The topic of financial freedom will always be understated in comparison to the pop culture of now. Such as whatever the Kardashians are doing, instead of something actually useful, like freeing yourself from a life ordained by others.
Positive or negative, all publicity is good publicity when it comes to having a wallet happy life. It always makes me happy when I see ‘financial independence’ organically in the headlines of my news feed.
Grant Sabatier, the author of Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need, has an ultimate rag to riches story straight out of Horatio Alger. After leaving college, Grant was unemployed and living back at home with his parents. This is not a story too foreign to many millennials, myself included. But unlike the vast majority of millennials out there, Grant found his mojo in the online sphere. Within 5 years, he had a net worth of over $1 million.
Table of Contents
Who Needs This Book?
Financial Freedom sets by example but it is not a memoir book. This book is not about Grant or his journey to financial freedom; it’s about giving the reader everything they need to reach financial freedom themselves. His book takes us on a personal journey briefly. But there is a lot more practical application of financial knowledge and loads of free tools.
Readers with extensive knowledge of personal finance and early retirement may know these principles already. This book fits young readers new to personal finance and entrepreneurship principles. I would have found this book eye-opening and life changing as a senior student in college!
Grant encourages everyone to get theirs using every good argument in the book. Those arguments I myself didn’t learn until about 5 years after I had already graduated. When you are in college…young, determined, full of energy…this book will speak to you in volumes!
God, how I wish I had this book back in college.
The Classic Question
I don’t think financial freedom will ring the same bell to someone in their 50s with a large family and number of dependents. This book may not be for you. Financial freedom and money making drive does play its favorites. The most advantageous edge is having a single, young man take a run at the game.
“Should you make more money or save more money?”
This topic has been beaten to death. Although it is critical, I’m glad Grant gave it the obligatory 2 short minutes and then moved along to tell straight facts: they’re both important.
But depending on your life stage the answer is more clear one way. For the reader’s sake, I’m going to assume you are a young man/woman ready to conquer.
Making money aggressively is going to be a lot more productive than saving money when it comes to reaching financial freedom at a shooting pace.
Making more money is also the harder of the two routes especially when it comes to entrepreneurship. Saving is undoing whereas making money requires a more active role.
There is only so much you can save before you can feel deprived. If you are looking for financial freedom then hustle for more money, reinvest that money, and grow a business empire.
He examined the pros and cons between employed to a boss and self-employed for those considering making the jump. There is no one right answer. It’s a subject of risk tolerance. I know he’s talking about this from real first-hand experience because my husband and I had the exact same talk 2 years ago.
This would have been still eye-opening for me 2 years ago! There’s more than personal finance advice in this book, you get to picture what goes beyond money.
My Favorite Side Hustle Advice!
The best golden tips in this particular chapter come in the consequent statements that Grant spews out in full paragraph chunks. I’ll pull some short quotes:
“Even after I started making $300,000 a year, I still watched my neighbor’s cat for $60, just so I could invest that money. Even $1 will accelerate the rate of compounding.”
I relate with Grant here too. Even if we could make $300,000 a year, I could never blink my eye at pet sitting for $30 a day myself. That pet sitting income bought me over $6,000 extra last year!
Guess what? We invested it all! In about 30 years, that $6,000 turns into $45,674 at an average 7% market return.
The most obvious truth revealed in the chapter is actually this:
“One of the biggest benefits of side hustling is that the more you do it, the more you train yourself to adopt an enterprise mindset, the easier it will be for you to identify other ways to make money.”
This is soooo true. I’m the real life prime example of this.
When I started my side hustles, I noticed some of them often opened up wayyy more opportunities and ideas down the road that made it more than worth it. That’s why I’m such a firm believer in the gig economy – it’s not always about what you make but what you can get out of it. It’s about what you can take growth wise from it as a person.
This is primarily why I think this book is a nugget of wealth for the young and motivated. Everything he says is the truth.
I was nodding alongside my husband reading this and thinking, I could have skipped 1 year and a half of career confusion and soul searching if only Grant had written this 2 years earlier. (That’s not his fault though haha.)
It’s a day late for me. I had to learn those lessons on my own. In a way, Grant summarized a lot of what I personally and strongly believe in.
The money is secondary; financial freedom is the game and that can be achieved faster through self-employment and side hustling, especially if you keep your eyes open for more and more
Takeaway
As Grant says, personal finance as a subject is not complicated. His ability to get effective, logical business advice across is what appealed to me. You need to know those principles in order to generate real money.
You should read this book if you have a dream to become financially free. The numerous tables in the book are a great point of reference. If you want to be aggressive and have a destinable goal then this book will provide an amazing roadmap to where you should be heading.
You should read this book if you are young with the working years ahead to take the lead on your destiny.
Young and single – financial freedom is in fine sight. Life gets more complicated with a spouse, kids, aging parents and so on. The beauty of numbers is a lot less terrifying when there are 30 years of compounding ahead of you rather than behind you. Even so, it’s all the more reason youngster need to pick up this book!
Some personal finance books focus on the lives of the authors and bloggers. I think life (spouse, children, parents etc.) is a more complicated problem than personal finance.
Financial Freedom is a little different than a money memoir. You will get a lot more practical, actionable ideas and less personal information. It’s about the strong principals of personal finance and business mindset that sets it apart from the traditional financial autobiographies you would expect. (And it’s a damn fine breath of fresh air!)
“If you are building a business that makes money, you are also building an asset that can appreciate, and you might even sell it – recouping all the value you’ve created and more.”
If you are money aware, entrepreneurial, and young, this book would be a solid pick up at your local Barnes and Noble!
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Hi Lily,
I heard Grant on several podcasts recently, and was intrigued by the book. It actually sounds different and stands out from all the other personal finance books out there.
Your review’s so helpful in giving me an idea of what to expect from the book. I’m planning to read it as soon as my library can order it in!
Thanks for the recap of the book, Lily!
I might check this book out!