Last weekend we headed off on a road trip to the Huon Valley in the south of Tasmania. Mamamia, what beautiful country that is! As we tripped around enjoying our weekend, our phones buzzed intermittently on and off. We were getting tonnes of new bookings for our Airbnbs! In this post we share what we earned as we travelled as an example of what is possible with Airbnb passive income strategies.
Most folks we talk to have the impression that when you look at Airbnb versus renting your investment property, Airbnb is sooo much more work. But did you know you can set up the systems and processes so that it doesn’t have to be? Read on and we’ll prove it.
Day 1 – Eugenana to Hobart
We took off from the north of Tassie early Saturday morning with our Vizsla’s Bailey and Boston. The reason for our trip? We were looking for areas around the city of Hobart that we liked because we’re trying to buy our next home somewhere here in Tasmania.
Day 1 Itinerary: Eugenana ⇒ Longford ⇒ Ross ⇒ Kingston ⇒ Cygnet ⇒ Longley
Ross, Central Tasmania
The Salty Dog – pet friendly pub at Kingston
Bailey cutting loose at Kingston dog beach
Day 1 road trip highlights were the amazing landscapes of wild Tasmania, the Salty Dog pub at Kingston, Kingston dog beach and everything about Cygnet. We’d buy there in a heart beat.
Day 1 Airbnb passive income
While we tripped around for the day travelling through central Tasmania, these were our Airbnb earnings:
26 April
Airbnb Earnings (AUD)
Booking 1 –
$265.53
Booking 2
$329.45
Total earnings
$594.98
Total hours worked
zero
Earnings are gross, but after Airbnb fees
When these two guests booked they received an automated tailored and personal message of confirmation and thanks. We received a phone notification via our booking management platform. We’ve set these processes up so that zero effort is needed. All runs smoothly without us. So we had a beer at the Kingston pub and watched the money roll in. We paid 4% ($23.80) of our earnings to use the booking platform and this is key to our Airbnbs making passive income.
Day 2 Huon Valley
Day 2 was spent tripping around in the Huon Valley looking at homes on the market and land releases.
During breakfast our phones buzzed constantly with notification messages. Here are the bookings we received:
25 April
Airbnb Earnings (AUD)
Booking 1
$448.39
Booking 2
$405.81
Booking 3
$116.07
Booking 4
$112.73
Total earnings
$1083 .00
Total hours worked
0.5
Earnings are gross, but after Airbnb fee
We spent about 30 minutes all up messaging guests who had requested early check-ins and leaving messages for our cleaners in the cleaning app we use. We have set up a cleaning system via an app that now runs smoothly and needs minimal intervention. We pay a flat fee each month of about $50AUD to use this platform.
How to make Airbnb passive income
Software management systems and cleaning apps are just two of the ways we turn our Airbnb income into passive income. But Airbnbing your own investment property is not a beginner passive income stream. It can take some upfront capital to become an Airbnb owner. We one hundred percent recommend you do the legwork BEFORE you put your hard-earned cash in. Read our blog post on Is Airbnb profitable? Know before you list.
If you want to join us and become an Airbnb host here is a link to the Airbnb platform.
And yes, you can also make money in Airbnb without owning property!
It’s more complicated as there’s a third party property owner involved but once you have all the tools and understand the business model, really anyone can do it. Learning the ‘how’ is the first and most important step to being successful. We invested in some specific training in this Airbnb business model before launching in and followed the formula step by step.
Check out some of our results making Airbnb profit with investor partners and none of our own property right here.
The final word –how passive income strategies (eventually) work
Passive income comes about from setting up income earning systems. These systems are built on processes designed minimise your effort to keep those systems running. The thing about passive income strategies is that they take effort and persistence in the beginning. And you’re not necessarily rewarded for that effort at first. But you have to keep putting in, building up and refining.
It’s an exponential earning curve. If you keep on it, then the power of passive income kicks in and you get to take a weekend road trip with your pooches, have a leisurely drink at the pub and make $1677.98 in income for just 30 minutes work.
The fat stacks are out there people. Let’s go get some.
We marketed and presented our home to suit the target buyer
In March 2020 we made the decision to not engage a real estate agent and to sell our home privately instead. We didn’t rush into it. We weighed up a bunch of things before taking the plunge. In this post we explain our top 5 steps before selling your house privately for big dollars. We sold our home in Queensland, Australia. But our top 5 tips apply equally to South Australia, Victoria or other states. And if you are not in the land down under, the concepts we go through are pretty universal so our tips should help you too.
