After I got out of that financial hole I was in during our time in London we spent the next two years in Paris where I saved a lot of money. I was very very frugal during that time, so much that I saved enough from my online earnings (which was much less back then but I didn’t have a team to pay) for the down-payment on one of those cash-draining properties that we now own.

I made a big transformation in that time from the spending mindset and also from getting paid for my time to a financial freedom mindset of saving to invest and earn money from my assets.

I must admit though that it is hard to keep disciplined and stay on course with the new mindset when you discover that it is not fast or easy to become financially independent.

Nevertheless, if you do manage to stay on course, re-invest your money instead of spending it, you’ll get ahead faster. Sometimes it’s really tough to give up having nice things, this is the case now with me and Sally.

We had started saving money for own house. But seeing that after 2 years of ‘crisis’ and a dead real estate market prices are barely moving downward we feel that even for our own home it won’t be worth making a purchase for a long time. We are quite happy renting and pay much less than we would if we owned it (and have less headaches). So we were at the beach a few weeks ago and we got to talking about getting a new car. Now we have an old Saxo, its 10 years old, but in decent shape. We decided we would just use our house money for the car to buy it in cash. So we were all happy with the idea.

But then we started thinking. Each one on his/her own. On my end I was thinking was now really a good time to spend all that money on a car? Taking consideration that the economy is in turmoil and maybe good opportunities to invest in something may arise?

Also, as mentioned in a previous post, Sally is quitting her work for IBM France at the end of the year. She has already started a Website related to her field of work and we talked it over and decided that she would officially join my company as an equal partner. So the sooner we can generate more cash flow from our Internet business to replace the money she will no longer receive, the better. Ultimately, this is our short term goal, for both of us to be free of working for anyone or being paid by the hour, up until now it was just me.

So instead of spending the money on the car we decided that we’re going to reinvest it in our business. We considered other possibilities but there is clearly nothing that could make the same impact now.

We thought over the different sites we are currently running and where that money could make the biggest impact, based on experience of what works and what doesn’t and what we know. I don’t want to get into the exact detail but we decided to employ the money on a good amount of labor (3-4 workers per month) on a particular site that experienced major traffic growth last year but is sputtering this year in search engine traffic growth, but continues to grow in participation. I believe the slowdown is partially due to the number of competitors and copy-cats.

The financial freedom mindset kept us from enjoying the luxury of a new car for the moment but will continue to move us towards more money and more freedom in less time. Around Christmas time we’ll see how our decision went.

Actually, up until now Sally has had to keep working to earn money. Even though she doesn’t have an employer she still works for money by selling her time and personal services. On the other hand, my income isn’t as dependent on my time, I could work 2 hours per week or less and keep it going, thanks to the Internet and my online team. It’s kind of like Tim Ferriss’s book, “The 4 Hour Work Week”, but truth be told, I wouldn’t know what to do with the other 36 hours so I spend them working to grow my business.

The great news is that Sally is planning on quitting her client at the end of this year. Now she will be as free as I am as she won’t be tied down to completing hours of work and deadlines. She is going to spend her time working on assets and building her own income from them.

In the meantime money will be a little tighter, but when I look back at the period where I started generating my asset income (I was flat broke) I look back with nostalgia so I doesn’t bother me at all to tighten the belt while Sally gets her assets going. Temporarily it will be less money but in the long run it will be well worth it, just as it was well worth it for me to devote my time building instead of working for someone else.

Even when Sally was just working part time for her major client she didn’t have enough time and energy left over to focus on her own projects. I am really happy she’s taking this step forward,  a bit into the ‘unknown’, I know it wasn’t easy for her to make that decision.

Most people are not capable of making that decision. They grasp to the false security of their job and assured income. I have to admit it must be scary to quit something that pays you well, especially in current times. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no better time to become an entrepreneur!

I struggle daily to find what I’m best at so I can focus my time on it. I’m always doing lots of different things, whatever is necessary but I don’t feel I’m good at making the best use of my time, probably because I don’t what the best use of my time is.

I work in the Internet marketing field, I guess you would call it, and I try to become better at it. But I can’t say that Internet marketing Gurus inspire me at all. Working on Web business is what I love but I’m inspired by other professionals.

