[Series] Achieving financial independence with Steem Intro 1
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![enter image description here](https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7737/16709762303_1edf2026cb_b.jpg)

This will be a series of posts on how to achieve financial independence using Steem. This series of posts is for people who want to learn and discuss different ways to think about money, and for people who truly despise the 9-5 salary worker lifestyle. If you're trapped in a salary worker lifestyle and you want to find an alternative then this series of posts is about how we can help each other free ourselves from that. Let's escape the salary worker lifestyle and teach others.



What does the salary worker lifestyle bring?
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https://youtu.be/FF4zlGfW7Ks



 - **Bosses.** Most people who have a salary job are employees and most employees have a boss.  
 - **Workplace politics.** Most people who have a salary job have to deal with the aspects such as workplace politics.  
 - **A slave to the clock.** Most people in this lifestyle do not get to set their own schedule. Their schedule is set by others and they have to work a certain amount of hours not just for the pay but to save face and or keep their jobs.
 - **Hard work can be discouraged.**  In salary work you can sometimes work very hard to make higher ups look good, who sometimes take the credit for your work as if it was theirs. You may see people who get raises for reasons other than merit.
 - **You have to go to work.** Not only are most salary workers a slave to the clock but they have to also go to some designated location just to work. In 2016 this makes little sense but it's tradition to go to work even when there are long traffic jams and lines to get coffee each morning. 
 - **You have to choose between arbitrary "full time" and "part time".**  The amount of hours you get are designated by arbitrary meaningless concepts like full time and part time. In reality if we look at the animal kingdom there is no full and part time. If we look far back at human history these concepts didn't exist until fairly recently. 


This isn't to discourage anyone who lives the salary worker lifestyle and who is happy with it. Some people for whatever reason are perfectly happy to live their lives working for others in this way. But if you are disgusted by this lifestyle then continue reading and have a look at this video below:


The salaryman lifestyle of Japan
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https://youtu.be/po8IPh64rVM



The salaryman lifestyle of Japan may be an indicator of the extreme version of the salary worker lifestyle globally. Many milennials look at videos like this and think it is totally ridiculous to live like this no matter how much money people get paid. Why do they do it? Because they need stable income to support their families? So this lifestyle for many is just a sacrifice, a means to an end.


https://youtu.be/NEdwrPwFo4Q


Japan offers a social compact where salarymen work for a company and have a job for life. This is distinctly different from how it is in the United States and this might indicate why people in Japan are willing to make greater sacrifices for their jobs. The company which treats employees like a family encourages the salary worker culture. But what if you could make a living as a blogger, enjoy your family, and not have to make these kinds of sacrifices anymore?


Bloggers have to get paid
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In order to free people it is important that bloggers can get paid. The key point is that they don't have to get paid a daily salary like a factory worker or salary worker. Bloggers need to get paid enough money to be financially independent, and how much that is, that minimum threshold, is a threshold which differs from location to location, from country to country. If you know a blogger is in the United States or Tokyo then you know the cost of living is high, so they will need to get more votes and rewards to reach financial independence than the bloggers in Nigeria. 

For this reason we cannot know for certain what is a big or small payout to a particular blogger. Most people would assume 20,000  USD is a large payout for the average American and they would be absolutely right. In most places in the United States, 20,000 USD is a year salary. In New York 20,000 USD might be enough for a month or two. This is because the cost of living in New York city is extremely high and 20,000 in a month is typical for some classes of workers in New York.

The threshold for financial independence
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This threshold is slightly different for everybody. This threshold might not be entirely measured in a dollar amount. But the point is that once a person has wealth beyond this minimum threshold, they are able to live off their own wealth indefinitely. This could be the person who has enough dividend paying stocks to live off their dividend payments for the rest of their life while getting a reasonable income for their location, or it could be in the form of a mountain of Steem Power which can give them weekly payouts for the rest of their life.

This isn't to say Steem Power is something people **SHOULD** pursue exclusively and it's not to think of Steem Power as an investment. It's to think of Steem Power as a tool in the fight for financial independence and as anyone knows, it's important to be diversified in terms of income streams if the goal is financial independence. Each reader can decide on their own wealth threshold, and determine what forms are most convenient for them to express their wealth, but Steem Power is important because it allows bloggers to express their wealth in a way which encourages financial independence at least as of now.


What are some of the benefits of the financially independent lifestyle?

 - **No bosses.**  No bosses, no bullshit, you're the boss of yourself if you choose to be or you can select someone to be the boss if you voluntarily want that. 
 - **Your workplace is mobile.**  Your workplace revolves around you, and it could be your laptop, it could be your smart phone, it could be your tape recorder, it's ultimately something you can carry about. Steemit could be the closest thing to a workplace and you go to work simply logging in.
 - **Work as hard as you need to.**  No one is micromanaging you, or on your back telling you what to do and how to do it. You work as hard as you deem necessary to accomplish your goals. It helps to be a perfectionist but there is no quota system. 
 - **You have time to enjoy your family.** Now you can be with the people you care about as often as you want. Your job is location independent so you can take them on vacations and tour the world while you work or you can work from home. 
 - **You aren't a slave to the clock anymore.** You can work when you want, sleep when you want, party when you want, and record all of it to upload to your vlog.


Promoting financial freedom while working to achieve it
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You can make posts, vlogs, and show the differences between the salary worker lifestyle and the lifestyle of a financially independent blogger. Even if you haven't yet achieved financial independence, you can help document the process of achieving financial independence as a sort of lifestyle lifelogger.  For this reason the travel blogs are very important because it is what helps to wake people up who are in lifestyles they hate to discover that it's possible to travel for a living.

When beautiful people **(notice I don't just say women!)** are posting travel pictures and talking about enjoying their life as a blogger, it is this which attracts many ordinary people who see how these people are enjoying themselves and who want to do the same. It's important that blogging remains fun and does not turn into something which resembles a salary job and in order to keep it fun it is important to remember that at this time being a professional blogger is considered an **alternative lifestyle** and is not mainstream. 

Normal people do not even know it's possible to have a career as a blogger and even if they think it is possible it's not currently associated with being financially independent. When people see that you can blog, go from rags to riches, or essentially become financially independent from the wage worker, then many people who currently are wage workers thinking it's the only noble way to make money will think to at least give it a try.


Show the Steem culture
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Did you know if you are self employed you can live in Japan quite easily? Japan offers a freelance VISA which means if you are successful on Steemit where you can make over $2500 a month then you can apply for this VISA. 

https://youtu.be/k0XavuFn_tA


And from Japan you can be a Steem ambassador where you can be a journalist to show how people in Japan are using Steem, or promote Steem to Japanese youth who do not want to be salary workers. Indeed, many Japanese do not want to follow their parents and despise the salaryman culture but they do not yet know Steemit exists. If you're in Japan, or just interested, you can bring Steem culture to Japan.

The first generation of financially independent Steemians will be the people who help create and show Steem culture to the world. You will have the opportunity to live anywhere you want, to give people around the world hope, and to show how Steem changes lives. You'll be able to promote Steem while also promoting financial independence as a concept.


I hope you enjoyed this post, if you did there are several others from [Extie DaSilva](https://steemit.com/@extie-dasilva) that you might like.
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