If’ you’d like know what we did to sell our house privately for a price $40,000 above real estate agent appraisal and $55,000 above bank valuation, read on.
Why consider selling your house privately?
For the money it saves you financial freedom seekers! If you’re on your financial independence journey with us, every dollar counts. Real estate agents routinely charge commission of between 2% and 3% of the total sales price here in Queensland. Plus, they charge you for ‘marketing costs’. These are the cost of photos, online listings, flyers and features in agency direct marketing and other publications.
In commission alone, selling privately saved us over $20,000.
Sell your home yourself websites
In our experience, marketing can cost you anywhere from several hundred to a few thousand dollars. Listing agents often make money on their marketing packages as well. But there are other services (at least in Australia) that can offer the same online exposure for a lot less. We usedFor Sale by Owner. Our total cost for this service was around $700 and that got us listed on realestate.com.au, full control over the listing, as well as a message forwarding service for direct inquiries.
Just know, these types of services are purely online. No print ads in the paper. But these days if you’re in a major city selling a middle or a lower income property most of your leads will come from online. In some regional towns print ads in the newspaper still make up a large proportion of sales leads in the local property market. These ads can cost a couple of thousand dollars to run depending on size of spread.
Will an agent always get a better price?
Some folks might say a real estate agent will always get you a better price, and this more than covers what you pay them in commission. Not necessarily peeps!
Is the agent working for you or for themselves?
Here’s an anecdote from our experience to demonstrate why it’s worth understanding the different motivations of agent and owner. Friends buying in our area at the same time we were selling placed an offer on a home that was selling through a listing agent. Although there ended up being multiple offers on the property, the listing agent didn’t even bother to take the process to a multi offer situation. A multi offer situation is when all offerors are informed they have one last chance to put their best offer on the table and are given a deadline to do so. It can build a sense of strong competition among buyers and is designed both for transparency and to push the price up. Good for sellers. Fair for buyers some would say.
It’s important to understand that even if you pay a real estate agent to sell your home, the agent does not share the same financial incentive as you, the owner. For the agent, the extra time and effort involved in a running a multi offer situation may outweigh the few hundred bucks in commission extracted from pushing the price $10,000 higher. Sometimes, they’re better off just churning through the sales instead. But 10 grand is a lot of extra money to put towards our financial freedom cause! In this case, our friends had more money but were not given the chance to show their hand. What a shame for the owner…
Do these 5 things before selling your home privately
So you’ve read through the why you might sell your home yourself. But what do you need to do or know before heading down this path? Here are our top 5 tips:
Know what type of market you are in
The best time to sell privately is when you’re in a seller’s market. We made the decision to sell ourselves after watching the local property market for 6 months. We noticed that there were fewer and fewer homes coming on the market and that new homes in the middle-income bracket went quite quickly under contract. We also noticed that listing prices were rising over this period and that listing tactics changed from nominating a ‘for sale’ price to advertising as ‘offers over’. There were also few listing to choose from.
These are all indicators you’re in a seller’s market, which is the best possible time to sell your home yourself. A seller’s market is simply when there is more demand than supply, or more buyers than there are homes for sale.
So if you’re looking for information about your market, watch realestate.com.au. For suburb market data such as demand levels for homes in your area, we recommend checking out the little-known investor resources on realestate.com.au – here is a link. Start watching listings for your suburb on realesate.com.au. Realistically, 6 months before you want to sell but 3 months at a minimum. Count how many listings there are each month. Notice many are under offer at any one time. Pay attention to how they are advertised.
Do these 5 things BEFORE deciding to sell your home privately
Understand the market value of your property
Getting to a value is pretty subjective until you actually put that question to the market. You can get a valuation done or you can look at comparables in your area to form a view yourself.
You can get a desktop valuation which is cheaper but less accurate. You simply buy a report online from one of the major property data providers. A report by a valuer will mean a visit to your home so this is more expensive but arguably more accurate. Beware though peeps, a valuer will be conservative in their valuation to avoid issues of liability. So in a seller’s market you could reasonably expect a valuer to come in under the true market value.
If you research value yourself you’ll need to look at ‘market comparables’. These are properties in your area like yours that have sold recently. The best way to find free market comparables if you are in Australia is doing a property address search on realestate.com.au or domain.com.au or on onthehouse. These sites will give you an estimated value for your home based on recent property sales data. You can also look up your neighbour’s homes, especially if they’ve sold recently. If you do this yourself make sure you are comparing like with like. We’d suggest looking for similar properties on your street with a similar aspect. The property features, condition and aspect can make a big difference to value.
