the context in which they are played out. To give yourself more context to evaluate ideas that help or hinder your way towards financial freedom, you should aim to read widely.

This is a big change as many of us would want to avoid reading books and especially non-fiction after finishing our education. But the reality is that there is so much wisdom and common sense in books recommended by many gurus that one misses out so much available context and histories in which to broaden our mind and sharpen our evaluation and critical thinking skills.

The best way to challenge and change preconceived ideas and dogma you learn from sources is to read widely. Good books abound and the trick is not just to browse in the library aimlessly but go find out good recommendations from people you follow and respect for those books.

I try to read books recommended by authors I read as they would recommend stuff that is relevant to the subject matter at hand. The best thing is that in Singapore, public libraries are relatively well stocked and free for citizens. So make full use of your rights as a citizen to access this wealth of knowledge.

4. Experiment, Learn, Try Again and Succeed

Life is not to be studied purely by reading and observing. We need also to get into the game by trying different things. My own explorations into equity investing started out in 2003 and has come some way to today.

Now I’m more confident about buying/selling or investing in stocks but I also understand the pitfalls more. This helps me to make use of equities as an asset class to achieve higher returns than deposits and savings and is a better way to deploy my investible capital.

The point is you have to take the plunge and experiment to truly learn. Reading books is a pre-requisite but the other fulfilment is to JUST DO IT. Do it within your means and experiment to see what investments turn out well or not based on your risk/return profile.

Ultimately, life is one big experiment.

Go try it out.

Be well and prosper.

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