Paradigms for Financial Independent Mindset

Removing Personal Financial Inertia of the Mind and Replacing with Paradigms for Financial Independence (from 07-21-2016 inspiration) written on 07-28-2016)

The pregnancy occurred in May or June 2014 when I was forced to confront the fact that left on my present course I would no longer be able to pay down my existing discretionary debt but rather would be mindlessly making payments on ever increasing amounts of debt. There were a number of factors that led to this point. But the biggest impetus was a constraint on my accessible earned funds. And as many impetus it was a blessing in disguise. For given this constraint and the fact that there was no realistic near term determination of when it would be removed, I was forced to confront the obvious, that I was slowly drowning in debt. Thus I set a plan in motion to begin to reverse course at year’s end (2014). Mind you, I had savings and a fairly decent supply; I’ve always been an avid saver but in my quest and pride over increase in the savings column, I made the fundamental mistake of missing the forest for the trees in watching the increase in the debt column at exorbitant interest rates. The solution came to me in one fell swoop, eliminate my discretionary savings and borrow to the extent possible from my 401k so that I replaced large amounts of outside debt to the banks and other institutions with debt to myself (my retirement savings) at reasonable interest rates. Two things happened shortly after I took action in this direction; one I eliminated a substantial amount (not all) but a substantial amount of discretionary debt and began the process of repairing my credit score. And two rather coincidently the outside constraint on my accessible earned funds was removed. This allowed me to continue paying down the remaining debt and begin rebuilding my emergency savings fund. The remaining steps in discretionary debt elimination are to make periodic withdrawals from the emergency funds to make ‘larger’ chunk reductions in discretionary debt until there is none or debt that exists but is able to be paid off within two months.

Another rail in this migration from Personal Financial Inertia to Paradigms for Financial Independence was to focus on creating a business whose focus was generation of passive income with initial goal of say revenue equal to 20% of current payroll income. Now I’ve started and stopped efforts at passive income generation mainly thru the stock market. There’ve been moderate successes. However the effort has not been framed from the perspective of business owner whose business activities are focused on passive income generation (in a broad sense, investments of any kind stock or other). I’ve fiddled around with the idea of real estate investment and real estate debt investment but as of yet have taken no forays. So for many years they’ve been ideas that have floated to the fore only to just as quickly float back. In the past year, in fact the beginning of 2016, I stumbled upon information about affiliate marketing and floated thoughts of setting up websites focused on representing brands that I personally used and supported for commission. The idea floated back thru the first quarter of the year and recently floated to the fore again due to the environment at the place where I ‘earned’ funds. So coming full circle on the pregnancy comment, with this idea floating around in my mind, I stumbled upon the Smart Passive Income podcast series hosted by Pat Flynn. It was really by accident as I was surfing thru podcasts on my phone to get thru the day at the place where I ‘earned funds’ and under the business section saw the podcast titled Smart Passive Income and it piqued my curiosity to such an extent that I had to click on the series and listen. My birth (rebirth, not spiritually but financially occurred on 20 July 2016 in Knoxville, TN). The podcasts so moved me to take up arms and take action that I listened to them for hours while walking thru downtown Knoxville in near 100-degree heat. The threads of thoughts of my investigation into affiliate marketing earlier in the year were borne out and actualized by Pat and many of his contributors to his podcast and listeners. But it was more than affiliate marketing, much more, a whole world of opportunity that exists and is known to many (but not many really) for most of us partake in the activities of the web but do not understand their transformative ability to change lives financially.

I have now engaged my Paradigm for Financial Independence and the continuing push to fight thru Personal Financial Inertia. I endeavor to take the journey and document my successes, failures and stalls as I my mind is freed from constraint. I will take a well worn but perhaps still untraveled path in the ‘yellow wood’ (Robert Frost poem).