Understand the process and paperwork to sell your home privately
If you sell your own home you will be in control of the selling process so you need to have a good idea of the process in your state. Each state has its own peculiarities and legal requirements. Engage a solicitor and have them take you through the steps and things to watch out for. We recommend a solicitor rather than a conveyancer if you’re selling your own home as you may need to call on the legal expertise. A solicitor will also help you with the paperwork to sell your home yourself. They can provide a standard property contract (these are generally not available for free), help you fill it out and take care of title transfer paperwork. If you’re confident you understand the process and paperwork after you’ve done this, you’re good to sell yourself. If it’s still a bit of mystery, you’ll probably need a listing agent to help you through.
Work out whether you have the skills needed to sell well
By sell well we mean for a great price. There are some skills involved and if you don’t have all of them, you’ll need to find folks that do to help you.
Strategizing – Are you confident that by selling yourself you can get a good price? If you have no idea what your selling strategy might be before you start the process, it’s probably best to use an agent. A strategy to sell your own home should cover how you present and market the property, how you price it, how you run your open homes and any private inspections. All of these things should be informed by your market research and knowledge of the target buyer.
If you don’t have a strategy in mind to maximise your price, then you probably won’t end up there. Run through your plans with your solicitor first to make sure its all legal.
Interpersonal skills – ultimately you’re selling something and to do that you’re dealing with people. Can you connect with others, build rapport and trust quickly and keep calm in tense situations? Are you good with people? If you don’t have these skills then it will be tough to run great open homes and private inspections, and to do the follow up phone calls agents would normally do to talk up the price or seal the deal.
Copy writing & design – can you write emotive copy that promotes your home’s selling points and appeals to your target market? This is key to converting realestate.com.au traffic into inspections. You also need to make your own marketing collateral when you sell your own home. Can you use apps like Canva to design your own professional flyers for open inspections?
Negotiation skills – these will also come in very handy when the offers come rolling in and contract process starts. Also, when things get tense, as they often do in property sales.
The final word – should you do it?
We say go for it, if the market conditions are right and you have the skills. If you can tick these 5 boxes it’s absolutely worth it. If you are in a buyer’s market however, this is when the real estate agent buyer databases and their sales experience is worth the commission they are paid.
If you’ve read our Fat Stacks blog you’ll know we are Airbnb owners. We have been Airbnb hosting 4 properties for a couple of years now making Airbnb profit. Fat stacks of passive Airbnb income people! Listing your investment property or home on Airbnb or other short-term rental websites is not a small decision. But Airbnb income can be much greater than other passive income from property (yes, Airbnb really can be passive. Stay tuned to our Fat Stacks blog to discover how). So how do you know before you list whether Airbnb will be profitable for you? In this blog, we’ll share some answers.
3 things you must do before making Airbnb profit
Would this property make you Airbnb profit?
Doing the right lead work will tell you whether you can make Airbnb profit before you put your hard-earned cash into the deal. Who wouldn’t want to know, before spending a few or even hundreds of thousands of bucks, that their investment will earn a good return?
Not every property makes a good Airbnb house or short term rental. You need the right property in the right location and market. Here are 3 things you must do before you can list your property online and make Airbnb profit.
1. Examine your property condition and amenities – will they be competitive with other Airbnb rentals?
At a minimum your property needs a renovated or modern bathroom and kitchen, fresh paint and no old carpet. Is it clean top to bottom? Like professionally cleaned…? Space and light are also highly valued. Do you have these? Not all properties on Airbnb are flash or brand new. But to make money with an older property requires an awesome outlook, a prime location or super cool uniqueness. Like a rustic treehouse.
Amenities matter to guests and to Airbnb. The more you have, the better you will rank in the Airbnb algorithm and the more bookings you’ll get. We’re talking things like aircon, heating, outdoor areas, work spaces, security, car parking, washer dryers, and the all-essential lightning speed WiFi. So, jump onto Airbnb at this point, open a listing in your area and click on the amenities list. Check off the ones you can offer. If it’s not a long list you have, this is money you’ll need to spend to make your place competitive.
2. Airbnb research – get onto the Airbnb app!
Given you’re already searching on Airbnb, it’s time to check out the local listings. By local, I mean local area. You’re looking in your suburb for properties that are similar to yours. A similar number of bedrooms and bathrooms, size, condition, location (by street), and amenity. Can you find properties like yours listed in your suburb?
