Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook

“90% of financial advisors are really just brokers in disguise.”

Thanks to our busy lifestyles, more people are finding it necessary to hire a financial advisor to help plan their financial journey. However, surveys show that 60% of Americans believe that financial advisors don’t act in the consumer's best interests. Furthermore, many of the largest financial institutions in the country have been involved in schemes to defraud and exploit consumers.

This doesn’t mean that the individuals working in the financial industry are inherently evil. The problem is that we have a system that incentivizes maximizing profits over people. Financial advisors are paid obscene commissions to prioritize their employer’s interests at the client's expense.

The majority of advisors are simply brokers whose job is to get you to buy terrible financial products made by firms they are affiliated with. These firms either find loopholes to evade legal consequences or willingly pay paltry fines when caught. With such a broken financial system, you have to learn how to identify the right financial advisor to truly grow your wealth.

“It’s not enough to know a principle. You have to practice it. Execution is everything.”

The average person treats investing like gambling. They think that they can build lasting wealth through luck and perfect timing. However, most successful investors in the world don’t rely on luck. They have a specific set of principles they follow every time they make an investment decision.

By using these principles, successful investors take the complexity out of investing. They use specific investing patterns to block out all the noise so they can obsessively focus on the things that matter the most. You need to internalize these same principles and make them the basic foundation of your investment decisions.

“Many people avoid financial risk because uncertainty terrifies them.”

In life, there’s no such thing as absolute certainty. This is especially true in the financial world. Financial markets tend to be very volatile, and when some people lose their money, they vow never to invest again. This is a mistake because if you make decisions based on fear, you’ll never achieve financial freedom.

As an investor, you have to be willing to take risks even amid uncertainty. Market crashes and corrections are a normal part of investing, and you never know for sure how some assets will perform on any given day. But uncertainty shouldn’t be an excuse to sit on the sidelines holding onto your cash.

You have to arm yourself with the knowledge of what to do during a bear market. When others are fleeing in fear, you can buy up a lot of assets because everything is on sale. By finding internal certainty and staying prepared, you can build wealth in the face of a market crash.

“The single biggest threat to your financial well-being is your own brain.”

The human brain is wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It translates anything that induces pain as a threat to be avoided. This was a useful trait back in our hunter-gatherer days. However, in today’s marketplace, it can be extremely damaging. For example, your brain interprets a market crash as a mortal threat, and this triggers a panic response that can lead to you making dumb decisions.

Instead of buying more stocks during a crash, most people succumb to fear and sell their assets at a loss. They then stay away from the markets until prices have gone back up. This is one of the biggest mistakes average investors make. On the flip side, wealthy investors avoid such errors by finding ways to master their thoughts and emotions.

As an investor, you have to find ways to avoid the many mental biases that cause you to make bad financial decisions. It is only by understanding your psychology that you can create simple systems and procedures that can protect your investment.

“Real wealth is emotional, psychological, and spiritual.”

Financial freedom is something we all desire. However, there’s no guarantee that financial wealth will make you happy or fulfilled. Many millionaires and billionaires are miserable and struggle to find joy in their lives. This is not the kind of life you want to live. Apart from seeking more money, you need to aim for things that build you emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

Real wealth is the ability to live an extraordinary quality of life on your own terms. It can be as simple as having a beautiful garden that gives you joy and peace of mind every day. For some people, writing poems or raising kids provides enough emotional fulfillment. As long as you strive to create a deep sense of inner fulfillment, you are already building real wealth.