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Optimal Finance Daily - Financial Independence and Money Advice
3354: Life Is a Triangle. Master Its 3 Points to Live a Kick-A** Existence by Charlie Brown of Simple and Straightforward
00:12:10
Charlie Brown outlines a refreshingly simple but powerful framework for designing a fulfilling life by mastering three key areas
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
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- [00:38]
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- [01:09]
Podcast Host
Welcome back to our Sunday Bonus episode where I share an article with you from a different podcast in our network to keep your life nice and optimized. Today's episode is coming from our main personal development podcast, Optimal Living Daily. You can find that show wherever you're listening to this and please do follow or subscribe to the show to get new episodes every day. So with that, here's Justin with the post and commentary as we optimize your life.
- [01:41]
Justin from Optimal Living Daily
Life is a Triangle Masters three Points to Live a Kick Ass Existence by Charlie Brown of simpleandstraightforward.substack.com Life isn't a circle, it's a triangle with three main focus points Working together to craft a life you can be proud to call your own 1 slap your finances into shape 2. Reject societal norms around your work and career and 3 living a simple, meaningful life. The real key that propels points one and two more than you can imagine. This triangle is a foundation. Master the way you live, spend your money and work and all the other awesome parts of life like relationships, meaning and contentment have a solid base to build upon and so far it's worked for me. I'm pretty happy with how my weird little life is shaping up. Living on the road, writing for a living, and achieving my own version of financial freedom. I took my personal triangle and I ran with it. Here's how you can too Focus Point number one Slapping your finances into shape. Yeah, I know finances can be freaking boring and freaking scary. And because I suck at math, I never had much interest in the mechanics of money. But we're talking big picture thinking here. So I started with the following what would my ideal life look like if I took charge of my personal finance situation? This is where it gets exciting, because you can start to think creatively. It could be as simple as saying, I want to sleep well at night knowing that my debts are cleared. Or, as I chose, it could be a bit more out there. Like I want to have a certain level of passive income, sell everything I own, and travel indefinitely. Once you have an aim, the mechanics of personal finance suddenly look a lot more appealing. It's no longer a boring a choreography. Instead, it's a vehicle that will get you to a destination you actually want to travel to. Cheesy analogies aside, the deep detail of tax optimization, index funds, debt consolidation, and other financial terms that previously sent you running to the hills can all begin to look rather interesting, because every minute you financially educate yourself is a minute earned for a better future life. Better investments equals more time to travel, clearing debt equals less time working, more time with family, and minimizing tax equals more cash to spend on meaningful projects. The bottom line is that healthy personal finances are a cornerstone of a kick life. So if yours are in a pickle, it's time to sort them out. Focus Point Number Rejecting societal norms around working. You don't have to hate it One of the saddest career stats I've ever seen is that 85% of people are unhappy in their jobs. Somehow we've managed to take something that almost every person on the planet has to engage in for an average of 90,000 hours, no less, and make it an awful experience. The worst thing about it is that it doesn't have to be like that. For great swathes of our world, particularly in the west, many of us, my past self included, have trapped ourselves in crapy working situations because we keep getting told there's no other way. On the flip side are companies that exploit our desperate need to work. With bad pay, long hours, poor working conditions, and no potential for growth, the whole thing sucks. The day I realized there is another way was the day my working life started to slot into place again. I asked myself a simple what would my working life look like if it was solely up to me? In my case, the answer was to become the best of the best in the UK wine trade and to work for myself. A vague, probably unachievable goal, I know, but it was a start. From there, I formulated more of an achievable plan, something that was realistic but still hit my triple goal of entering the wine trade, being good at what I do and working for myself, I landed on owning a wine shop and bar that eventually was awarded UK Independent Wine Retailer of the Year. So dream with me here, what would your dream career look like? If it's something that's been shelved for many years, gathering cobwebs in the back of your mind, why is that? Is there a way to make it happen for you? Side number three of the triangle can help with that final question. Focus point number three Living a simple, meaningful life. This is the magic point, the one that pulls everything together. The way we're taught to live our lives doesn't work anymore. We're all busy, stressed, tired. Life is rinsing us for all we're worth. I bang on about simple living a lot because it's a very practical antidote to the stresses and strains of modern life. Master simple living and the other two sides of the triangle slot together. Think about it. You're in a financial state. Debt up to your eyeballs. Multiple cars on the driveway costing you hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars every month. A house that's too big for your needs. Struggling to make the rent or mortgage payments. If you simplified it all, how many of these stresses could be eliminated? If you stop spending in areas you don't care about, you could start to repay debt. If you looked to downgrade your car lease, perhaps making do with just one car, or buying secondhand, you could minimize your transport costs. And if you downsized your house to something that better suits your needs, you could reduce rent or mortgage payments. These are just examples. Your situation could look very different. But I guarantee there will be some area of your life that you could look to simplify and minimize. As Tim Denning recently wrote, you can be twice as rich by deciding you need half as much. He's right. Then say you've applied simple living techniques and you're bossing your finances. What could that mean for your career? I see you unhappy at work, dreaming of a new life with a job that gives you meaning and, dare I say it, a little bit of joy. There are so many ways simple living can do this. With lower living costs, you could go part time at work, leaving more room for a side hustle that could eventually become your main source of income. You could save what you would ordinarily spend on whatever you used to mindlessly spend cash on, saving enough to start your own business. You could take a position in a company that you actually want to work for, even if it pays less. Or you could land a part time gig giving you more time for friends, family or yourself. Because not everything is about making as much money as possible. If life is a triangle, it's not equal sided. Simple living is the long line at the bottom, the foundation of it all. There's a reason why careers in entrepreneurship, finances, and simple living are the top three categories I write about on this platform. It's because they're the foundation of a good life, one that's in your control. You may have to get creative. You may have to piss some people off with your different ways of thinking and living. Because as Theodore Roosevelt said, nothing worth having comes easy. But the result? A life that works for you, one that is lived on your terms. The result is totally worth the effort. Let's get to work. You just listened to the post titled Life is a Master. Its three points to live a kick Assistence by Charlie Brown of simpleandstraightforward.substack.com this.
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- [11:13]
Justin from Optimal Living Daily
Thank you to Charlie Like I mentioned, in many episodes on this show, the first step is usually awareness. Awareness of an issue we could resolve. Awareness of what we're actually doing since so much of it is unconscious behavior, and so on. That's definitely the case with finances. I'm still thankful that a grad school professor gave us the homework assignment of tracking every penny we spent for a week back in 2010, because I never stopped doing it. I found that practice that valuable, and I find that even if you do just that one thing, not much else is required. Of course you can analyze your spending, see what percent of income is going to what. You could also see if your net is positive or negative, that is Are you spending more than you earn? But generally what seems to happen is that your spending naturally goes down because you start to catch certain things when you track it, like a subscription to something that you never actually use, or you realize you eat out a lot more than you thought. Something happens and your spending begins to shift, all by simply tracking it. And this applies to other areas of life too. But her first focus point was money, something I've been tracking for over a decade and never stopped. So I do recommend it. And if you want to use the same app that I use to track my income and expenses, just go to oldpodcast.com track for a free trial. Love to see you start that trial and give it a shot with that. Have a great day or night and I'll be back tomorrow as usual, where your optimal life awaits.