The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (3 page)

Most of us already know at least some of the steps we could take to free ourselves from money anxieties—we could manage our debt better, arrange for our children’s education, strategically plan now for later, protect what we’ve saved, save more. Yet most of us are paralyzed, too, when it comes to actually taking these steps, however wise they seem, however much we think we really want to take control.

What good will it do you to know what you should do, if you can’t do it?

The first steps of this book take you back to discover why you don’t do the things you know you should do and bring you beyond that—to where you can take action. These steps will free you to open up a dialogue about money with your parents, your children, and, most important, yourself. The next three steps are the laws of managing money. These laws are must-do’s. They cover everything from wills and trusts and what insurance you need (and don’t need) to new ways to think about debt and your 401(k) or retirement plan to how to invest and what to invest in. They teach you why you must trust yourself more than you trust anyone else with your money.

The goal of these particular steps is to make you as independent from financial advisers as possible. Over the years, I learned that it was in my clients’ best interest for them to take control over their money, not to relinquish it, even to me. If, later on, they choose to entrust their money to someone else, with these steps they would no longer be able to be taken advantage of by an unscrupulous adviser—or by their unwillingness to face up to the facts and figures of their own finances. Once you take these steps, you will discover the exhilaration that comes from wanting to deal with your money, not just having to deal with it.

The last three steps take you beyond the realm of finances, to the wealth that money can’t buy.

When it comes to money, freedom starts to happen when what you
do, think
, and
say
are one. You’ll never be free if you say that you have more than enough, then act as if and think you don’t.
You’ll never be free if you think you don’t have enough, then act as if and say you do. You will have enough when you believe you will and take the actions to express that belief. And you’ll have more than enough when you realize that you can be rich at any income because you are more than your money, you are more than your job or title, than the car you drive or the clothing you wear. Your own power and worth are not judged by what money can sell and what money can buy; true freedom cannot be bought or sold at any price. True freedom, true wealth, is that which can never be lost.

Please ask yourself right now: What is it that I want to get out of reading this book?

Financial freedom is something we’re all working for, but each of us has specific things that concern us the most. To achieve complete financial freedom, you’ll need to follow all the nine steps. But depending on what your goal is, you’ll want to pay special attention to certain sections of the book. So let us begin by deciding on your goals. Here are some examples; feel free to choose new ones or rephrase these in a different way.

The most important thing to remember is that whatever your goal is, you can make it happen and goal by goal, step by step, you can take charge of your destiny and achieve financial freedom. The power is within you.

T
HE ROAD TO
financial freedom begins not in a bank or even in a financial planner’s office, but in your head. It begins with your thoughts.

And those thoughts, more often than not, stem from our seemingly forgotten past with money. I’ll go so far as to say that in my experience, most people’s biggest problems in life—even those that appear on the surface not to be money related—are directly connected with their early, formative experiences with money.

So the first step toward financial freedom is a step back in time to the earliest moments you can recall when money meant
something to you, when you truly understood what it could do. When you began to see that money could create pleasure—ice-cream cones, merry-go-round rides; and also to see that it could create pain—fights between your parents, perhaps, or longings of your own that couldn’t be fulfilled because there wasn’t enough money or even because there was too much. When you first understood that money was not just a shiny object or something to color on. When you understood that money was
money
. I want you to think back and see that your feelings about money today (fearing it, enjoying it, loving it, hating it) can almost certainly be traced to an incident, possibly forgotten until now, from your past.

Suzanne came to a financial planner for the same reason that brings many people—she didn’t want to deal with her money. Her earliest memories about money helped explain why. She had learned that what money buys is nothing compared to what it takes away.