I’m really inspired by Donald Trump, at least in the realm of business success. He is so passionate about his work and is moving millions around on a daily basis. I wish I were that passionate about my work and being the very best at it. I also like Trump a lot because he’s so focused on quality. The only downside to Trump is he seems to work 24/7 whereas I would like a little more balance in my life even if I love my work.

I’m greatly inspired by certain athletes. I imagine the discipline, talent and willpower they must have to be among the best of the game. I’m a big fan of Rafa Nadal. He really inspires me because he doesn’t seem to be as talented as other tennis players but wins more than anyone, with the exception of Federer. Nadal seems to have a really really strong work ethic on and off the court. He is always the player on the court who’s in the best shape, who can go 5 sets and stay fresh and full of energy. He is the strongest mentally and pulls out many hard fought victories against technically better opponents.

It’s not just Rafa, I’m inspired by all great athletes more than any other professionals. Maybe that’s because I’m a terrible athlete!  If I could be half as successful as these guys I would be a happy camper.

Have you bought anything on credit lately other than a well priced house?  If so, shame on you. If not, you’re on the right track.

I talk to so many people that are like yes of course I bought my car with a car loan, how else do you buy a car? Well personally I’d love to have a new car and I could definitely afford the monthly loan payment but – it’s just downright stupid.

Financially intelligent people collect interest, financial stupid people pay interest to banks or to financially intelligent people. Banks LOVE financially stupid people, without them they would not be in business.

I did away with using credit years ago when I got my financial habits in order. I was a complete disaster. I actually moved to Miami for 1 year and bought a brand-spanking new car (my parents lent me the money for the down-payment of course because I didn’t have any money.) Then I found out my license was suspended because I didn’t pay a speeding ticket a couple years back. Then the car dealer looked at my sad credit history and finally agreed to sell me the car.

I drove it to work for one year, 2 hours per day from Miami Beach to Fort Lauderdale. After making $300 monthly y car payments for that year I left back to Europe and my brother had to sell the car for me. After selling it I had to pay $2000 to clear the debt- talk about a financial disaster!

Now I only buy things with debit cards or credit cards that will bill the full amount the following month to my bank account. I refuse to pay a cent of interest on anything that’s not a house. During the sum of every hour, day and minute of your life all this stuff ads up in your favor or against you. If you still use credit you’ve got to kick the habit now or you’ll always be a slave to money.

Whenever my wife Sally hands me coupons from the grocery store, I’m like “What is this?” I really can’t be bothered looking for product we have coupons for regardless of how short on cash flow we are.

I always grimace when I see people shopping around to a million stores and comparing a zillion products just to save €20 Euros. It’s like what is the point?

Spend your time doing something more productive. Instead of focusing on doing extra work to save money focus on how to make more money. That’s a much better use of time.

The time it takes to cut coupons and search out products that you have coupons for is time you could be using to make more money or time you could be using to work on an asset that will produce more income.

A little shopping around is fine, no sense in wasting money, but if you find yourself spending too much time on it your mindset might not be in the right place. You can’t save yourself to wealth.

In Germany very few people own their own home and housing is pretty inexpensive to buy.

In the states I guess it’s the “American dream” to own your own home with the white picket fence, or maybe it used to be.

Here in Spain the saying went “Renting is throwing away money.” (Alquilar es tirar el dinero.)

I always wanted to own my own home so I could decorate it as I liked, make as many holes in the walls as I wished or do just about anything I wanted to it. I never imagined reaching 35 years of age and still renting.

I must admit that when I look at the amazingly cheap home prices now available in parts of the US like near where I used to live in Ohio or Florida I can’t help to feel a little jealous. Here in Spain the bubble burst a couple years ago but not much has changed in terms of prices.

It seems that half the houses on the market are held by banks and they somehow manage to, with the help of the government I suspect, hold up a massively overpriced market. Well there isn’t much market really because not many houses are sold. To get a decent flat in Madrid would still cost €300000 Euros, a ridiculous price considering that most Spaniards don’t make more than €21000 Euros per year.

But in recent times my thinking has been altered somewhat. The truth is I’m quite happy now renting. We have a great flat in the city for  €1000/month rent. Since we became landlords with our investments flats I learned about all the expenses and hassles involved with being a homeowner, especially in an apartment building community setting.

