before I get into today's video I want to thank all the longtime listeners and welcome to all the new people joining we recently had 875 subscribers never thought I would be able to reach that many people it means
a great deal to me that I have that much support hey YouTube Alex SRA coming to you today from hot Yi Thailand and it is pretty hot today in hot Yi in today's video I want to make the
overall point that Financial Independence is far more important than retire early for those who are un familar the fire movement is the financial Independence retire early movement for those who are unfamiliar the general idea is to live far
below your means save and invest every penny you possibly can until your investment income exceeds your expenses whether it be dividend stocks real estate crypto whatever your preferred investment is to the point that your investment income exceeds your
monthly or yearly expenses some people combine this idea like myself where they want to attain fire but they also want to go overseas to a place where the cost of living is much less than their home country naturally
some countries cost more to live in than others Point number one retirement means no longer sacrificing today for tomorrow and there are a variety of developing countries that offer certain types of visas for not only retirees but also
digital Nomads early retirement is much more a function of financial Independence and that's why I think Financial Independence is the more important Target to achieve some have been convinced that this means living on a beach drinking margaritas from
a coconut shell and not doing anything but that's not what it means at all to me it means that you have enough money to pay your bills and you can choose what you want to work on and if
you don't want to work you could choose to donate your time to charity now both of these assume you have the proper visas in line if you are planning to do this overseas if you're like many of us
you don't mind working you just don't like working for a boss the upper management is is making decisions on what you get to work on and for how long they are often rarely Satisfied by your work and no
matter how much you do you could always do more Point number two is that early retirement will allow you to work on what you want to work on when you want to work on it and with whom you
want to work on or not at all when people are trying to get money they're sacrificing their time their health their energy and their life force to get that money retirement means hey I'm not going to do that
anymore I'm not going to keep sacrificing to day for tomorrow I'm going to live in the moment I'm going to live in the present Point number three is how much you need varies by location if you want to
be financially independent in San Francisco you're going to need a figures and assets to produce enough income to be able to afford to live there now if you're living in a developing country you may need a million in
assets or even less depending on your needs of course your mileage may vary this is not Financial advice I'm not suggesting to buy this or that rather that it's a generally accept Ed thing that different places have different
costs of living your cost of living will also vary by lifestock you want to have a family that's going to be more expensive if you want to live in a gated community that's going to be more expensive if
you want to drive a nice new car that's going to be more expensive I'm not saying you can't do these things they're somewhat antithetical to achieving fire in the first place Point number four is how you spend fire
is up to you it's Unique to the individual for some people Financial Independence may open up time for them to focus on their health and fitness for that Marathon they've been wanting to train for or lifting weight such
that they're able to build extra muscle everyone has a different idea of what Financial Independence will look like for them to me drinking margaritas on a beach after about a week sounds like torture I don't want to be
doing that for a long time I'm happy to do it for a weekend or something like that but to be doing that year round just sounds like a recipe for unhappiness for me personally how I imagine fire is
that I get to financial Independence and then I pivot to working on what I want to work on exclusively whether it be blogging making YouTube videos writing books it's not going to be working for a boss and trading
my time for money essentially renting out your time because if you're renting out your time you're replaceable I guarantee for many Americans if they lost their life in some kind of tragic accident their company would be ordering up
a replacement for them within a couple of days if not immediately in the past there was a tripartite model companies were loyal to their shareholders their employees and their customers nowadays it seems like they're mostly just loyal to
the shareholders rather than grinding it out for those shareholders I'd rather grind it out for myself it's okay to be selfish I think everyone is selfish some people are just more honest about it I think the value that
I could provide for society is a business person a business owner is far greater than the value I can produce as an employee for you it may mean traveling the world or giving your time to charity or a
combination of these things Fifth and final Point here it's possible for everyone in the modern world to be wealthy wealth is assets that earn while you sleep as a great example from nval ra aant wealth is the robots
in the factory turning out widgets if we were in a world where everybody was an engineer and everyone could build useful products we'd all relax while the robots did all the work unfortunately that's not the state of the
world today but I do believe everyone in the modern world can be wealthy you see this with the US tech industry lots of otherwise ordinary people have have made lots and lots of money not through just selling their
time or renting out their time but through Equity through owning equity in a growing business this is partly how tech companies incentivize bright people to work really hard they make the argument hey if our company grows a lot
your stock is going to be worth a lot more the advantage of the modern world is that in the modern world we have unlimited leverage this is sort of a bonus Point by unlimited leverage I don't mean unlimited
debt what I mean by that is that your efforts can be Amplified by the internet for me with YouTube I produce a YouTube video and sometimes well over a thousand people view that video I'm able to help people
I'm able to inform a thousand people I could one day get to the point where my channel reaches hundreds of thousands of people and it's invigorating it's exciting I have people watching not just from English-speaking countries but also
non-english-speaking countries as well places where people are learning English there's an English teaching industry and they find my content valuable some might say oh you can only be wealthy if you're an engineer that's not the case if you
look at the trades right now the trades wages are through the roof and the tech industry is not doing so hot it's not just the obvious if you own a trades business you can charge a lot of money
right now due to the shortage it hasn't always been that way I've heard in the past trades people were underpaid relative to the value they created and so things are constantly shifting the economy but there are opportunities for
everyone in the modern world if I was giving myself advice on how to pursue fire I'd say find the place that you like figure out how much money you need to live there get incom producing assets to cover
that and then move it is not a short process it is not an overnight process but it is worthwhile for me personally and I think it may be for you as well everyone has different priorities on how they'd
like to spend their time let let us know down in the comments if financially independent how would you spend your time let us know down in the comments if you were financially independent how would you spend your time
so that's it for this video thanks so much for for watching if you enjoyed it give us a thumbs up subscribe to the channel down below if you want to see more content like this and we'll see you
next time
