Hey All,

I increasingly see that the connecting thread of everything I’ve been writing and making videos about is financial independence.

Whether you’re looking to buy a house, to start investing, or to build a business, it all circles back to the ambition many of us have of being financially free.

Today, I want to deep dive on financial independence, and share what financial freedom means to me in practice.

BUT First - We’ve reached 10.000 subscribers on YouTube 🎉! It only took… 4 years? 😂 I’m happy for the milestone and I’m motivated to keep going. This is one of the latest videos I shared, on the car taxes in Denmark:

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Spoiler: I only learned now that the famous car tax accounts to 2% of the Danish GDP - It's wild wild.

Moving on:

💐 Financial Freedom is a FEELING
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Financial independence is often seen as a hard target - a specific number in your bank account or investment portfolio.

However, I’ve come to realize that financial independence is more about a state of mind, a feeling of freedom and control over your life and choices.

When you feel financially independent, you have the confidence to make decisions based on what you truly want, rather than being driven by financial necessity.

This is a crucial mind shift, because - if we’re honest - 99% of us won’t be able to save 25 times our yearly expenses. (Which is the metric that is suggested in the “Financial Independence Community”).

So, in my context, I flipped the script and decided - personally, in my own unique case - that I will feel financially free when I can:

- In my job, do things I love doing - at least 80%+ of the time, having fun
- In my job, work hard, but not too long - at least not as an obligation. Specifically, I have to be able to push back my boss if he/she tells me I need to work more. (The idea here is that I want to be able to spend a lot of time with my kids).
- In practice, the two above points mean that I must be able to - without a hiss, if needed - switch jobs and move to a job paying me 20%+ less if it means doing something I enjoy and having shorter hours.
- In parallel, I must be able to splurge on the lifestyle I want: nice home, short commutes, lots of green close to me, nice tech (computer, phone, cameras), nice clothes and a lot of traveling

In 2024, I feel that all the above is in order. I feel "financially independent" and it has lifted a huge weight off me.

Mind, though: I still invest - e.g., I literally transferred my full bonus from Maersk to Nordnet this month - but I’m less fixated on the numbers than in the past.

My realization has been that, like almost everything good in life, it’s about “journey before destination”.

👉 Question - What would it take to have a “feeling” of financial freedom to you? I recommend you deep dive into it.

🏎️ Speeding Towards Financial Independence - 3 Key Tips

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Let's now go through some practical tips though:

1) Focus Where You Spend Your Money 🙉

Spend your money where you spend your time/what you love doing. Spend lavishly on what you love, be super thrifty on everything else. This is can sound obvious, but there are a lot of people who say they want to travel, or do X or Y, but end up spending their money on something else.

In my case, look into this contrast:
- I splurge on TRAVEL - to the tune of 10-20K kr a month (if you mensualize costs.). This is a lot for a “normal” person. And that’s just me: add my wife and you’ve another 10-20K for the family.
- But I spend almost zero on transportation, entertainment and eating out. I don’t have a car, I don’t have a TV (and no Netflix, Disney+, etc.) and don't buy expensive things. I also spend relatively little on housing.

This is a trade-off: I don’t crave the above, but now with two kids, I would love to have a Tesla Model X and a bigger centrally-located apartment 😉. But travel prevails.

2) Build a Side Business 📊

I’m now more convinced than ever that having a business is the only feasible way to be mathematically financially free for most people. (This can be a full-time or part-time business. Also - exception can be if you work in a very highly paid job for many years and enjoy it along the way - which then, great for you.)

I’m in the luxury position that I would write online and make videos even if I didn’t make any money. (I can tell you so, as I’ve done this since 2009 - and didn’t make any money for many years, lol). But, that said, now that I do make money:

- I earn this money independent of my time - unlike my job, I can take months-long breaks and the income keeps flowing
- I can expense (meaning, purchase as business expenses) a lot of tech products I love - and, crucially, buy them with pre-tax income
- If need be, I can pay myself out - but, then, yes, still taxed at 50%+

Building a business is not for everyone. But, hey, the hard truth is that to be rich, it’s the way to go. If you’re interested on this, you should check out my free online course on building an online business.

3) Surround Yourself with Like Minded People 🚴‍♂️

99% of the people you know are not financially independent. They at least don’t feel so.

The hack is to surround yourself with people are or who seriously want to be. You’re, after all, “the average of the five people you’re surround yourself”.

In this context, I recommend you join my Financial Independence Accelerator (ex “Mastermind”).

It’s work in progress. We’re building this basis your feedback, but I now know that this is the topic that the majority of you care about most.

We do monthly group calls, have our exclusive forum, have 1-1 connects and I’ve been building a “vault” of exclusive videos for members:
- New Video - Financial Independence Planning From Your 20s
- New Video - You Don’t Need to be Rich for FIRE
- New Videos & Email Series - "The Fast Start Exercises" on how to get the rich-person mentality

If you want to try it, join us here - I would love to grow this and make it a hub for us interested in this topic.

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🤖 Cool Tech & Travel Update

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​Cool Tech I’m Trying - Claude.ai. I love ChatGPT, but the Claude 3 Opus model has finally nailed my “holy grail” - it can write very good YouTube scripts in my voice and style. It’s a subjective feeling but it’s super good. It just launched for the EU. (It was a hassle to get access to it before.)

Hat-tip: This is the YouTube channel I watch to keep up to date on all the AI news each week.

Security & Backups Project - Last month I decided to level up my backups and online security. In short, I have now all my files backed up in two SSDs harddrives + an online mirror - so photos, all my videos and notes etc. are safe and strong. It doesn’t cost much (one-off for the SSDs, $100/y for unlimited data with BackBlaze) and it’s a good insurance. It’s one of those things that hopefully you never need to use but good to have just in case.

👾 Monthly Prompt - Is there any new tool or system that you’ve been using or that you recommend me to check out?

🧭 As for Travel:
- We were in Bhutan (my country #140 💪) and India for Easter and it went super. We were a bit wary of taking the kids with us, but it all went well and they both loved it. We’d it a bit rough taking the hike to the Tiger’s Nest (picture) with two small kids but managed.
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(We also had to cancel museum visits in Bhutan to visit the local Dinoland/indoor playground instead lol - but that’s how you keep kids onboard with this type of trips.)
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We also did some short weekend trips in Europe to visit family and in June we’ll cruise through Norway, up to North Cape and even sail all the way to Svalbard. Exciting times ahead!

Thank you for reading my emails - I appreciate it! It’s always fascinating to me that I can reach out now to thousands of people with my videos and writing.

I hope you got some inspiration or new idea from this one, and wish you a nice springtime!

Hugs,

Mario

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