When you rent you don’t have to deal with all that crap and you know exactly how much you’re going to pay each month. You don’t have extra works and unexpected expenses, not under your control, popping up all the time.

Buying a home is supposedly an investment but renting can be a smarter financial decision If it saves you a good amount of cash each month as opposed to buying – and in this still ridiculously overpriced market – it definitely does save us cash.

So for now I’m quite happy being a renter. We live in a nice neighborhood, in a great flat with a nice little view, not a bad deal!

After more than 10 years working at home (at least for me) we have installed ourselves in an office with brother Mike near the city center. It was time to put some order into our schedules and separate work from home (at least a little bit).

No more rolling out of bed in the morning straight to the computer. No more distractions of friends popping by, phone calls (less phone calls at least), laundry to hang out to dry or cleaning to be done. No more occasional time periods of 48 hours or more without leaving the house!

We generally get into the office between 10 and 11 and leave around 7 or 8. Sometimes we cut Fridays short to run errands or get an early start (beat the rush) leaving out to the country for the weekend.

Coming to office forces us to put more discipline and order into our life and actually makes everything less stressful and more relaxing. At least that’s how I feel about it.

I have to confess that I still do some ‘overtime’ at home, but I just can’t help it, I love working on my Internet assets. And I need to grow my Internet assets so I can buy more offline assets.

I think most people have ideas. The trouble is they never pick one and give it a go. Not just a half-a** go, but a real go at it. But that’s beside the point.

My point is that success doesn’t usually come with a brilliant idea. It seems to come from two simple ideas:

• Working on something you are passionate about.
• Becoming the absolute best at what you do

In fact, in the well known business book, “Good to Great”, author Jim Collins says that you or your company should be so passionate about what you do that making a good product or service should not be enough, even if you make a lot of money. You should want to build an extraordinary product, just because you are so passionate about what you are doing.

So if you are one of those people looking for a great money-making opportunity stop and think about how you can make a lot of money working in an area that you love. What can you be the best in the world at and love doing it?

When you are an entrepreneur, you are liable for whatever happens to you, you have to take action, solve the problems that pop up and constantly take initiative. If something goes wrong, you cannot blame your boss and complain about how poorly your company is being run: you are the boss and you run the company. It’s not so much of a disadvantage than simply more responsibility.

The bright side is that you have complete control over your activities and you don’t have to put up with (sometimes stupid) things your superiors decided. When things go well, you are the one taking credit for them. Even employees have big responsibilities but they work hard for somebody else’s success, which I find less rewarding.

When an employee is made redundant by his/her company, he/she receives unemployment benefits while looking for another job (I am obviously referring to the so-called developed countries). As a freelancer or a small company owner, if you go bankrupt, you usually cannot expect any benefits of that kind. My income still depends on my clients hiring my services and in Fred’s case it depends on people’s capacity to advertise (which can drastically go down in times of economic crisis). We have no safety net to provide us with some income if we lose our clients. That’s why many people think we are very vulnerable. It’s true but, being entrepreneurs, we also have the capacity to find new clients or new ways of making money. We have the mindset to bounce back because we are used to taking initiative and solving problems. I am not saying I like solving problems –I think everybody prefers when things go smoothly, but when it’s necessary I am able to do it.

Also, nowadays, companies tend to cut jobs more and more often. Your employer can demand that you change department or move to another region if you want to keep your job. All this puts pressure on you and your family too: should you move, should you commute every week, should your wife leave her job to go with you, should you sell your house, what should you do with the kids…? So it seems to me that job security is a bit of myth. Whatever the work status, we all face difficulties and risks, they are just not the same and some are just easier to put up with than others.

Although I am convinced that we are lucky, we have a great life and we are doing the right thing, I don’t have many friends or relative who chose the same lifestyle (or a similar one). This means I know a lot of people who think the normal behavior is to find a well-paid job, get married, buy a house and a car on credit and have children right away. Most of my friends and close relatives are following that path actually. Everybody has to find the lifestyle that suits them and do what they believe is correct, and I have a lot of respect for other people’s choices. It’s just that it’s not easy to explain why we are acting differently, especially since we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feeling.

