Freelance Finance

How to save money fast…10 ways to get out of debt now…How to become a millionaire….and so on and so forth and blah, blah, ad nauseum, BLAH. With all of this free information available about personal finance, you’d think that Americans would be walking around in stellar financial shape. But alas, mon frere, you would be oh so wrong.

The national savings rate is at its lowest point since the Depression.

For the first time since 1945, Americans, as a whole, have more home debt than they do equity.

I’ll resist the temptation to go into detail about the impending “R-word.” Suffice it to say, things look grim.

I have to think that some of it has to do with how we view ourselves financially and our ideas about what it means to be financially secure. And for those of us who are independent workers, battling negative financial image can be tough.

I was breezing back through Stanley and Danko’s “The Millionaire Next Door” last night, marveling at the ideas of perception and reality when it comes to wealth. I also came across a couple of my favorite stats, the kind that cast a little ray of sunshine on what can sometimes be a cloudy financial picture for the independent worker.

The book notes that self-employed people are four times more likely to become millionaires than those who are employed by someone else. FOUR TIMES. In fact, two-thirds of the millionaires they identified were self-employed. This site is not about getting rich quick or telling people easy ways to earn more cash. However, if garnering some well-deserved wealth happens to be a potential consequence of the self-employed life, why not use this juicy little statistic as motivation?

When the independent working routine is getting you down, remind yourself of some of the benefits of your chosen lifestyle (or the lifestyle you happen to be in, even if you didn’t choose it for yourself). To get you started:

1. Your chances of becoming wealthy are much greater in your current employment situation than if you were working for someone else.

2. You can’t get laid off.

3. If you work at home, the current gas prices have a much smaller effect on your earning potential.

4. Since no one else is paying your benefits, you don’t have to worry that they’ll be cut back in order to make sure some shareholder can finish his or her spread in Montana.

5. Your earning potential is unlimited.

In short, YOU are in control of your employment and financial destiny. The sky is the limit, and you can get there wearing the same pair of sweatpants five days in a row. So strap in, chin up and remember that there are no limits besides the ones you yourself impose.