When is Enough, Enough? · Dion Talk Financial Freedom

When is Enough, Enough?

Let's go ahead and hit all the controversial topics today. Yesterday I was having a conversation with

on X, and due to me not being a premium member, my responses had to be very limited. So, let's dive into this topic further here.

The way this conversation goes is that the goalposts never stop moving. People go from the goal of financial freedom to empire. Let's dissect that a little bit, and to do so, I will tell part of my story.

When I started my second real estate life, I was making $750 a week with a family of 7, and all I wanted was financial freedom. So, by my math, $3500 per month would make me financially free. But guess what, it sucks to live off $3500 per month. So, I changed my goal (I wasn't living off the passive income yet, but I changed my goal). So, I thought, let's make it $5k per month. Then my real estate hit $5k per month passive income. But guess what, with a family of 7, $5k per month sucks as well. In 2022, I moved into a paid-off house, no debt, and a job making $1k per week, and it was tough. So, I changed my goal to $10k per month - even though my real estate was making more than my job, it still wasn't what I thought it would be - plus Covid happened and spiked the prices of everything, so we were financially free, but it still wasn't fun.

In June of 2022, I was fired from my job and started living off cash flow. My real estate was pulling in $10k per month or so, and we started living off of $1500 wk (6500 per month), which is about the average income in Indiana. We still qualified for government health care, had no extra money for vacation, had no debt, but if big expenses came up, we were strapped; it wasn't fun. Now the narrative out there is we should stop moving the goalposts; I have been financially free for 4 years - but it sucked, which is why the Lumberjack talked about Fat Fire or Obese Fire. I was financially free and fired; sure, I could have gone back to work, but who wants to do that? So, I created partnerships and went full-time investor. Now I work a ton on my properties and my partnerships, and I now want to hit $50k per month NET. Why? Because I created an ideal budget, and I want to hit that number ($25k per month), and I want my BUSINESS to thrive as well, and if I am eating all the profits, I can't grow.

It turns out, as you move the goal posts, you get better, more efficient, you can help more people, and you can teach others. However, if you are teaching and not doing, well... you shouldn't be teaching. But, at the beginning, if I had set a $50k monthly NET number, was that realistic? Shoot, it might not be realistic now, but the Matt Parrott back then wasn't capable of the goals and lifestyle I have now. Which brings me to my next point. As we grow, we become different people; life changes, my daughter was recently married, and all of those things bring about different goals, so yes, YOUR GOAL POSTS MUST MOVE! My dad recently turned 70, and his goal posts are changing; he wants to own less. Changing your goals is a constant, and realizing that your old goals are not adequate or are outdated, or didn't achieve what you wanted them to achieve, isn't bad. And if you want to change your goals just to make more money, and you are now capable of that, when you didn't know you could BECOME capable of that before, that's ok also.

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When is Enough, Enough?