Whether you are working for yourself or working for someone else we all work so we can pay the bills, buy food and water, and acquire life’s necessities. Earning income from work also allows us to take family vacations with our loved ones, go on road trips with our fellow college roommates, eat out at fancy restaurants with our spouse, go to the movies to watch the latest movie release with friends or family, this list goes on and on.

Let’s face it. Working is a part of life.

A lot of times many of us work our entire lives just so we can claim a future monthly social security check that we may never see, a pension that doesn’t factor in inflation raises, or cash out our under performed 401k’s and Roth IRA’s. Let me rephrase that another way…a lot of times many of us waste away the majority of our life and our creativity potential by working for someone else, profiting a company that doesn’t have their employees’ best interest at heart, and making the corporate executives happy and rich. There that’s more like reality.

I don’t know about you but ever since my very first job retiring as early as possible has been my number one goal from the start. I wish I was as financially smart back then as I am now. We can’t change the past; however, there is always opportunity to set ourselves up for a successful future. It is never to late to start earning passive income and retiring from working for someone else as early as possible.

And unless you enjoy working for someone else, retiring early should be on everyone’s mind, not just the financially wise. What’s ironic is the people who are reading this article are more than likely the ones who are already earning passive income. And the people who are not reading this article are more than likely the ones who are enjoying slaving away working for someone else.

F.I.R.E. is a financially wise person’s best friend

Meet, F.I.R.E. An acronym for Financial Independent Retire Early. The goal of a F.I.R.E. minded person is to reach financial independence as soon as possible so you can retire as soon as possible. Why would anyone want to retire later in life when they can retire early? Much earlier than their family and friends. Think about it for a moment. Why would you even want to work for someone else in the first place? Let alone working for someone else for ten, twenty, or thirty or more years of your life. That is decades of your life just wasted away in order to earn minimum wage while profiting the corporate executives.

Working for someone else sucks!

Working for someone else is a complete waste of your own personal time. You know, the time that your life is made out of and given to you at birth. And here we are giving our precious time away to someone else and to working for someone else and making them and a minimum wage paying company financially rich rather than using our precious time to work for ourselves and enjoy our own personal life. Working for someone else is a waste of our brain power and thinking potential that could be put to better use at home with our relatives.

How often have you worked an eight hour or longer shift at work and come home to find friends or relatives who stopped by for a brief visit who you haven’t seen for years only that you are so mentally exhausted you can’t stay focused and visit with them or enjoy their company so you end up having to go to bed to rest your body and mind. And then those loved ones leave your home the next day and since you chose to work for someone else your entire life you just missed out on the chance to visit with them and catch up on each other’s life’s happenings. Which causes you to miss out on that bonding time you would have had if you would have been financially smart and chosen to work for yourself at home.

Not only is working for someone else mentally draining, but choosing to make someone else financially wealthy and giving up our time to slave for someone else gives us less quality family time to spare and puts us in a miserable mood once we get home after a long day at work including commuting to and from work. Your home should be a place of peace and security for everyone in your family including you.

Use all of your vacation time

If you work for someone else and you accrue vacation time every week don’t let your vacation time get unused. It’s your time that you accrued by working for someone else to have the opportunity get away from the company you work for and the people you work with. Even if you don’t necessarily go anywhere on vacation and instead just stay at home and do nothing but let your mind and body rest, it’s your vacation time. Do with it what you will. Vacation time is awesome. By taking vacation time you are getting paid by your employer to not work for them. I love it! Vacation time is also a great way to get caught up on chores around the house, run errands, go to the dentist, or even work on passive income generating hobbies such as writing blog articles, publishing books, or investing in dividend paying stocks on the stock market. What you do with your vacation time is entirely up to you. Using all of your vacation time that you earned is a great habit to get into otherwise it is even more time of your life that your employer is robbing from you.

Put yourself before others

Work for yourself and on your time. If you want to succeed in life you need to put yourself ahead of others. Including family and friends if you wish to reach financial independence and retire early as soon as possible. If you don’t help yourself first, how can you successfully help the ones around you? The ones you care about the most? Your loved ones require you to be financially independent as soon as possible so you can dedicate your time around your home and focus on your family rather than focusing on your boss and a company that wants to pay you minimum wage while giving you the minimum required hours. You should be your number one priority.

Your work shouldn’t define your life

Working for someone else and dedicating your time to their benefit shouldn’t define who you are or how you live. So often I’ve seen people at their job when they weren’t even scheduled that day. They just walk around and talk to their friends and fellow employees who are scheduled that day. I look at those people who have the day off and are at work and I’m like, “why are you at work during your day off? Don’t you have a life? Oh yeah I forgot, work is your life. And unlike you, I’m laughing all the way to the bank.”

Don’t work for anyone but yourself

Working an eight hour day five days a week job for someone else and for someone else’s company just sucks! By the time we get home after grueling for someone else our bodies and minds are so exhausted that we know deep down inside we just wasted eight or more hours of our life that day just to make someone else happy. By the time we get home we eat dinner, take a shower, and lay down in bed. As our bodies and minds are finally starting to rest and recover, it’s now time to go back to working for someone else again. And just think, you only have to do that for the next thirty years, and that’s at the very minimum. But don’t worry, by the time you do retire in your sixties, you’ll finally be able to retire and enjoy the last few decades of your life with a body that is now only able of doing half the activities that it once was capable of prior to you choosing to work for someone else rather than working for yourself.

