While I’m not a fan of the term “financial freedom”, I’m a fan of “financial independence”. Not only is this way of thinking one of the most attainable, it’s also an incredibly liberating way of looking at life.
Financial independence is basically the kind of lifestyle that allows you to do whatever you want without the financial worries that come from taking on debt. There is a huge difference between being able to do whatever you want with your life and being able to leave your debts in the bank, rather than having to pay a high interest rate to someone else. It is the difference between being able to walk away and having to beg for a loan.
There is an irony in a lot of the financial advice out there. We are constantly told that we need to “get out of debt,” which is a huge trap to fall into if you don’t have a reliable source of income.
How does this work? Like with debt, you need to have a reliable source of income in order to be able to quit debt. If you don’t have any money, you can’t quit debt. If you have a reliable source of income, you can quit debt, just because you don’t have to live on a credit card, or any other kind of loan.
In the same way, you need to have a reliable source of income to be able to quit debt. One thing that is very important about our finance system is that we can only borrow money for a limited amount of time. This is called a “life time” loan. So for example, if you have a credit card that you can borrow at 0.5%. In that case you will need to pay back the money over the life time of the loan, which could be years.
It’s a pretty common problem, and a huge reason why student loans are so expensive. In particular, loans with high interest rates have been a big problem for many of our graduates over the past few years. The problem is that the borrower is often unaware of the high interest rates and just ends up paying much more than they should. This is especially true of people with poor credit scores who are not aware that they’re still paying high rates, so they just end up paying much more.
If you want more information about this problem, I would recommend reading my article “How to Pay Less on Your Student Loans”. It explains how to get your credit score to improve and how to pay less on your student loans.
I had a student loan that had a high interest rate and I actually paid the higher interest rate only once. It was at the end of my college career when I was struggling to pay my way through a few months of tuition and studying. After that, I only had one student loan that I paid off at the higher rate.
Now I’m retired and I have a couple student loans that I paid off at the lower rate. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this.
The key to the whole process of getting your credit to improve is to pay your student loans at the lower rate. This is something that the FAFSA folks do to help folks who have trouble saving up and budgeting for their expenses. The FAFSA is a form that folks fill out and submit to the IRS that is filled out and filed electronically. Once it is filled out, the IRS will put it into the tax code that will help you pay off your student loans.