Achieving the dream of financial freedom

A lot of people ask for a lot of different kinds of financial advice. Sometimes, the advice is about inputs, as in, I have X amount of money, what should I do with it. Sometimes it is about outputs; I need X amount in five years so what do I need to do to ensure that happens. Sometimes it combines both. All these are fine and have quite well-established and sensible ways of selecting a solution. However, there's one such demand for advice that is really hard to respond to, and that is, 'financial independence'. This may appear to be a vague term but actually signifies a roughly similar thing to different people, which is, not having to worry about money ever. This is a common-enough dream. Since the daily grind of earning money dominates our lives, a permanent relief from this is