What would you give up if someone said to you, If you give up five things, you can quit your job tomorrow and wont ever have to work again?

What else would you give up if you instead had to give up ten things? Fifteen things?

At some point it may not be worth it and youd rather keep your job but I imagine the list of things youd be happy to give up could be pretty long.

I actually thought about this a lot recently when creating the budget for The Perfect Life.

After determining what kind of life would make me and my wife happiest, I sat down to figure out exactly how much the perfect life would cost.

Before I describe the shortest path to financial independence, its probably a good idea to reiterate my definition of financial independence.

To me, financial independence is having enough income from your assets to cover your essential expenses so that you can survive without ever having to work again.

Never having to work again is very different from never working again.

Since I plan on working in some capacity after I achieve FI (on things I want to work on, rather than what my boss wants me to work on), Im not concerned with saving up enough money to cover my discretionary expenses.

Id rather reach FI as quickly as possible, quit my full-time job, and then slowly build up the amount of fun money I have by doing work that I enjoy.

As Mr. Money Mustache described in his First Retire, Then Get Rich article, its likely you will make more money and spend less post-FI than you anticipate. Therefore, Im happy with this plan and am in no way worried about living a boring life after financial independence.

So how can you achieve financial independence as quickly as possible?

The first thing you should do is list your current essential expenses. This will allow you to understand how much you spend per month and will help you better predict how much you will need to spend after you quit your job.

The number you computed in the previous step assumes your post-FI life will resemble your current life.

Most likely, this will not be the case. When you no longer have to work, the number of expenses that you incur should decrease.

This step is the fun part.

If you really envisage your post-FI life, you can quite happily drop expenses that are no longer necessary or important to you.

We currently own a house but plan on renting after reaching FI. There are a few reasons for this:

The decision to rent smaller apartments/houses in cheaper places will allow me to decrease my future monthly expenses significantly!

Sadly, we currently require two cars for me and my wife to both get to work. The costs associated with these cars is ridiculous and if I never have to own a car again, I wont. Post-FI, we wont need to own a car.

Not having a car will probably result in additional public transportation costs but by cutting out automobile ownership from our future expenses, I can decrease our future monthly expenses even further!

Im sure there are many expenses in your life that youd be happy to substitute for free alternatives post-FI if you take some time to think about it.

Theres a big, exciting world out there with many amazing, free things to do so why not start with those and then move on to things that cost money after you get bored of all the free options?

Library books instead of TV. Running instead of gym membership. Rock climbing on actual rocks instead of on a fake climbing wall that costs money to use.

You get the idea.

This exercise may help you decrease your current expenses even before you achieve financial independence.

If you ask yourself, would I give up x if it meant I could quit my job tomorrow and you answer yes, why would you continue paying that expense now? It is obviously not that important to you so why not remove that expense now and instead use that money to get one step closer to achieving FI?

The beauty of saving enough to only cover your essential expenses is that it will force you to really scrutinize your discretionary spending after you achieve FI.

If you have to go out and make extra money to buy something, youll most likely only buy things you really need or desire. You will truly be trading your free time for stuff so you will most likely only do that for things that are really important to you.

Theres no need to wait until FI to see if you can limit your discretionary spending to what your supplemental income can provide.

If you start developing supplemental income streams by doing things you enjoy now, youll be able to increase your savings rate while cutting out the discretionary expenses that really arent meaningful to you.

In conclusion, here are the simple steps to achieve financial independence as quickly as possible:

What would you consider giving up if it meant you could quit your job tomorrow?

Want to shorten your journey to financial independence even more? Check out this comprehensive guide How to Optimize Your Journey to Financial Independence

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Shortest Path to Financial Independence - Mad Fientist