My whole life my family and friends all told me that if I focused on financial security then I’d be able to live ‘comfortably’. By comfortably I mean being able to afford a typical house, to send my children off to a good college, to drive a descent car and to occasionally enjoy a nice meal out. For the most part, ‘living comfortably’ means to live an average lifestyle with little worry about going broke.

Well, as we advance more and more into the digital age, we are finding that our collective mission isn’t to ‘live comfortably’. That is not enough anymore. We want much more than an moderate level of comfort. We now aspire for financial freedom over financial security.

What do I mean by freedom, you ask? Freedom from the ordinary. Freedom from being average. Freedom from living an average and stagnant life. Freedom from jobs that we dread. And most of all we desire freedom from working for bosses that make us ill. We want the kind of freedom that allows us to truly own our lives. By that I mean having the money to do what we want to do and the time to do what we want to do whenever we want to do it.

In 2004 CNN conducted a survey that found that only 43% of American workers are content with their boss. The number one reason why most business owners started a business is because they say they despised feeling like a slave to a boss or corporation.

Think about it. When you are an ’employee’ you have the worst tax advantages and the worst work situation. You get very few tax breaks when compared to your employer. You are told when to get up, when you can take a break, when to eat lunch, when you’re ‘allowed’ time for vacation, when to go home and what you have to wear each and every day. And to make matters even more difficult, there’s no such thing as security in your job anymore as your company can make ‘budget cuts” or hire a younger person to work for less pay at any time they want.

Financial freedom however doesn’t mean not working at all. It means having a situation that we truly love. It means having little distinction between work and play, since there is very little difference between the two when you really love what you do. Once this occurs, a person believes he/she has obtained success.

Success today is more about quality of life, not just the acquisition of money and material belongings. People are becoming more concerned with their environment in which they live than with material wealth or power. Money can afford very little when it comes to people. Yes money can by a yacht or a four million dollar million mansion, but it cannot buy true love, affection, friendship or loyalty.