Financial Freedom versus Retirement

The standard idea behind retirement is that you work hard for your first 65 years or so, save and invest wisely, and then hope that the savings / investments will carry you though your retirement years. Hope is the key word there.

These days change is the only constant and with change "hope" can get dashed. Dashed hope is the situation in which many seniors and many of my fellow baby boomers will find themselves in the years to come if the past trends are any indication of the future. Even as I write this article, Congress is fighting over our mounting debt and eyeing cuts to Medicare and Social Security. With the changes we are undergoing, the old version of retirement may be on its way out.

A much better goal for today's seniors and baby boomers is financial freedom. What does the term financial freedom mean? It doesn't necessarily mean wealth (although it could) but rather it refers to building passive income. It refers to that passive income reaching a point where it exceeds your expenditures. Passive income (and its close cousin Residual Income) refers to income from work that you've already done.

Interest from Retirement funds is a form of passive income since you have already earned the money and are now getting additional money from it. However, having enough interest income to support one or two seniors will take a huge amount of money. Another option (and a more attainable one) is a Network Marketing business.

In Network Marketing, building streams of passive and residual income are hallmarks of the business. The larger your organization grows, the more passive and residual income you will earn. Unlike the model of interest based on a fixed amount of money, this type of passive and residual income grows exponentially and practically limitless depending on the network marketing company's compensation plan.

And if the passive income drops below that level of exceeding your expenditures, you simply go back and do a little more work - on your desired schedule of course!