What Does Financial Independence Feel Like?

What does Financial Independence feel like? That’s an interesting question because in this space, the personal finance world, the vast majority of people blogging and reading posts are not there yet. They are paying off debt, life hacking, side gigging and minimizing their way on the journey. But they are still years, perhaps decades, away from reaching their goal.

When I try to think of something I can write that is more than just another opinion, I think of what I’ve experienced that most readers have not. As an older writer I have shared career tips from a career that lasted over three decades and the advantages of rural non-metro living from somebody who doesn’t live inside any town’s city limits. I’ve reveled in driving my eleven year old, $7,000 car that outperforms most 2019 models. And I’ve talked about hiking to every waterfall in our state, something I’m pretty sure no reader has ever done. (Louisiana readers don’t count, water doesn’t have anything to fall off of in Louisiana, it mostly just sits still unless it is flooding.)

But just a minute ago it occurred to me that I know one more thing that most people do not know, so I dropped what I was doing and started creating this post. I know what financial independence feels like, and I’ve known it for years! What is life like when you not only can buy anything you want but also know for certain you will never, ever, have to work for money again? That is something I know!

First the space that worrying about money occupies in your life now is freed up. That time is now useful to you. Sure, you still analyze purchases to see if the value you perceive in an item exceeds its price. But you never think “I can’t afford that.” or “Can I afford that?” Those thoughts are gone, never to return. Certainly there are things I can’t afford, like a ten million dollar yacht or a twenty million dollar jet, but I’d never find myself wanting those things. What I mean is that every single thing in this world that fits in the realm of things I’d consider purchasing, is now affordable to me, so affording things will never be a question again. If my seven thousand dollar car falls to pieces tomorrow I can go buy another used car or any new one I want and price really isn’t a concern. Knowing me I’ll try to find a similar one for $6,000 but if I replaced it with a 2019 model for closer to $60,000 it wouldn’t hurt us. It may not sound like a big deal, but knowing that you’ve got enough money that the cost of things is no longer a required factor in your decision making, feels like a big deal.

Perhaps even bigger than not worrying about money, you don’t worry about being employed. I have a nice set of side gigs that entertain me now. They also bring in six figures in income, and trust me none of it comes from the internet or from blogging. The side gigs are various forms of consulting that are based on my old job experience and my chemical engineering skills. I’ve been doing them for three years and they’ve been a nice transition from my old nine to five to my retired life. But they are nothing like a real job. First they only consume about one day a week’s effort, at most two days. Second I don’t really have a boss, just clients, and they have to pay me whether they like my results or not. It’s been mostly fun with just enough hard mental effort to keep my brain taxed with problem solving. But I’m already looking for what’s next. Maybe more volunteer work or maybe a different kind of paid work? It may take me a couple of years to move to whatever that turns out to be but there is no pressure to figure that out.

And did I mention I don’t have a boss anymore? That’s big. I liked my bosses, our CEO was one of the most charismatic natural leaders I’ve ever known. My other bosses were brilliant and experienced engineers with incredible talent. But the job was tough and the pressure to be perfect was intense. And I am not talking about intense in the way that all jobs can be stressful, I’m talking about an intensity I would not have believed if I had not been the victim of it first hand. The best way I know to describe it is in what has happened since I retired. They are currently looking for a person to replace the person who replaced the person who replaced me. That’s a lot of replacing in just three years. Even for high six figure pay it is hard to find people that can handle the pressure. I eventually couldn’t do it anymore even though I did hang in there for over three years. That made me the all time record holder for that job. What let me escape? That financial independence thing of course. So another way it feels is the way it feels to not have a boss, simply free!

In your case you might choose to keep working like I did for years after financial independence. I even considered working full time again briefly when a couple of great jobs were offered to me after I retired. But it doesn’t make sense to work full time at anything less than a dream job and I haven’t found one of those yet, other than my side gigs. I am a proponent of always working some, I think the benefits are worth the fact that all work has some drudge days included. But I can be hella picky now! And that is also how financial independence feels.

Some of the things financial independence feels like are about things I don’t have any more. Work stress is a big one, and it is gone! Not the worries about getting fired but in my line of work worry about one of my workers getting hurt or even killed on the job. Chemical plants are fairly safe compared to many other jobs but when things do go wrong they can go very very wrong very very quickly and can have deadly results. Another thing I do not have is being on call. As “the boss” I was on call every hour of every day of the year. If something bad happened, an accident or a major equipment failure, then my CEO expected to be notified by me within minutes of the unfortunate event. This kind of thing seemed to happen most often on vacation, Christmas or during family events. Not any more, that’s gone.

I know I could go on and on. But let me end with one of the bestest things. There is no alarm clock or phone alarm set for Monday morning. No…alarm! I just wake up when I wake up. Sure I still get up before 5AM three days a week to run with my wife and our running group but that’s my choice. And we never run on Mondays. If you are working a nine to five then I know every Sunday you start to think about Monday morning and when that alarm goes off, man, it is just not a good feeling knowing you have five days to live through before you have much free time of your own. I mostly liked my job until at the very end. But even so there were many Mondays when the last thing I wanted to do was to crawl out of my warm bed and get ready for work. And never feeling that way now, that’s how financial independence feels to me. It feels like rolling over and catching a few more Z’s.

What about you, if you are already financially independent how does that feel?

If you aren’t how do you imagine it will feel?

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