Hey guys, it's sasha, i keep seeing people who chase financial independence, make the same mistake over and over and over, but for some reason everyone just copies whatever everybody else says just because it is the story that people who want financial independence want to hear. The problem is that the story - those people need to hear is not the one they're being told fire is the popular online movement standing for financial independence retire early and the popular narrative is that if you manage your finances, the right way, if you look after your Money, you too can become financially independent long before the typical retirement age. At some point in your 60s, then at that point you can go ahead and stick two fingers to your boss: go and travel around asia with backpack and never have to work a single day in your life again, unless you particularly want to - and it's a nice Thought you can clearly see in the typical stereotypes that are painted in the community that it is sort of meant to especially appeal to younger people. Young people have a long long way to go until retirement, and they are also usually considerably less prepared for retirement as well, and they are usually a lot more keen on the idea of spending a few months on a random island in thailand.

Or you know, driving around the country in a volkswagen campervan and someone who has a family with three kids, but anyway, fire comes in different shapes and flavors. They have created a version of how you can achieve your dream, regardless of how improbable it is. If you don't want to go and eat beans on toast every night, no problem there is a special fat fire version, particularly for you. It is the same as every other kind of fire, except you can throw frugality right out the window.

How, incredibly handy anyway, the way fire is achieved is ultimately the product of a very simple equation. You take your income, you subtract your living costs and then you go and save or invest to the difference. That's it and you keep doing that, and eventually those savings or investments will be big enough. You'll reach your fire number for you to be able to live off that money forever.

That's the theory anyway, and if you look at this equation, almost all of the fire advice out there seems to focus on completely the wrong bit and there's not many things in the equation to focus on, and this is the bit that really frustrates me. The most popular thing that fire enthusiasts focus on is costs, because if you reduce the cost in the equation, then you will have more money left over every month and the more money that is left over the more you can save and the faster you'll be able To get to that fire number that magic amount of money you need to not have to get out of bed in the morning and you know not have to actually do anything and the second most popular topic in the fire community seems to revolve around the investing Side should you go and buy property without money? Where is the best place? To put it, should you go and invest in stocks and shares? What is the best interest rate available and savings accounts all of that kind of mumbo jumbo? But here is the unfortunate truth. If you really do want to achieve financial independence, rather than just sort of you know pretend to make yourself feel better about things, then spending a few decades. Scrimping is not the best way to get there.

Can it get you there possibly, but it is not the best way. It is not the fastest way and i'll tell you one thing: it is not the most pleasant or enjoyable way, either. Spending your 20s 30s and 40s constantly worrying about spending money that takes away from your fire goal is a pretty miserable way to live your life, and just so, you might not be able to go to work, and you know enjoy yourself a little bit at some Point in your 50s you're trading, the wrong things and i'll tell you another secret. I have a finance youtube channel right here that talks about investing for the vast majority of it, so i'm a pretty passionate guy in that space.

I love investing. I'm really interested in it, but here's an unpopular truth about investing that. You need to know you can figure out ways of squeezing an extra few percent on the returns on your investments by doing certain things, by investing in the right way, by diversifying it between different asset classes and all that jazz. But the single most important factor that trumps everything else in how much money you can make with investing is not the rate of return on your investments.

It is actually how much money you invest in the first place. I can tell you that if i go and invest 1 million dollars, i will get a higher rate of return over the next year. If i let a monkey pick my stocks, then the luckiest best investor out there will be able to earn from investing 1 000. So here is where the fire community seems to have completely got their priorities wrong.

In many many cases that i am seeing, the most important factor by five in reaching financial independence is not being super frugal. Living in a one bedroom apartment eating ten food for every meal and showering once a month. It is also not trying to work out if you should invest in the s p, 500 or which particular stock. You need to keep your money in the one factor that trumps, everything is your income and you can only save so much on your cost.

There is a minimum that you will never be able to go lower than and the closer you get to that minimum. The more miserable your fire journey is going to be. You can also realistically only optimize your investing returns. So much many investments will yield you around 10 on average in the long term.

If you kick ass, you might be able to get 20, maybe even 25, but it is pretty rare, especially over a long period of time. But income is the one lever where you basically have unlimited theoretical power. It is actually possible to go and get more than 20 or 25 increase on your income. It is also the scariest out of these different levels, and that is why people don't like talking about it, because it takes far more effort to go, and you know, go out of your comfort zone.