Just because you are “educated” doesn’t mean you are intelligent

The scenario for a typical college graduate goes like this…

You are a young adult maybe in your twenties. You find a college you would like to attend and get a student loan with a high interest rate to help pay for your college tuition, text books, and school supplies. You search around for nearby apartments and find one you like. Since you are a young adult and already know everything you sign a lease for your apartments for several years. You rent the apartment and go to college to get “educated.” Once you get educated you try to find a career in line with the degree you now have. You spend months searching for a company who wants to hire someone and pay them above minimum wage just because they have an engraved piece of shiny paper that cost you tens of thousands of dollars that you didn’t even have. You’ve always liked the thought of spending money that isn’t yours.

The career searching turns up empty handed and the creditors are after their money that they loaned you to pay for your education. Now you have to find any job to help pay for that student loan that caused you to go into debt just so you can be taught how parallelograms apply to the real world. You apply at a business in the neighboring city and receive an offer for an eight hour a day five days a week position that pays you minimum wage. You accept the job offer and now have to go out and buy a car to commute in to and from your new job. You don’t have any money so now you have to finance your car and are now in even more debt. Your new job isn’t just eight hours of your life that you are wasting since you have to factor in the commuting times to and from your new job. Let’s pretend it takes you an hour to get to work, then you work eight hours and take an half hour lunch, then it takes you another hour to get home. You just wasted ten and a half hours of your life because you chose to work for someone else, make them and their company financially wealthy all while earning minimum wage to help you pay off your student loan, car loan, and help pay the bills in your apartment that you leased for several years. Oh and since you work for someone else, say goodbye to a good night’s rest. Hopefully you can get used to the sound of alarm clocks for the next thirty years.

Then one day you are commuting to work since you weren’t smart enough to work for yourself, let alone working close to home, and you get into a car accident. You get admitted to the hospital and find out that your health insurance hasn’t kicked in yet as you were still working during your probationary period at work. So now you take out another loan to help pay for your unforeseen medical expenses and are in even more debt. Hurray! After you get rehabilitated you ask your employer if they would rehire you back. You tell your prior boss about your sobering life story and since that business would just hire anyone off the street anyways they kindly agreed to hire you back onto their team and allow you to keep your previous hourly wage…minimum wage.

Remember, you only have to do this for the next thirty years or so and after that you can finally retire in an unhealthy state and start to enjoy life by staying at home since you are now not able to do much in a sixty year old body. Ah…life.

Why on God’s green earth would you want to work for someone else and be able to retire in your sixties and start to enjoy life, when you could work for yourself and be able to retire in your twenties, thirties, or forties and start to enjoy and even larger portion of your life?

Claim social security as soon as possible

I don’t know about you, but I am not going to wait until my full retirement age to claim one hundred percent of my social security income. Once I reach sixty two years old, the minimum age to claim a social security income, I am claiming social security. Why? Because it’s my money! Even though those who claim social security at the minimum required age only receive seventy five percent of what their full social security benefit is, they still begin to earn their social security income sooner that the those who choose to wait until their full retirement age. But whose to say we are even going to live that long anyways? And even if we do live long enough to claim one hundred percent of our social security income we are in an even more frail body as we were when we were at the minimum age of sixty two. And then it’d still take the person who chose to wait to claim one hundred percent of their social security income years to catch up to the person who chose to claim social security as early as possible even with the twenty five percent deduction.

I’d much rather claim a partial social security pension as early as possible and invest that income into dividend paying stocks and compound that interest over time rather than waiting until I hit my full retirement age to start claiming a full social security pension. On second thought, rather than compounding that interest I may just say “F it” and collect the dividends. After all, it is my money.

Passive income is the key to happiness

Even when you are finally financially independent, working for yourself and retiring early isn’t just about enjoying a larger portion of your life, but being able to enjoy a larger portion of your loved ones’ lives. You need to think about your loved ones and your family and relatives; however, you need to place yourself and your needs and wants above everyone else. Being selfish and financially wise helps a person to reach F.I.R.E. status as quickly as possible.

In fantasy land money is pure evil; however, in the real world money buys happiness in all areas of your life.

Earning passive income that even provides you with partial financial freedom gives you the benefit of working less for someone else and working more for yourself.

Earning passive income as soon as possible gives you the mental clarity to help you focus on your creativity. For example let’s say that you always wanted to write blog articles for a living like I do. Before you start to earn passive income from your ad revenue, you are solely dependent on your employer for money. You are solely dependent on the paychecks that you receive by working for your employer so you can pay the bills and buy food and water and other life necessities. Finding time to write those blog articles while slaving away for someone else is not always easy; however, the end result of posting quality blog articles in a consistent and timely manner can be financially rewarding much sooner than you think.

If you do work for someone else it’s your own fault. We all have to work; however, who we work for is entirely up to ourselves. By working for yourself and earning passive income allows you to achieve your dreams quicker and reach your life’s goals much sooner than someone who chose to work for someone else their entire life. When the day comes you become financially independent and are able to retire from working for someone else you can finally laugh all the way to the bank.

I’m an author, blogger, and stock market investor. I am…financially independent.

Cheers!