[caption id="attachment_2661" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Photo by Hamed Saber"][/caption] This post arises from the gentle prodding of La Papillion (aka Bullythebear) on the state of my personal finance and financial freedom blog posts of late. He commented that I seemed to be busy and the frequency of my posts had gone down. The reasons for me posting less are several. The most obvious one is that some of my spare time is spent looking after my daughter at home as well as handling a couple of admininstrative issues relating to buying my new place. Another is that I’ve started to think and reflect more about what it means to be financially free and how I’m starting to fundamentally relook at whether investments and a superior rate of return is the way to achieve financial freedom or to build up my income generating skills and abilities to get the maximum salary and bonuses in my career to build up investible capital. Developing Lenses and Frameworks I’ve attended a three day workshop on strategy and from my discussion with the trainer, I’ve realised that the models and frameworks to review and develop strategy really are lens in which we perceive the world around us. The conceptual frameworks and models allow us to slice and dice the issues and concerns of what’s happening around and within organisations  so as to come to a common way of looking at things. The journey towards financial freedom is also a strategy encompassing the following formula or framework: Financial freedom = passive income > living expenses. And the way we achieve financial freedom is from:

• Living within our means
• Saving and investing
• Growing our means
• Protecting our means

Growing Our Means Read more...