There’s a corner store just near our place, owned and run by a family. The couple who have served me on many occasions are lovely people, always smiling and giving great service. Despite having young kids, they work long hours, seven days a week. I don’t know how they do it.

When I first wrote Financial Freedom years ago, my main aim was to be able to show people that working hard, long hours was not the only way to get the bank off your back. In fact if you choose to live this way you may end up gaining financial independence but losing those most dear to you. I have found that a little bit of the right information, delivered in a way that’s easily absorbed, makes a huge difference to people’s lives.

My favorite saying (not sure who said it) is “Nobody ever said on their deathbed – I wish I had spent more time at the office.” I hope the people at the local shop never regret the hours they have worked and I hope you never regret not spending more time with those most important to you.

Dear spammers,

I understand that you need to make money and I understand that you wish to do it with little personal exertion. I can also understand you being easily led by non-personal emails promising huge amounts of cash paid into your bank account for only a few hours of work from the comfort of your home. I understand that it’s tempting when you read the bit that says “all you need is a computer” ’cause that’s what you are reading the advertisement on.

The bit I can’t understand is why you reckon it’s a good idea to target the blog from my website. After all, Financial Freedom For Gens X and Y is a site that actually shows you how you can achieve a comfortable lifestyle that you seek, albeit at a slower pace than is promised in the ads you blindly believe. By the way, there is no promise of lavish lifestyles contained in my website, just a way to show you how to live without money being a worry. And the best thing is I show you how to do it without clogging other people’s inboxes with promises of larger appendages that last longer than John Holmes could go for.

Ps Sorry to my Russian spammer for not translating this post, but hey, I couldn’t read your website either.

I’ve just come out of a short stay in hospital and wanted to share part of the experience (don’t worry if you get a bit queasy with this sort of stuff as I’ll spare you the gory details). While I was there it struck me how getting myself out of hospital is so similar to achieving things in life.

In hospital I just wanted to get the hell out – get back home to my family as quickly as I could, but to do that I needed to do a number a steps. First I needed to get off the morphine and sit up unassisted in bed. My aim for day 2 was to have a standing shower without help from a nurse. By day 3 I aimed to be back on solid food, and day 4 to take longer walks around the ward. The goal for day five was to explore further and actually go outside the front doors to the hospital, and day 6 was the ultimate goal to go home.

My longer term recovery is also filled with small steps, small goals to get back to the physical state I was in before I walked through the doors of the Emergency Department, and it will take about 2-3 months to get there. I know I can do it and I also know that it would be so much harder to get there if I didn’t break down the recovery into small, easy to achieve steps.

Whether it is your aim to get back to a place you were previously with your health, to purchase a car or pay off a debt, getting what you want is so much easier if you know exactly what that is, then break down the steps to achieving it. Small payments every week pay off seemingly insurmountable debts. Putting a little bit aside is easier to do if you remind yourself that it is for that well deserved holiday.

And being able to do 50 push ups isn’t so hard when you start with 5 today, 6 tomorrow, 7 the next day…….

A while back my mum received some interesting unsolicited mail in the form of a letter from a woman who described herself as a clairvoyant, medium, numerologist and about 6 other things on similar lines. This letter was really quite amazing. It said that in exactly 29 days mum would receive the amount of $432,784! It gave the exact date of this windfall and then went on to say that another windfall would occur again on 13 Feb that same year. In fact there were 17 dates specifically given over the next 12 months (from the date of the letter) where 17 important life changing happy events would occur.

I don’t know a great deal about things like astrology but I reckon that predictions as accurate as these are extremely rare (it stated as much in the letter). Now, I hope you are sitting down, because here’s the really amazing and true thing – my mum kept the letter! That’s right, she didn’t just shred it immediately and feed it to the worms, she actually held onto it, then passed it on to me.

A closer inspection of the letter reveals something interesting. Of all the dates that year, where 17 happy events would happen, not one of them coincided with the birth of mum and dad’s granddaughter, their son’s wedding or any of the days when they were on their first overseas holiday in 16 years. Perhaps none of these events were happy (dad did get a cold when they were cruising down the Rhine River).

Admittedly, mum didn’t pay the $30 for the “Grand Special Reading” mentioned on page 8 of the letter, right above the section on payment options and spaces where you can confirm your date of birth, email address and phone number, and perhaps this effected those special dates and predictions. And, strangely, the $432,784 never crossed mum’s path.

A quick Google search reveals something very interesting about this clairvoyant – she doesn’t have many fans in Australia. In fact there are many sites out there saying she’s a scammer, including one from the WA government.

