you don't need £100k to be free
4 unfashionable skills that gave me more options than my net worth ever could | fhg #107
I haven’t reached my financial goals. I’ve made significant progress in the last 6 years, going from debt and living hand to mouth—to now having a net-worth over £100k, but I’m not financially independent yet. Meaning, my assets don’t yet pay for my life in full.
However, what I do have is a life with many more options than before. For example, after travelling for 7 months, I lost someone close to me, and I was able to semi-pause my life (not knowing I’d need to). I had the option to be flexible. Do you know how priceless that is? Having a life that isn’t just a sequence of obligations?
When I went back to work out how that was actually possible for me, the £100k in my net worth had very little to do with it. Truthfully, £100,000 doesn’t fund an amount of time of flexibility. What funded it was that my life is cheap to run, and income was easier to earn.
𝜗ৎ In this issue:
the irrefutable reason I have options
4 lost arts to optionality that become unfashionable
why having agency is cooler than control
✦ the irrefutable reason I have options
I have options because I have a personal brand. Posting content online is what lets me earn enough for my life without clocking in somewhere at 9am.
The price of entry for building that brand was that deep, soul-crushing embarrassment of being a terrible creator before I was a good one. Unfortunately for me, I started posting online about finance before it was a ‘thing’ to be a creator, no less someone sharing financial literacy tips online.
I started posting when I was still in debt and still living in my overdraft. I was not good at it—both my money and creating content. I got better because I kept going, and along the way I picked up skills I now get paid for. It turned into an income stream that pays my bills.
⟡ 4 lost arts that became culturally unfashionable
Having a personal brand allowed me to create an income stream that’s flexible. But making that income stream map onto a low-cost lifestyle took rediscovering lost arts.
Thinking about financial independence forces you down a path of optimisation: F.I.R.E. (financial independence, retire early) means maximising your savings rate, negotiating everything, creating multiple streams of income, and inherently creating a layer of financial surveillance in your life.
Instead, I implore you to think about the below arts. These things helped me live with more options without necessarily reaching financial independence, which will ultimately just exacerbate the level of optionality, and therefore quality of life that I have when I do reach it.
The lost art of inner contentment. A.K.A. upgrading things out of habit instead of intention. We don’t know how to be happy, therefore we don’t know what we want.
You buy something for pleasure.
You see someone with a more desirable version.
Your pleasure becomes inadequacy.
The new purchase becomes ordinary.
The cycle begins again.
Lifestyle inflation is always the 100 small upgrades to feelings you already had. The skill here is being able to still like your own stuff after you've seen someone else's, which inherently asks you to like and know yourself better than anyone else.
The lost art of being resourceful. I have never been a fan of cutting something out of your life cold turkey. It’s the equivalent of slapping a plaster onto a deep, gashing, bleeding wound. Instead of deprivation, we can be more resourceful—it asks what you can do with what’s already here.
Repairing instead of replacing. Hosting instead of going out. Cooking from what’s already in the fridge. Restyling something you own so it feels new. Borrowing the thing rarely used.
When I was 27 I started creating Pinterest boards for items I already had in my wardrobe. I became resourceful instead of trying to cut a spending habit and what I got back was a better sense of style, fashion and financial stability.
There is also a social dimension to being more resourceful. Much of modern dat consumption culture is individualised: everyone buys their own tools, entertainment, and experiences. Resourcefulness can be communal; sharing, swapping, hosting, teaching and making do together. It helps you build a village, and get rich with that village.
The lost art of of the ability to wait. Delayed gratification has been discussed as a productivity and financial virtue, but it is also a cultural defence against manufactured urgency. Everywhere, money is being converted into speed: buy now, pay later, same-day delivery, instant investing, immediate upgrades, constant, on-demand access to new experiences.
Waiting creates an essential, liminal space between desire and purchase. That space is precious and it builds real health in our bodies, real purpose in our careers and real meat in our bank accounts. It’s one of 7 key skills to being Financially Hot.
In the FHG’s world, marinating lists, being difficult, practising discernment and proving the purchase is how we delay gratification. Creating liminal space between desire and purchase is the coolest skill you can build.
The lost art of an honest limit. This is truly a lost art because of how hard it is to disappoint people, or be the one in a different financial season to someone else. We’d rather sit in our financial discomfort than say what we need to. But a limit is information, it lets people respond to your actual life, it lets resentment dissolve and community arrive.
The skill is saying it without building an elaborate excuse around it. “I’m keeping this month cheap.” “I’d love to see you, can we do X instead.” “Can we pick somewhere cheaper?” You don’t owe anyone a full breakdown, but you do owe them the truth so that you can maintain a community.
This is again an important social skill: saying what you can and cannot afford. In the UK, money remains uncomfortable to discuss, and people avoid financial conversations even when those conversations could help them. So once you figure out your financial season, tell people about it. Let people in. Build a community to enjoy life with when the limits eventually lift.
꩜ why having agency is cooler than control
Financial agency is not the same as financial control. Agency means you can make choices that reflect your priorities. Control is the belief that if you are disciplined enough, you can eliminate uncertainty altogether.
Our financial problems can’t just be solved with individual discipline, so the magic really does lie in asking ourselves what forms of control we have available vs where solidarity, policy or better institutions are needed instead.
In pursuit of optionality, the more financially agentic questions to ask yourself is: what do I actually want in life? What makes me content, how can I be more resourceful, how can I be okay with waiting and how can I be more honest? Especially for the financial season you’re in.
The future of our financial wellbeing depends less on becoming better optimisers (control) and more on recovering the ability to experience enough (having agency).
Until next week,
— Dev xo
The lifestyle inflation part is so true, especially when there are SO MANY points of comparison both online and offline. That’s why social media can be a financial decision as much as a social one!!