I try to have long term goals but it's very discouraging when you can't have any savings since it goes to pay basic needs, so you cannot start any sort of meaningful life proyect. I've already given up on owning my own place and bringing girls there and generally living like a normal healthy human being. Im stuck in my parents house for life until I inherit it or some shit.
When I was 12 I realized I need to get to Helsinki or I would be stuck in a village where the distance to the nearest elementary school is 25 km and employment was about 30%. (My brother currently runs the farm and both parents are working outside in addition, to make the ends meet.) So I needed to undergo the following, among others:
- Working on farms (several employers), potatoes, picking strawberries, manufacturing & selling products, general farmwork, to raise money
- Buying and playing every title of the Sid Meier's Civilization series to enhance strategic thinking
- Saving money whenever possible, especially never buying a drink (even at my own sophomore party), always drinking from the toilet tap, going a whole day without drinking if tap water wasn't available, walking up to 8 km habitually just to save money, never buying clothes or food until 18
- Investing in stocks in the age of 16, in Russian market when 18, it went down 75% in 2 weeks since I bought
- Biking 22 km/day instead of taking a subsidized bus, to save money; hopping off bus 1 km early because the fare was cheaper
- Delivering spam to ppl's mailbox, twice per week, up to 830 mailboxes at a time, while trying to study
- Scavenging the trashbins for food, living up to 6 weeks without even once buying groceries, during uni
- Falling victim to multiple scams and money-making schemes
- First company went bankrupt and due to good luck, I did not end up losing all
- Second company was still making loss after 5 years, so essentially I subsidized it with my time and lived off wife's salary
- An arm of the government of Finland confiscated all my assets once for 7 months, no charges, no compensation
- Only occasionally had a car or two (or up to 8 when we had a car rental agency)
- Never owned real estate before buying the castle
...
- Making my first million at the age of 29, a mere 17 years after making the commitment to do so.
=> Make a target and stick to it. The unalterable laws of statistics favor the determined, if you just roll the ball enough many times
17 years sounds like much, but really if you are now 23, you'll then be 40. Not everyone who is 40 has a million euros! Also you are older in the beginning, so it's possible you can do it ~4 years sooner just for that reason. Then the general speed of things has increased a lot, shave off an additional 2 years. So at 34, you'll be a millionaire!
Thats a great read!
I am in a similar situation, working my ass off in 2 jobs while giving tutorials in university and trying to finish my studies. And investing/saving every penny i can into Bitcoins.
I am not doing it as extreme as you did, but i only need 250 per month - i think thats a good number. Every above that number goes into Bitcoins.
GiveBTCpls, i have a lot friends like you. Blaming everyone else or the universe for their situation, but in reality its always their own fault.
For example, they re paying 40/month for their smartphone contracts, and then they are surprised, that they have no money.
If you are paying more than 10 per month for your phone, well then you are one of them.
I believe that we do NOT have enough facts about GiveBTCpls to know for sure that he has put himself into his current predicament. Also, I believe that people can have runs of bad luck and very difficult obstacles to overcome. NONETHELESS, it does seem that GiveBTCpls has demonstrated what seems to be a considerable amount of negative and defeatist thinking and projections of his current predicament.
I do agree; however, that GiveBTCpls needs to work on making himself a more sympathetic person by taking more responsibility over his destiny. There is NO guarantee that his creation and maintenance of positive actions is going to result in positive outcomes;however, it seems that he needs to devise a variety of plans and alternative plans in order to attempt to make progress towards tangible goals. I believe that his assertion that he is working to accumulate BTC - and striving to achieve at least 1BTC on or before the end of 2014 is a step in the right direction. He also said that he is involved in course work, too... NONETHELESS, he may need to create some additional plans and back up plans and keep working towards his plans in order to achieve financial freedom.
Personally, it is my belief that financial freedom DOES NOT come from any specific number (such as 1 million euros or 100 BTC); however, it seems to come from a person being able to comfortably live within his/her means - and having a passive income that allows for such, would be better than having to work... or at least whatever work that a guy/gal does is on his own terms and b/c s/he wants to... NOT b/c he has to in order to survive.
There seems to be a variety of definitions and perceptions of what is financial freedom, and I tend to believe that a person can still retain some obligations and responsibilities while maintaining financial freedom (and where those lines are drawn is gonna vary from person to person).