Free ourselves from wage slavery now.

I have blogged about how someone told me that I should be ashamed of myself.

I should be ashamed that I am unemployed although, more accurately, I am economically inactive.

See:
AK should be ashamed!

I have also explained why I worked hard to achieve financial freedom and why I chose early retirement.

To put it quite bluntly, I didn't want to be a wage slave forever.

See:
Why want an early retirement?

What is a wage slave?

If we are 100% dependent on our monthly wages to support our lifestyle, we are wage slaves.

What does this mean?








If we need $500 a month to live and if we make $500 a month, we are wage slaves.

If we need $10,000 a month to live and if we make $10,000 a month, we are wage slaves.

So, even if making $50,000 a month is considered very high income, if we need $50,000 a month to live, we are wage slaves.

Wage slaves are absolutely dependent on their monthly wages to survive.






Now, although I do not fancy being a wage slave, there are people who seem to be quite happy being wage slaves.

Ignorance is bliss, after all.

Ask those who lived next to a dormant volcano which decided to erupt one day.

Horribly blissful!

This video shows an example of what could happen to wage slaves:






To break the chains of wage slavery, I start by asking three questions.

1. How much money do we need in life?

Are the needs really needs?

Or are some wants disguised as needs?

We should keep our needs simple and our wants few.

After all, we only need so much money in life and the rest is for showing off.






2. How much money are we saving?

To save more money, we should increase income and reduce expenses.

It is quite simple.

Not easy, perhaps, but quite simple.

Find legitimate and ethical ways to increase income.

Reduce expenses where possible but remember to be reasonable.





3. How hard is our money working?

If we are leaving the bulk of our money in savings accounts with low interest rates, we are doing ourselves a disservice.

Make our money work harder.

Make sure to ask if the investment is legitimate.

Ask how is it generating income and how is it rewarding us?

If we do not find a way to make money in our sleep, we will have to work till the day we die.

One way to make money in our sleep is to make use of weaknesses in the stock market to accumulate some stocks that will generate income for us.






Dividends will start as a trickle but after some time, we will see dividends pouring in!

We should take a long term view and invest in companies which are here to stay.

Investing for income for the long term, market volatility is nothing to fear.

This video is pretty succinct as to what we should do:







If we want to be free from wage slavery, we have to free ourselves and we have to start now.

We should work because we want to and not because we have to.

Related post:
Happiness and slavery.