In reality, your lucky numbers are likely to be 16 single digit ones in the form of a credit card number which are best kept away from unsolicited letters and emails from con artists.

I have won the lottery. I’m male, white, employed, living in a developed country and my wife has just given birth to the light of my life. We are all well, happy and free from flooding, drought and bushfires. We are also average Australian income earners, which means we are very rich on world standards. So much of the rest of the world cannot enjoy the simple things that we are currently experiencing. Really, what are the chances of having all those boxes ticked in a world with over 6 billion people?

You might be reading this and noticing that you can also tick most or all of those boxes too, but, unlike me you may not feel like a lottery winner. One of the things that allows me to feel so good right at this moment is that my wife and I are able to focus on and enjoy our little bundle of joy without worrying about money. We have just gone to one income (we’re getting a bit of help from the new Paid Parental Leave Scheme) and our expenditure has increased. But that doesn’t worry us at all.

Sorting out your finances gives you the feeling of winning the lottery, especially when it allows you to forget about money worries and the ability to take heaps and heaps of photos of the most gorgeous little face you’ve ever seen.

I have finally done it. After years of weighing up the pros and cons (and telling my optometrist every time I saw him that I would do it) I have just had laser eye surgery. Anyone who has had this procedure can tell you just how expensive it is, and there is only one health fund who covers the cost (after a 3 year waiting period). My health fund doesn’t cover laser eye surgery.

I was talking to one of the people who had it done the same day as me and she said that although the cost of the surgery was over $5000, she would make the money back in about 4 years. She was a regular contact lens wearer, which cost her about $110 per month.

I rarely wore contacts and had last updated my glasses about 2 years ago. By my calculations, the time taken to recover the cost of the surgery will be about 25 to 30 years! But this is not just about money. It’s a lifestyle change. A change that allows me to do lots of things I previously couldn’t (or at least do lots of things with much more ease than I could before). Laser eye surgery is a luxury, but one that had been budgeted for and covered by savings.

It’s part of what financial freedom means for me.

I grew up in a household where we always had a dishwasher (the earliest one I can remember was louder than a vacuum cleaner!) and I hate doing the washing up. As a result, I will put anything, everything into the dishwasher. Pots, wine glasses the good crockery with the fancy gold rim (yes, it was a gift), undies – you name it, it goes into the dishwasher. What can I say, I’m bloody lazy.

I’m also lazy when it comes to paying bills. Every regular bill we get is paid by direct debit. It’s a really easy way to pay bills. You do have to make sure that you have the available funds in your bank account for those bills and you must check your bank statements and bills so you know what you are paying for. But the time and effort saved is well worth it. And you never wake in the middle of the night worried that the electricity is about to be cut ’cause you’ve forgotten to pay it.

With election day getting closer, you will have to decide which person or party you will put a number 1 next to. I am not about to tell you which of the 2 major parties is better, and I don’t discuss how I vote. I would simply urge you to consider the bigger picture.

Both major parties have things going for and against them when it comes to matters of personal finance. The coalition started the Financial Literacy Foundation, whose aim was to raise the standards of money knowledge among all Aussies. The Labor party ripped the guts out of it. Labor has plans to increase super contributions so all Aussies have a better retirement. The coalition has said it will scrap these plans.

The next time you see a pollie (or candidate) in the local shopping centre, try not to focus on what is going to benefit, or hurt, you the most. Think about what will be best for society and the country. Then put a 1 next to the party, or independent, who you feel will do the job.

When I was young I asked my mum “Why do we have compulsory voting in Australia?” She replied quite simply “If you didn’t have the right to vote, you would want it more than anything else.” Please, don’t waste this important right.

On a recent work trip to Queensland I got talking with a cabbie – a bloke in his late 20’s or early 30’s who had come to Australia from the sub-continent. He arrived, aged 16, with nothing. It turns out that this guy had only recently moved to Queensland from Melbourne. For love, of course.

He told me that he owned 2 cabs in Melbourne as well as a house. Outright. Yes, all 3 of them. “What does it cost for a pair of taxi number plates?” I asked. “Five hundred thousand dollars,” he replied. I turn to my colleague in the back seat and said “There you go – the cabbie’s a millionaire!”

He had worked bloody hard and you wouldn’t pick his wealth to look at the guy. In fact, he would blend into a crowd as easily as many of the wealthy people I have met. The ones who stand out, displaying wealth with the clothes they wear and food they eat, are the ones who keep their credit card providers very, very happy.

Things in life that are more important than money: life itself (wow, that’s heavy), love, family, happiness, good health, laughter, education, fulfillment, sex, helping people, wisdom and playing card games.

Things in life that are made easier by having your finances sorted: all of the above.