If not, then your risk in being the first is greater. Jump on down to part 3 for next steps.
If so, then it’s time to get into the detail. On the Airbnb app, do a search to stay in your suburb but don’t put in any stay dates. Instead, click ‘I’m flexible’.
Open each listing near you and look up the booking calendar for each one. What level of bookings do they have? You can’t look at past months, but you can look at the current month and into the future and this is what you’re looking for.
If you’re in the first week of the month look at that month’s bookings. Are there at least 15 days out of 30 booked?
If you’re in the last week of the month, look at the next month’s bookings too. Are there 8-10 days booked for that next month?
This will give you an indicator of demand for stays in your area in properties like yours. From our experience, this level of occupancy for that time of the month will lead to more bookings and Airbnb profits by the end of the month for any well-run Airbnb. If you can’t see evidence of bookings at this level, then you may have to get deeper into the data. It’s sounds scary but it’s totally not. Next, we’ll tell you how.
3. Airbnb market research – done for you
There’s a great website called AirDNA that has unpaid and paid market data on Airbnb listings all over the world. It also covers VRBO, which is a popular booking platform for holiday destinations in particular.
We’d suggest you start with the AirDNA Airbnb Rentalizer. It’s free and will tell you what property like yours could make on Airbnb, based on other similar properties in the area. Put in your address, bedrooms, bathrooms, carparks and bobs-your-uncle! Remember, the figures are gross not net. We’ll explain what reasonable Airbnb profit margins you can expect in a future post.
The Rentalizer is a great tool and exactly where we started. But it’s very high level and just enough to get you to the next step but not enough to base your investment decisions on. AirDNA also have paid monthly subscriptions to a service called Market Minderfor those that need more detail before jumping in to Airbnb hosting.
We used Market Minder before we took the plunge and highly recommend it. You can subscribe monthly to suburb reports that give actual earnings, number of listings, types of amenities and listing links for other Airbnb accommodation in your area. You can also see actual occupancy data, forward demand estimates and recommended nightly pricing data, which is critical to your ROI calculations. Here’s a link to subscribe to Market Minder.
The beautiful thing is you can turn your subscription on and off as you need it. So it still works if you’re on a budget because you can jump back in once a quarter to get market updates for a small one-off fee. Huzzah!
We used Market Minder to work out our Airbnb strategy and to determine our budget to set up each Airbnb. It gave us peace of mind on our ROI and stopped us from over capitalising on set up. If you want to know exactly how we applied the Market Minder data to our decision making about whether to invest in Airbnb or not, take a look at our Airbnb profit calculator. Also, pop back in a few weeks to check out our upcoming blog on profitable Airbnb business models and setting up an Airbnb business.
If you’ve done your due diligence, the numbers look good and you want to join us as Airbnb hosts, here is a link to the platform where you can start to create your listing. You can easily kick things off and it saves your work as you go.
The final word
These aren’t the only things to consider before jumping into Airbnb hosting. But if you’re buying an investment property or already have one, with a little due diligence like this you might be surprised at what it could earn you in pretty passive income. I know we were and haven’t looked back.
(Oh, and if you wanted to check out our Airbnbs or even book with us in Toowoomba, QLD just click the link in the footer 🙂 )
Just in case you’ve been orbiting earth from the International Space Station and hadn’t heard, Bitcoin recently rocketed to $60,000 per coin in just a few short months.
Bitcoin is one of thousands of cryptocurrencies that appear to have sprouted from nowhere and are now being bought, sold, held or traded around the globe. Cryptocurrency at its simplest is just a form a digital currency that is secured by cryptography. If you’ve seen the news about crypto but don’t really understand what it means for you and your financial independence journey, read on. In this post we’ll give you a simple introduction to investing in Bitcoin, as the king of cryptocurrencies. Believe me financial freedom seekers, if you don’t know about this stuff it’s time to get educated.
The Bitcoin difference
Bitcoin – the king of crypto
Bitcoin started as an electronic cash system in 2008. It was in the midst of the GFC when Satoshi Nakamura (pseudonym for person(s) unknown) went live on the internet with an alternative to fiat currency (think US dollar) designed to solve some of the major problems of the global money system.
In short, Nakamura opposed the de-pegging of the US Dollar from gold enabling unbridled money printing by central banks and nation states to do things like ‘save the world from the Global Financial Crisis’. Sound familiar? Fast forward to 2020 and it should….
