Are you tired of worrying about money and ready to build habits that accumulate wealth? It’s not really that difficult. Here’s a quick pitch for 2 basic steps to financial freedom.

Let’s be honest, it’s not rocket science so much as time and effort.  Apply these 2 basic steps to your everyday life and watch your money start growing. If you don’t have more money after 3 to 6 months, we need to talk.

The 2 Basic Steps To Financial Freedom

1.) Make more money than you spend.

2.) Invest that extra money you’ve saved to start earning more money on it’s own.

The thing is, you can’t just apply these steps when you want.  You HAVE to be RELENTLESS. You have to make a conscious effort to apply these two steps as often as possible in your life if you want to see change.

Step 1 – Make More Spend Less

Depending on your habits and strengths, applying step 1 can mean either figuring out ways to make more income, or it can mean cutting back on expenses.  Both are valid. Just do whichever comes more naturally to you.  Or choose both and watch your capital really sprout.

Some people are better at figuring out more ways to bring in income; they might commonly monetize their hobbies or enjoy selling things they no longer use around the house. Other people are born-naturals when it comes to budgets and eliminating “impulse buying” from their lives.  And some people just love the challenge of adding new habits to their skillset that will boost their finances. Whatever your pleasure, just be sure you’re making more money every month than you’re spending.

If you’re NOT making more than you’re spending, you’re going to build debt, and debt is the opposite of working towards financial freedom.  Debt is when you owe money to other people (like a credit card or loan).

The credit card companies love debt. If it were their choice, they’d keep you in debt your whole life. Basically making it so 5 days a week, you wake up and go to work in order to make money to pay them. The conversation looks like this:

Credit Card: “Hi, let us help you buy this purse/jacket/car/vacation…and then for the next 10 months you’ll work for us.”

You: “Well, I do love having things now.”

Credit Card: “We hoped so, in fact, we’re banking on it.”

Consumption can be an addiction like anything else. Have you ever met that person that has a closet full of clothes and at least 1/2 of the items still have the price tag on them? That person may encounter a few troubles if they’re still trying to build their wealth.  And that’s ok. We all have different goals. This blog might not be for them. They can try this fashion blog.

Step 2 – Start Investing Your Extra Cash

After you’ve started saving some money, the next step is to put it to use. If financial freedom is your goal, the best thing to do is to buy things that will make you more money. Yes, there are things that do that.

What if instead of buying a shirt you never wear and giving it away someday, you bought something that became more valuable over time and you could sell later for more money (unless you’re good at doing that with the shirts you buy, then you should seriously debate that as a legit business model for you). When you gather enough assets or things that continually make more money, you don’t even have to work a 9-5 job anymore. You are free from worrying about doing things for anyone else.

There are all kinds of techniques that can be applied on top of the 2 basic steps to financial freedom, and personally I love learning about them. That’s what this blog is for. But for me it helps to simplify things sometimes and remember the basics.

Save money. Invest money.

If you can do those two things, then you can grow your money. If you’re struggling with the first one, check out this blog post on The Richest Man in Babylon, one of my favorite books about saving.

Leave your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear your opinion on the 2 basic steps to financial freedom or if it should be boiled down another way?