What time freedom, location freedom, and financial freedom mean to me

Freedom means something different to everyone. I have worked to create time, location and financial freedom for myself with my online business. In this week’s podcast, I fully recognize what this looks like in my life now as I celebrate the start of wedding planning!

Prefer to read? Here’s the blog version…

Happy July everyone! I am in the middle of wedding planning. So as you may know, Ragz and I got engaged on my 30th birthday on June 21st, and we are planning for our wedding to be on September 20th (3 months)!

Originally, we had wanted to just elope just the two of us and our families. But then we started talking about the sentimental value, and how we would love for our friends to be a part of it.

After asking some of my friends from New York if they could make it, they actually said it would be possible – a lot of them hadn’t used all of their vacation days.

So it got me thinking like, what if we just have a mini destination wedding in England where Ragz grew up? That would be so special.

So here we are. I am in the middle of wedding planning and it will be taking place in September, which is less than three months time, so of course everything is just happening really fast.

Do Things YOUR Way

Because Ragz and I live such untraditional lives, I truly feel like this wedding is so representative of us. I am thinking castle Cornish, countryside and clifftops, and surrounded by my closest friends and of course my amazing family.

The good news is I already have my wedding dress, If. you haven’t seen the try-on video that I posted. I went to this beautiful boutique called True Society in Switzerland.

What I’m learning from this process is that there is so much hype and Marketing over weddings, and I am here to tell you that you are fully free to make your own decisions and design your day exactly how you want it. Follow no rules!

You can literally design the day as elaborate or as intimate as you want. You don’t have to go through the standard procedures. You don’t have to do everything by the book.

My Freedom-Based Lifestyle

I also took a lot of time to reflect on how grateful I am to be in this position where I can plan a wedding in three months. I can have it in England, thousands of miles away from friends and family.

I am running my business that allows me to do everything that I want to without having to request time off from work, without having to fly somewhere else. I can stay as long as I want to in Cornwall. 

• I have been traveling full-time for the past 4+ years
• I work when I want, where I want, without a boss to report to
• My business consistently brings in tens of thousands of dollars every month in passive income
• I freaking LOVE what I do and connecting with all of you! I am truly blessed!

Discovering The Value of Time, Location, and Financial Freedom

And that is the topic of today’s podcast episode “What time freedom, location freedom and financial freedom mean to me” because I didn’t grow up with all of this.

I definitely didn’t have financial freedom in college.

I didn’t have location freedom until I studied abroad and got a taste of what it was like to travel.

When I was working in corporate, I definitely didn’t have full time freedom with my 15 vacation days a year.

So the fact that I set out to create this beautiful, perfect life for myself came from a place where I felt SO restricted.

And I truly believe that this deep gratitude for what I currently have stems from at one point in my life, not having it. So you do have this newfound appreciation when you experience both sides.

You don’t know what light is until you’ve been in the dark. You don’t know what happy is until you’ve experienced extreme sadness, and this is kind of dark, but If, you think about freedom in its extremities.

From Humble Beginnings

My parents grew up in communist China and they were taught to worship the dictator and how they described their lives growing up is just so similar to North Korea.

It wasn’t until they immigrated to America where they experienced and learned that you could say things about the government without fear of being killed or fear of the government going after your family.

You are able to watch whatever you want or surf the internet without any government controls. The fact that they came from that society and then experienced freedom gave them this newfound appreciation, right?

When they were growing up, every time something bad happened to their leader, everyone was expected to cry. And if you didn’t cry, then you would get punished. Everyone just had to let tears stream out of their eyes, which to me is insane for a government to instill that upon.

So the fact that they went from that to building amazing lives for themselves in America and really seeing both sides, I think that’s where my sense of freedom and my definitions of freedom first originated.

Freedom isn’t of utmost importance to everyone, it’s very much that I grew up with this and I found my own values, and it’s just something that is so ingrained in me.

Disclaimer

Also going to include here that it’s not the only path to happiness: having time freedom, location freedom, and financial freedom. For me, that is just what I value so much in this life and it’s brought me so much joy and happiness, but it’s not the only path.

However, If, you feel like there is so much potential and so much happiness once you do achieve that time freedom, location freedom, and financial freedom. 

I’m going to give you a glimpse of what I’ve experienced and know that it is possible for you. I didn’t achieve this until the past few years. Like I completely changed my life at the age of 24. So in six years I have built something so incredible. I’ve helped hundreds of clients build the same for themselves. And if I can do it, you can too. And if they can do it, you definitely can too. So let’s start off with time freedom. 

What is Time Freedom?

Time freedom is the ability to do what you want, when you want, without having limits on time. You have full control over your time: your days, weeks, months, years.

You want to stay at home for a week and go explore every day? Fine!

You want to spend time with your family for a few days? You can do it.

You need to go to a doctor’s appointment without having to tell a boss? That’s time freedom!

When I Didn’t Have Time Freedom

What I didn’t have when I worked a corporate job in New York City, I had 15 days of vacation every single year.

I needed a request days off at least two weeks in advance. All of my vacation days accrued, which meant that in January I only had 1 day, and if I wanted to take 6 days off, I would’ve had to wait until June and my vacation days did not roll over.

So if I didn’t use any vacation days during that calendar year, I had to start over from scratch. It’s not like I could save them up and that’s just how my company worked, which was so incredibly limiting and frustrating for me.

What does time freedom look like for me now?

Now with my online business, I get to choose where to spend my time, with who to spend my time, and I get to choose what exactly I do with my time.

I don’t have to be at an office or I don’t have to be in front of my computer from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM every single day. Instead, I get to choose which clients I want to work with, choose what tasks I want to work on in my business.