The idea was to create cash for the internet that did not require central authorities (banks or governments) to supply or control it. To do this, Nakamura dreamt up some key design differences between bitcoin and fiat currency – the Bitcoin difference.
How does Bitcoin work?
Bitcoin is created and exchanged on the internet via technology called blockchain, which acts as a secure digital accounting ledger. But…instead of having banks control the ledger, this is performed by a network of independent and decentralised ‘miners’ who contribute their supercomputing resources into the network. Transactions on the network are secured via cryptography. Miners gather up these transactions into ‘blocks’ and solve math problems to verify each block and add it to the chain of past blocks (blockchain). Miners are rewarded in Bitcoin for this role. This validation process replaces the role of trust (in banks and governments) that underpins the fiat money system.
Now this all sounds a bit like a parallel universe of virtual BS, but at its core it’s just a technology and a system to execute ‘trustless’ money transactions that don’t require a central ‘authority’ to verify them.
What drives the Bitcoin price?
Another key characteristic of Bitcoin is that its supply is limited in the blockchain code. Unlike the limitless printing of fiat that is devaluing the dollars in our pockets, only 21 million Bitcoin will ever be issued. The rate of issuing halves every 4 years (called ‘Bitcoin halvening’). The last halvening was 2020, smack bang in the middle of the largest round of central bank quantitative easing the world has ever seen. This feature is about supply, demand and pricing. If you look at Bitcoin’s price history there’s a strong and repetitive correlation between the Bitcoin price and these Bitcoin halvening events. The governance is set in code so that supply goes down, and if demand goes up then so does price. In a period of inflationary monetary policy, Bitcoins deflationary design has driven new demand for the coin.
What are ‘satoshis’?
It doesn’t sound like much when you think of the $USD9 trillion that rolled off the printing press in 2020 alone, but one Bitcoin can be broken down into 100,000,000 ‘satoshis’ (like cents or pennies) and this is how Bitcoin is traded – in satoshis. So there is plenty of scope to denominate and scale, but new supply of Bitcoin will halve every 4 years until it runs out completely in the year 2140.
Other cryptocurrencies that are like Bitcoin are built around these same principles as well.
Is investing in Bitcoin worth it?
With all this tech mumbo jumbo I bet you’re asking – Why should I care about any of this? Here are seven powerful reasons Bitcoin should be on your radar if you’re a financial freedom seeker:
Inflation or even hyperinflation. Money printing is killing our purchasing power peeps! The cost of food, housing and other essentials is going up and will become more unaffordable as wages stagnate (as these tend to be more fixed or static). Bitcoin has a deflationary and controlled money supply and is in growing demand as a hedge strategy.
Listed companies have begun to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets. Most famously Tesla. Some are taking advantage of cheap debt rates or stimulus money to buy Bitcoin.
Mainstream adoption is happening. Bitcoin and crypto’s use as a means of exchange in a more digitally-oriented global economy is growing. Paypal just launched a crypto check-out service for all of its 29 million merchants, coming in the next few months.
Institutional money has begun to ‘follow the crowd’. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have both entered the crypto space. Canada has approved the world’s first Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund. Van Eck and Grayscale are both looking to launch in the US. ETFs could bring ‘old money’ into crypto and light a fire under demand for larger coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. We’ll explain the crypto market and how money moves between Bitcoin and large and small cap ‘altcoins’ in an upcoming post.
Trust and legitimacy are growing as more recognised brands and institutions buy in, leading to a ‘FOMO’ effect on demand. Trust matters in the money system. After all, isn’t fiat currency just our trust in a government IOU?
The Bitcoin price has 20x-ed in 12 months. Without doubt it’s among the best performing assets of 2020 and so far in 2021. Will this continue? If I had a crystal ball I probably wouldn’t be posting on the internet about it…
It’s still early. In terms of adoption and distribution that is. Retail money has not yet entered the market. Less than 2% of the global population is thought to own Bitcoin which means there’s stacks of growth potential.
These are notable changes in the cryptocurrency world, but be warned: it’s not for the feint hearted. The space is largely unregulated and this goes in keeping with the ethos of decentralised money and individuals controlling their own finances rather than banks controlling them for us. Just like any investment it’s important to know the risks before you dip your toe in the water (if you do) so keep an eye out for our upcoming post about the risks of investing in cryptocurrency.
