76% of people earning $50,000 or less live paycheck to paycheck.¹
For 20 years I earned way below that figure. Actually, I didn’t even have a “paycheck”—I was a gigging musician with no idea what money was coming in when.
So why did I stick at it so long?
Well, I believed financial success was reserved for people who were willing to sacrifice their wellbeing… Or their integrity… Or both.
And I was unwilling to make that trade.
If I’d known then that I could’ve kept my wellbeing and integrity, plus made better money than my dad was making back then, I’d have saved myself 20 years of pain.
In this section of Freetirement Foundations, I’m going to save you at least that much. Most people never learn what I’m about to teach you—and so live their whole lives at the mercy of other people’s decisions.
My father set a strong example of a traditional work ethic.
He was an insurance broker, and he never denies that his work was enormously stressful. But he did well financially. My father had plenty of evidence that sacrificing wellbeing for material gain was worthwhile. So it made sense for him to encourage the same behaviour in me.
But to me it always felt off.
“In this world of infinite possibilities,” I wondered, “can’t it be possible to get paid and feel good?”
My world was very different to the one my dad grew up in. There was a PC in my infant school classroom which, though it was basic, stood as a symbol of the new options that would open up for my generation as we matured.
Still, not a single person encouraged me to “go my own way” in life. Fortunately, I had just enough of a “fuck you” streak in me to decide I was going to become a pro musician.
But that “fuck you” streak was eventually compromised.
I remember a conversation with my dad over his favourite modest lunch of ham & cheese rolls.
“You can’t play only rock & metal music, Dan,” he told me. “How will you pay rent? I know you don’t want to live here forever.”