Also, everybody dreams of having their own nice house and car. So sometimes you have to deal with your own frustrations. It’s like people who keep smoking although they know it’s lethal. Well, sometimes, though I know it wouldn’t be reasonable to buy a house right now nor would it be to buy a car on credit or to spend more money on entertainment (instead of being very disciplined with our saving, investing, home saving and charity giving), I lose patience and wish I already had all those things. Fortunately, I have a couple of friends and relatives who share the same principles and we pep up each other from time to time! This is when I notice the environment is very important. If I was only surrounded by people who go with the flow, I would probably end up wondering why the heck I am doing what I am doing. It’s textbook human behavior that you mirror the people around you.

So, in my opinion, the disadvantages of our way of life are pretty much subjective and they are totally outweighed by how exciting it is to develop your own projects and how nice your life can be when you have so much freedom.

Of course Fred needs to dedicate time to his business so that it generates more and more income and of course I need to meet deadlines for my clients. But we don’t have to work standard hours: if one day we want to work from 8 to 5 it’s fine but we can also decide to start working at 2 p.m. or to take a break on a weekday and work on the weekend instead or to work only 3 hours per day, etc.

Also, if we are tired for some reason or sick, we can enjoy our freedom of schedule to oversleep or to postpone what we had planned to do. As long as we organize our activities in a responsible manner, we can do pretty much what we want. Nobody expects us to be in front of our computers 40 hours per week at office hours.

How does this translate into our everyday life? Well, we can take two weeks off to go visit our families or to move to another country and we don’t need to ask the permission to do so nor to plan it in advance. We can be pretty spontaneous. We can go out during the day (grocery shopping, to the gym, etc.) to enjoy daylight and work at home later, when the sun is already set. If we need to do some paperwork somewhere that only opens during office hours (it’s more than often the case), it’s no problem, we don’t need to worry or ask for the day off, we just work later or don’t work at all that day if our schedule makes it possible. Also, if one of us is sick and needs to go to the doctor, the other one can assist, go to the pharmacy, etc. Nobody prevents us from spending this quality time together. At a normal job, we would have to ask for a day off and therefore lose one day of vacation. Maybe we wouldn’t even be granted the day off since you usually get one for your husband only in case of serious health problems.

I want to insist on the fact that we do work and we are certainly not lazy persons but nobody imposes office hours on us. We have the possibility to organize our work in a very flexible manner so that we can adapt to special situations or simply enjoy our time without having to report to anybody.

Both Fred and I work from home and all we really need is our computers (laptops made it very easy!) and an Internet connection. Nobody expects us to be anywhere: Fred’s collaborators don’t care where he is as long as he can be reached by email and my clients don’t care either as long as they see I get the job done.

This is great because we have the possibility to move a lot. I think that many people would love to do the same thing but cannot just because they have to be at an office Monday to Friday or because their work depends on them being at a specific location. I am very happy to be able to do that and share it with my husband; those are great experiences and will be great memories to remember.

Now is the right time. When we have children we will have to provide them with stability. Also, there might be a point where we are physically tired of moving around so it’s great to be able to do it when we are still young enough to feel like it. When we are older and look back, we won’t complain “I would have loved travelling around but I couldn’t back then and now I don’t have the energy or health to do it”.

If we had a mortgage (and worse than a mortgage is a variable-rate mortgage), we would probably be struggling right now. If we were working at a company hit by the crisis, we would be worried about being made redundant or maybe we would have lost our job already.

We are not rich (not yet!!!) and we sure are careful with our spending but it’s nice to go through life without worrying about being short of money for indispensable (and sometimes less indispensable) expenses. The way of life we chose still makes it possible for us to afford the things we need, to travel every three months on average, to buy presents to our relatives and friends on special occasions, to eat out regularly (in reasonable-priced places but still…), to pay for any necessary health care (I recently had an unexpected gum problem that health insurance didn’t cover and I was happy to be able to heel my gums so my teeth won’t fall off within 10 years), to buy DVDs that we like, etc.

At that point, you are probably thinking that I am completely biased and you can name many disadvantages that our way of life entails. To be honest, I don’t see any serious disadvantage but I do feel frustrated sometimes, so I will post about the downside of our lifestyle next time.