The final word
None of this is financial advice peeps! Investing in cryptocurrency is like the wild west. The whole point here is to broaden your horizons, get educated about opportunities. But the great thing about financial independence is you get to make your choices yourself. Huzzah to that!
So, you’ve googled ‘how to achieve financial freedom’ and landed here. Huzzah! Our website is all about exactly what you want to know – how to become financially free and stay there. It can seem like an impossible task at first – overwhelming with no starting line in sight, let alone finish line. In this post we explain the key steps you need to know and take to get started on your financial freedom journey.
What does financial freedom mean – to you?
Technically, financial freedom is when your return on investments covers 100% of your expenses. But when you ask this question on a personal level most people have to think really hard because they just haven’t even contemplated what financial freedom would look like for them. So this is the first thing you should do.
Ask yourself, How would you spend your days if you didn’t have to work? Get comfortable with that. It’s where we are headed.
Financial independence means different things to different folks. For us, it’s the freedom to do what we want when we want. And that takes resources. Money for bills, food, water, power, health care and fun. So how do we solve for money, to get the rest of the equation? We’re all about keeping it simple and actionable. Here are the three things to focus on for financial freedom when you’re starting out:
What is financial independence?
In the interest of keeping it as simple as possible, we’ve broken down down financial independence into three primary steps:
Make sure your income is greater than your expenses
Invest the difference (your savings)
Maximise your assets so the income from them covers your expenses.
What is the ‘financial independence retire early’ movement?
Financial independence retire early (or FIRE) is about applying the three key concepts above… aggressively. The aim is to retire in your 30s or 40s instead of your 60s. So what’s the theory? Well, average personal saving rates are about 10 to 15 %. But that’s not enough for financial freedom. You just have to look at when Joe average retires (65) to know that. On the other hand, hard core FIRE starters aim for savings rates closer to 50 – 70% – either through frugality or by increasing their income. The FIRE movement proves that savings rates are critical to financial freedom.
FIRE investing is other big part of the FIRE journey. Actively making your money work for you. With inflation and negative interest rates one thing is for sure – sitting on your money will not get you to financial freedom any time soon. If you have your stash in cash it’s time to pick up your freedom game.
Your starting point and how aggressive you are with the three key concepts above will determine how quickly you get to freedom. That’s the beauty of FIRE – you can dial it up or down depending on where you’re at in life. You can also choose to focus on the income or the spending side of the equation, depending on what’s right for you. Although, take heed. There is a school of practice that says cutting your spending is way more powerful than upping your income because it has a tailing effect – it lowers the amount you need to live on every month for the rest of your life.
We at The Live Life Project are not here to argue one or the other. We do both, along with some clever independent wealth management strategies around the treatment of income, tax and debt. We’re certainly not about never eating out or holidaying again – life’s too short for that! We’re about finding ways to have fun and still make smart decisions every day in the right direction.
How to achieve financial freedom – knowing your numbers
If this sounds boring to a lot of people, that’s because it’s boring to a lot of people. I get it. Math was never my jam either. But with the same certainty as death and taxes I can say if you don’t know your numbers you’ll never be financially free.
E.V.E.R.
Financial independence is where you control your money not the other way around. This starts with the numbers. Savings/assets, income, expenses, residual. Put these numbers in a spreadsheet or write them down. There’s also apps for this of course, but we’ll get to those later.
Next, check out this awesome calculator. Put in your numbers. Be honest. It’s not gospel, but I put in our numbers for the last few years and it’s a pretty accurate reflection.
Our freedom
So here comes the big reveal. This is what did to get to financial independence, without revealing all of the juicy details in one post…
We saved from 30% to 65% of our net income each year for the last 7 years
We invested everything but our buffer money, mostly in property
We kept saving and invested this in maximising our assets
We also changed the way we earned our income so that we got to keep more of it – we’ll cover this in a later post so stayed tuned
We’ve recently made big life choices specifically to reduce our cost of living
Our income from our assets cover our living costs 100%.
Once you’ve put in your numbers look again at your income and your expenses. Making your way to financial freedom is about jigging these numbers – income up, expenses down.
We have published a bunch of articles that step out the different pathways that you could take to financial freedom depending on where you are in life. Take a read and we hope you can learn something from our experience.
The final word – financial freedom is about how to eat an elephant (figuratively of course)
When something seems massive and unobtainable just break it down into bite sized chunks. You’re already on your way. Make sure you understand the 3 key steps to financial freedom and get to know your numbers. We know these things have worked for us. Stick with it. We know they can work for you too.