In order to increase your income, then you know buy own brand food in the supermarket. It takes far more effort and application to learn new skills and to invest in yourself so that you can go and get a better paying job to earn, say double what you earn. It takes a massive amount of dedication to wake up two hours early on a miserable february morning for the 1000th day in a row to work on your side hustle, and there isn't a clear manual that you can follow. There isn't an obvious answer like there is with you know, cutting the cast bit or the investing bit.

You can't just go and watch a youtube, video and just know what to do so. I do get it. I understand why this happens. Increasing your income might feel like a mystery wrapped in uncertainty obscured by opaqueness and shrouded in confusion, but if you are serious about financial independence, that is where you need to be digging.

That is where the treasure is buried. Let me tell you an old russian joke that is really not funny, but it's pretty educational. So there's this drunk guy looking around on the ground, underneath the lamppost at night and the policeman comes up to him and asks him what he's doing and the drunk guy says i'm looking for my keys, i lost them and the policeman says: do you know roughly Where it was that you lost them, and the drunken guy says oh yeah yeah over there by by the bushes and the tall grass and the policeman goes. So why are you looking for them over here then well says the drunk guy, it's much easier to see under the lamppost.

I apologize for how unfunny that joke is. But what is funny is that this is pretty much exactly what so many people in the fire community end up doing if you earn two thousand dollars per month, for example, adding an extra four hundred dollars per month from a side. Hustle is going to make a massive difference towards your financial independence goal. So why does every journey in this brave new world of fire seem to start with trying to cut costs? Instead, i mean sure, be smart and don't spend too much and stop buying stuff.

You don't need, i mean, i think that we're all grown up enough - or at least we should be to understand these kind of things without it needing to you know, be a special club with an acronym, but why is the community focusing so much attention on these Aspects i get that they're easy and i get that it is. You know, far easier to feel like you're doing something because you save five dollars on whatever it is you're buying. But we have people obsessed with spending hours, finding the best discount vouchers or coupons. Instead of spending those same hours figuring out and working and developing how they can actually earn more money instead and there are lots of ways to earn more money, you can start today go and look at websites like fiverr or upwork.

I bet you. There is something on there that you could do and that will earn you more than driving an extra 30 minutes each way to go to a slightly cheaper shop to buy your groceries. You can then try to go for something more elaborate, maybe charge more for your work. If you develop more in demand skills, you can adjust your career to go down a route that will pay you a better wage.

I mean sure it takes a hell of a lot of planning. It takes a lot of thinking, it takes education, but it is doable. You can learn how to build a passive income business. There's tons of completely free information out there to get you started, but the key is exactly this: the bid, i just said, did you catch it? You have to get started, it might feel like the journey ahead is long, but nobody is going to do it.

For you, the world might be unfair, but sometimes we just have to pull ourselves up slap ourselves in the face and then put one foot in front of the other and then do it again and again and again i can tell you now that if over the Next, 10 years, you invest all the time you would have spent trolling money, saving tips on fire forums and cutting out the latest vouchers, and if, instead, you go and invest that time over that entire period and invest find extra time. On top of that as well. To take your income from your two thousand dollars a month to twenty thousand dollars a month, you will feel a whole lot more financially independent. Will it take time, yeah yeah, you bet it will? Is it going to be hard yeah you're going to have to work? Really hard for it is it impossible? No plenty of people have done it, it is actually achievable.

It is just that nobody sees that person working on their online business at 5 00 a.m. You know two hours before the kids wake up. Nobody sees that person starting again from scratch pulling themselves up after they failed the last two times to try to start something, but they all see the end result five years later and think to themselves how lucky that person is to have just accidentally by complete fluke, Stumbled into this online money making machine so if you're in that camp, where you want to watch daytime tv play bingo, maybe do some golf for the next 50 years of your life or even, if you don't want to do those things, don't make the mistake of Focusing on the wrong thing focus on improving your income of increasing your earnings. Instead, if you found this video useful, please don't forget to smash the like button for the youtube algorithm.

Thank you so much for watching. I really really appreciate it and, as always i'll see you guys later.