Posted on July 4, 2009 - by PanzerGrenadier

Financial freedom by working smart

Photo by kwanz

Your career is still one of the most important ways to achieve financial freedom because it is how many of us generate income.

When you are first starting out in you career, the income your career brings helps you clear your study loans, pay for your expenses and generally allows you to save so as to be able to have sufficient money to invest for passive income.

Before the number of grey hairs on my head became more prominent, I believed that the path towards financial freedom is to work hard at your job and save money.

I was right for a while before it became apparent that working hard gets you only so far. I’m not saying working hard is not important because it is. But working hard but itself without applying the “smart” part sometimes result in you working for results that are unsatisfactory.

Why is that?

Working Hard

Working hard is important when you are first starting out. It is the main way for you to acquire skills and knowledge in the area you are working. When I first started out as an auditor, I worked hard in that most of the junior level audit checking, ticking, vouching, tracing to documents, asking client questions, digging through histories of transactions was part and parcel of my daily work.

Answering review points, and compiling neat working papers to substantiate balances and to document controls of the client’s system were everyday stuff that I did. It was like that for two years before I “graduated” to become a team leader managing other auditors.

Being a team leader, I worked hard as well, answering to my audit manager while getting my people to deliver on their portions of the audit assignment.

It was a necessary step for me to understand how audit worked and it was part of the price to pay for earning my Certified Public Accountant (non-practising) certification.

Working Smart

For your hard work to be recognised, you need to work smart. This means getting the people who decide your promotion, bonuses and overall career development to understand what you’ve done for the organisation. It means to network, to get to know people from all levels within the organisation as well as to be able to determine what type of projects and assignments get you climbing the career ladder and not stagnating over time. Read more…

Related posts:

1. Financial freedom: it’s a mindset, really!
2. Expect the unexpected: navigating the potholes of financial freedom
3. Developing an unconventional life towards financial freedom