Happy Independence Day and a toast to your financial independence

Today is Nigeria’s 53rd Independence Day and there are things to be grateful for and whine about if you are so inclined. The focus of this post is your financial independence day. Have you reached it yet? Politicians are notorious for breaking promises (actually many have no clue what it takes when making the promise), but what have we done with our money? Have we converted it to wealth or a heap of thrash? Is that not a broken promise?

October 1 signals the beginning of the last quarter of the year and is a good time to stop and take another look at our 2013 goals. Are you on track or they have joined the long line of abandoned projects? I took a look at mine and I noticed I have made progress on all fronts and have achieved some, still stand a chance to achieve some while almost 50% of them will be deferred to 2014. My focus tended to be on financial goals, so I seemed to do poorly on fitness and other goals. I am still on the wrong side of 100kg despite my stop-and-start efforts. I need to adopt a more balanced approach to achieving my goals and become more realistic when setting goals. Setting too high goals can de-motivate while setting them too low leaves you stuck in your comfort zone.

Keeping an eye on your goals helps you retain focus and move consistently toward the finish line. It helps you develop the habits required to achieve those goals. If you do not grow the habits required to support the goal, you may be fighting a losing battle.

Your financial independence goal is foundational and has an impact on other areas of your life. A lot of folks in Lagos for example cannot have a decent breakfast (which is the most important meal of the day) because they hit the road before sunrise and there is no place in the office to get a decent meal, so they eat junk food. Many are estranged from their children because they hardly get to see them due to the pressure of work. Many have not had a vacation in years. They live a sedentary lifestyle, sit 4 hours in traffic, and grow premature grey hair and a pot belly with their cardiovascular numbers on the wrong side of the chart. They know their job is slowly killing them but they have no choice.

With financial independence, you don’t have to do anything, you chose to do it. If you don’t like your circumstances, you change them rather than murmuring and complaining. You can do that if you have the choice to say “I don’t”. Financial independence gives you this choice – the choice to focus on the most important things in your life. Life is not about paying bills. Bills should get paid as you go about doing what you know best how to do, enjoy doing, and are passionate about. Nobody should make a career out of a job they hate. That is a life sentence, no matter how many carats the golden handcuffs are.

So this is a toast to your very own Independence Day, the day you stop working for money and having money work for you so that you can truly start giving your gifts so that the world will be better off because you came. It is not about money. It is about getting to truly live before you die.