I get to take two weeks off from work without having to ask a manager. If I have a bachelorette party or a wedding I need need to go to, I can decide myself without needing to request for time off.

I have time for self care, I have time for my hobbies, and once I have kids, I will have time for my kids. I think this was actually one of the main reasons I started my online business because I grew up with immigrant parents who didn’t have this time freedom. They had to work extra, I was always in afterschool programs, and my parents could never come watch my games or my concerts. So it was a little traumatizing for me as a child.

When I travel, I get to stay for as long as I want. I don’t have to limit my vacation to five days or seven days. I can literally stay for five months or seven months if I wanted to.

I am able to really excel and commit to my hobbies. Like with surfing, you can’t just get better at surfing by going on a three day surf retreat. It’s really something you have to do consistently for a long period of time because the tides are constantly changing every day. You can only surf during some tides.

Sometimes there’s no swell, so there’s no waves and it comes and goes. You need to learn how to read the waves and waves are different at every surf spot. So it’s really a skill that takes a lot of time.

If you are confined to a 9-5 or 8-6, there would be no time in your day really to go surfing unless you lived right on the beach.

How to Maximize Time Freedom In Your Business

When designing your online business, if you want to maximize time freedom, what I would encourage you to do is to prioritize digital products such as eBooks, courses, memberships, and templates.

When you are able to scale online outside of your time, it frees up your time.

What I see a lot of people doing is they make a lot of money with one-on-one services, and that is perfectly fine.

But if you don’t have the vehicles in place in your business to scale and to take yourself out your own time out of the equation, the time freedom is gonna be kind of hard for you to achieve.

If, you can build your business running on digital products and scalable products, then you really get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

🤩 Want to learn how to do this? Book a Power Session!

What is Location Freedom?

Next is location freedom. This is honestly one of my TOP priorities.

Location freedom is being able to travel and live and be based anywhere in the world.

You don’t want to sign a lease in New York City and instead spend a year sailing the Mediterranean? You can do it.

You want to go on a 3 month cruise and then explore a new country every month without a plan? Sure thing!

So with the location freedom of an online business, I can choose to be based wherever I want to be in the world. My husband and I have been traveling full-time for the past 5+ years, including remote surf islands in the middle of nowhere where we were literally the only foreigners and we had empty waves to ourselves.

What does location freedom look like for me?

I love location freedom because it really lets you surround yourself with the people that you want to surround yourself with.

I love new experiences and I wanted to always surround myself with people of different cultures.

I will go to surf destinations when I feel like I really want to surf and when I want to be near the water.

I also choose destinations that are catered more towards digital nomads. And if I wanted to meet other entrepreneurs, it’s really easy for me to meet them if I’m at a location where they kind of like congregate.

This also gives me the location freedom to be doing what I am doing now, which is spending time in England with Ragz’s family, planning our wedding in 3 months, and knowing that it’s going to work because I can truly dedicate myself to this location, learn about the different procedures, and make it happen for myself.

If I was working a full-time job in New York or somewhere where I wasn’t location independent, it would be really hard for me to plan a wedding here especially.

Location freedom is knowing you can be at a certain place whenever, wherever.

🤩 Want to learn how to do this? Book a Power Session!

What is Financial Freedom?

Last but not least, we have financial freedom. Financial freedom is something that comes from within and it also comes from your business.

It is not only the amount of money you have and are able to make, but how you FEEL about your financial situation.

You could have the most money in the world and still feel poor. You can also have no money at all and feel so abundantly rich.

What Financial Freedom Feels Like to Me

Financial freedom is different for everyone, but for me, one of the main things that kind of dictates this is I get to pick anything from any menu without looking at prices.

Like I know menu prices in New York, all of my friends are saying it has gone just up and up and up with inflation. It doesn’t bother me. If I want to eat something, I will order it without looking at the price.

Growing up, this wasn’t always a case, and even when I was making a lot of money in finance, I still felt like I wasn’t deserving to order the most expensive thing, even if that was what I wanted.

I had the money for it, but it was always clouded by I need to be saving for a rainy day. This is irresponsible of me to spend this much money on food and all of these other beliefs, right?

So what you tell yourself can really affect how financially free you are.

I also love being unlimited in terms of where I travel to. I don’t need to only pick the budget backpacker destinations. I don’t only have to pick countries where my currency goes really far. I can be based wherever in the world I am, despite the financial situation.

I also love having ideas like I wanna take my parents on a cruise to Alaska for their 60th birthday and also take my brother and support my family whenever they need help.

This makes me feel financially free, really doing stuff for other people and ultimately being able to fund my hobbies, my desires, and whatever it is that I want to buy.

These were parameters I had set out for myself when I started my online business. I knew I didn’t want it to just be a side project. I wanted to be big. I wanted to make a lot of money. I wanted to have a team. And ultimately, after achieving all of this and working from corporate to then starting entrepreneurship, to then growing in entrepreneurship, what I’ve ultimately learned is truly being financially free is a feeling.

🤩 Want to learn how to do this? Book a Power Session!

How to Invite More Abundance Into Your Life

You are able to inject feelings of financial abundance into your day-to-day in really small things.

It could be lighting a candle, it could be painting your nails yourself, or it can be splurging on an item that all your life, you’ve talked yourself out of buying like a really expensive candle or really expensive perfumes.

Do things outside the box and inject those in your day-to-day. And I promise you, you are going to attract more abundance, more abundant opportunities simply because you’re thinking different thoughts and taking different actions.

If you dedicate your time and energy into changing that, into developing the new thoughts and the new habits, then this incredibly abundant life is naturally going to gravitate towards you.

If you have any thoughts about this episode, I would love if you could take a screenshot, share it to Instagram, and tag The Wanderlover Podcast.

I’ll see you guys in the next episode. Have an amazing July!

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