#22: Securing Basic Needs

Lifestyle itself is built through trial, error, and practice...daily practice.

You can practice how to build a business, invest, travel hack to different countries, exist with time freedom, build meaningful relationships, and even have 3 full-time careers at the same time – whatever makes sense for you.

The key to it all is mindset.

It’s understanding you have ability to make your extraordinary, ordinary, now.

Understanding if people around you talk about doing average, typical things, and you accept that dialogue, then you too will do average, typical things.

But that’s not what we want.

My coaching students redesigning their lifestyle deep dive into 24+ Try Life On principles with me. The principles are a “starter” that gets us thinking critically about how we approach and solve “blockers” to designed lives.

I’ve added the Try Life On principles sheet for you to keep handy.


Download the TLO Principles Here

In this newsletter, I'm going to explain one in detail, the importance – and power – of covering your basic needs first.

Secure your basic financial needs first.

By far, this is one of the Try Life On principles I work with my coaching students on the most.

For some reason (school, Instagram, friends), we’ve fallen under a spell that we need to have millions of dollars to be “free,” so then we can go Try Life On and really live. Well, that is simply not the case.

We don’t need to do it like that, but folks are simply convinced we need a lot of money. So, we waste years chasing $20MM schemes, when it is completely unnecessary because, usually, a few $000 will do.

Here's how practical freedom really works:

1. Get your basic needs covered.

2. That allows you to control your time.

3. When you control your time, you have the ability to Try Life On more. You have time freedom – mental and physical space to do what it is you want. And those experiences and relationships you have time for create more relationships and experiences. Life starts to compound on itself. And you can do this because…

4. You are not financially obligated to anyone (especially an employer), and now you have time to access the planet and earth as intended.

And here’s why it’s important and key to living...

I firmly believe what people want is not money. It’s the experiences they think people with lots of money have. But really what’s needed is some money coupled with lots of time. But people are wasting lots of time chasing money.

Make sense?

Get your basic needs covered and you're onto something.

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How it went for me:
Monthly Family Basic needs (since approx. 2010 to now)

- $2400 mortgage, insurance, etc. (humble U.S. based home)
- $2000 bills, gas, food, other
- $2000 kids, life, travel, fun
- $0 on cars and junk (my 2005 Infiniti is just fine)

My mindset was and has always been secure my family needs and I will always be in control (and not at the mercy of an employer, for example).

By 2012, I met that need of $6400 by cashflow coming from 6 paid off condos (they were all around $100K a piece, U.S. East (Maryland and Virginia)). I used my paychecks from work systematically to buy them over a decade.

When I got up to 8, some of them appreciated in value. I decided to use the equity from 2 of them and paychecks from work to pay off rest.

I was systematic and disciplined about it. Any raises or found money (i.e. tax returns) was always used to accelerate the process. And this was possible because I generally kept my standard of living at a normal level, not increasing it every time I got a raise or promotion.

Now here’s the key no one thinks about (and why folks misunderstand the power of covering basic needs):

Once basic needs are covered, you're beholden to no one. (Read this again. If you absorb anything, absorb THIS!)

When your needs are covered, life opens in ways not easily explainable; and it does that because now you are in control of your…

TIME.

And as I said above, when we control time, life opens in a way folks must experience to understand.

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We don't need $20MM to be free, yet folks chase it for decades.

What your basic needs number?

Use work to create income streams to cover it. Or leverage a virtual job to cover it, be mobile and live more.

Life changes from there.

No $20MM deal needed.

Yes. You can.

If I can help you, reach out to me at [email protected].

Hope this helps you today.

Maurice