Allow me to first and foremost address the lack of a rating this book has. I didn’t read it all. I think I am quite financially literate, so I only skimmed through the parts of the book that talk about inflation, stocks, the rule of 72, the time value of money, etc. And this was the majority of the book. Nevertheless, Financial Freedom significantly changed my way of thinking about money in the following two ways:
Prior to reading this book, I was a big proponent of living below your means. By saving and investing as much of your paycheck as possible, you can achieve financial freedom and retire sooner. It’s a no brainer, right? Well… not quite. This would be true if your salary never changes. But you can increase your paycheck by increasing your value. This requires time, and time is a scarce resource. So instead of budgeting your money like it’s a scarce resource, invest it in things that allow you to make the most of your time.
A pair of Airpods Pro doesn’t cost $300, it costs 12 hours of your life, assuming you work a $25/hour job. Alternatively, it costs 41 cents per day, assuming a useful life of two years. In my opinion, its much easier to decide whether the happiness and value you gain out of using Airpods is worth 41 cents/day and 12 hours of time rather than to simply ask yourself, “can I afford this $300 thing?”
You may have heard of the equation: Happiness = Reality - Expectations. Well this is a corollary of that. The concept is quite simple. I’ll let Thoreau explain it:
“That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest” — Henry David Thoreau
A large part of this book was dedicated to “finding your number,” which refers to the amount of money that you need/want before you can stop working full time. Obviously, this number greatly depends on the type of lifestyle you want to have. After following Sabatier’s advice and doing some self-reflection, I found my number: $5 million. That’s a lot of fucking money. But that’s because I have more expensive expectations. Expectations are not something you can change at the snap of a finger, but they do change gradually and subconsciously. I learned that it is important to revisit your expectations and recalculate your number once in a while.
Overall, this was a valuable book, but reading a summary of it might have been a better use of time. Sabatier comes off as a little too arrogant in his writing for my liking, and I feel the book is longer than it needs to be.
IRL Update (05/01/2023): I actually read this book from late March to early April, but decided to hold off until after exams were over to write my review.