Getting control of your finances is fun.
Figuring out how to develop a Spending Plan that will allow you to hit your goals is empowering.
Paying off each successive debt is gratifying and the sense of real progress is palpable.
Its exciting, you're making changes. You're making decisions. You're Adding Assets and Limiting Liabilities. You're making worthwhile sacrifices.
And then, one day, you become debt free!
You go out to a nice dinner as a reward.
You feel the blades of grass between your toes for what seems to be the first time ever. Your elation is causing you to break out in little happy dances at random times. The sky is so beautiful, you feel the air in your lungs and the warm sun on your face. You're happy. You're smiling.
Then, after a couple of days, you are in bed trying to go to sleep when you realize that you just made it to zero. You got out of the hole that you were in. The perpetual smile starts to slip.
And while getting from a negative net worth to a positive one is awesome and it was totally worth it, all of a sudden you realize that it doesn't mean that you've made it. You're not wealthy yet. You're not financially independent yet.
Now you're on the path to becoming wealthy.
It is boring. You keep doing what you had been doing. Except now its automatic. You've developed the habits. You've setup automatic transfers so that some of your money goes automatically into your savings and investment accounts. You don't have to make cliffhanger-dangerous financial decisions because you are not a slave anymore - you don't owe.
Its kinda dull.
That is exactly what the process of becoming rich feels like.
It is slow.
It is not dramatic and fast-paced and it is certainly not a wild ride.
Becoming rich is a process that takes time.
Even if you invest 70% of your take-home pay (easier for higher-earners, for sure) - saving up enough to have your Freedom Figure is still going to take you 8.8 years. That can feel like a drag.
That is the feeling of becoming wealthy.
When I counsel people on their finances and they get out of debt - sometimes even before they get all the way out of debt - they will invariably tell me that the 'fun' went away. They're right. It did.
Becoming wealthy is more fun the further you get into it, but it is a process, and it always starts slow.
It takes time.
It takes persistence.
It takes consistency.
It demands your resolve and discipline.
Having your Freedom Figure in your investment account is worth it. I promise you, it is worth it.
Pursue your goals for your reasons, but earn your freedom.
