I have been asked by a lot of people over the years about what I do and how I do what I do, and importantly for what purpose?
Well, the answer is simple…
I enjoy investing and trading and I do so because my ‘WHY’ is to create financial freedom for my family and myself.
As it happens, I have also helped inspire others to do the same, which gives me great joy, knowing I have been able to help change someone’s life for the better.
People forget that financial freedom has multiple by-products. They are time freedom, location freedom and life experiences freedom.
Financial freedom allows you to have time for your family, time to do what you love -which may be to just do the very simple things in life, like taking your children to school without rushing back to work or simply enjoying a stroll in the park.
When I say location freedom, I mean being able to be located anywhere in the world, whether it be to live or to travel and still be able to pursue investing and trading, as long as you are able to connect online to execute your trade orders.
The one thing I am most passionate about is the ability to have experiences freedom, which simply means I get to experience activities like taking a helicopter flight over the Niagara Falls or over the ice cap mountains of New Zealand, hiking through the Alaskan wilderness, kayaking with the humpback whales, chasing mantra rays in Fiji, white water rafting the rapids in Bali…
I get to live life fully is what I am really trying to say.
People associate financial freedom in multiple ways. Even for myself, I remember chasing ‘financial freedom’ and my definition was to have one million dollars in my bank account. I wanted to be a millionaire. Who doesn’t?
But what does having a million dollars actually mean? I don’t think you really want a million pieces of paper with deceased famous presidents and other famous people, right?
What you really want is what this million dollars can do for you and your family. In other words, you hope it gives you that financial freedom, time freedom, location freedom and experiences freedom I just spoke about.
For those who don’t know my story, I came from a very humble background. I was what one would classify as a refugee child who had just escaped the Vietnam War by wooden boat with his parents, seeking a new world with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Luckily we survived this treacherous journey in the rough seas as our boat actually began sinking but was rescued by a cargo ship who happened to sail past. We were fortunate to have landed in Australia to begin rebuilding our lives. That was my first taste of freedom. Freedom in a new country, without communist oppression for the very first time.
So from a very early age, seeking financial freedom seemed to have been ingrained into me because I saw with my child’s eyes my mother working multiple jobs at factories and washing dishes in restaurants to make ends meet and rebuilding a financial future.
So it was my intention from a very young age to ensure I could look after her once I grew up and hence this desire to become independently financially free drove me. I was hungry, not for food, but for financial success
For you it may be different. I am hoping you did not suffer the same type of early upbringing as it really wasn’t fun going through that experience. However, I wouldn’t change for it for anything better (not that I can!) as it formed who I am today.
Enough about me, so what is your ‘Why’ to become financially free through trading or investing? I will use trading and investing interchangeably as I believe it is essentially the same thing apart from timeframes. Investing just involves a longer timeframe for holding onto an opportunity you have found. Trading means you buy and sell your investing opportunities much more frequently.
I believe that if you don’t find a big enough ‘Why’, your chances of long term investment success is diminished because you will either treat it as a hobby or when the going gets tough and you make some losses (which is inevitable, by the way, even for the very best on the planet), you will quit because you have suffered not just a financial loss but an emotional loss.
For those investors or traders that succeed long term, their ‘Why’ enables them to get through these tough times and keep on going.
This was my experience. Although I read all the books when I began, attended numerous ‘guru’ seminars all around the world to learn all I could about investing and trading, I struggled for the first two years. My account not only went nowhere, but it went into the red to the tune of about negative eighty thousand dollars which meant I had mortgage my home to pursue this dream.
That was a lot of money but I loved the game so much and I knew there just had to be a way because I had heard of others who had done it, so I just kept on going. Don’t get me wrong, I had my doubts but my ‘Why’ was big enough to overcome this temporary defeat.
Luckily, after those two years of experiencing consistent losses but learning valuable lessons on the way, things did turn around over the next five years and I achieved that financial freedom I was seeking and eventually founded a hedge fund to look after others as well.
A very important book also changed the way I saw financial freedom. I mentioned earlier that everyone has their own perception of what financial freedom means to them – I thought being a millionaire was financial freedom when I began.
However, a book you may have heard of by Dr Van Tharp ‘How to Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom’ changed my thinking forever. I like to give credit to where credit is due and this book is one of them.
I learned that financial freedom is not about just becoming a millionaire, accumulating all the toys and luxurious goods you can get your hands on, but simply to gain enough passive income through your investments to cover your expenses in life. Such a simple but yet profound definition.
Not only does this way of viewing financial freedom seem very achievable, it also relieves the pressure you place on yourself because you can now strive for this simple goal when you begin, not some distant arbitrary millionaire dream.
Once this is achieved, everything else becomes a by-product of now enjoying your work.
This definition also allows you to adjust your expenses down if you believe there is a lot of waste in your spending habits and hence can speed up your journey to your own financial freedom, whatever that may be.
So it makes it much easier if you live simply and have low expenses. Not sure about you, but have you ever seen very high corporate income earners who, on the surface, seem very successful because of their position and high salaries, but never seem to be financially free simply because of very high daily living expenses? I have. I was unfortunately one of them in my previous life as a corporate employee with a large major bank.
I now live very simply; I don’t chase fancy big houses, European sports cars and branded clothing etc. etc. But I do travel well as I have a dream of setting foot on over a hundred different countries to experience the natural beauty of wildlife and history this world offers and really experience the joy of living through my travels with friends and family I love. I have been lucky enough to have set foot on over thirty different countries to date.
Funny thing is, once you feel the financial freedom, your investing and trading actually improves dramatically because you not only feel free and abundant, but you can now focus not on the money but on the process.
In fact, most long term successful investors and traders, including professional hedge fund managers, focus not on the money and returns but on their daily processes, and the money and returns become the by-product which naturally occurs.
I hope, over time, investing and trading becomes your path to the financial freedom you seek. It has for me.
For the naysayers who say it can’t be done, I am living proof that it can be, even from a very humble background and a very bad start.
Begin slowly and safely. What’s the rush?
Investing and trading yourself to financial freedom really is a game where this time, the tortoise can and does win the race.
For more information about how you can trade your way to financial freedom, please click here.
