We all desire to live in financial security. What comes after that is to achieve financial freedom. In other words, realizing a lifestyle you’ve dreamt of and not merely securing your and your family’s economic safety. You want something more, something that seems like an entry on your bucket list. And yes, before actually making a plan, reaching financial freedom sounds like a heck of a task.

Appjobs has asked 20 vastly followed experts, who are still on their way to be financially free, or are already enjoying the fruits of their labor about the techniques they use to achieve financial freedom and to share a piece of advice for those who are at the beginning of theirs. Read about their personal stories, their approach to and understanding of financial freedom, and get inspired. It’s time for you to stop asking the question of how to achieve financial freedom and become debt-free.

Regardless of your socioeconomic status, you can start your own journey now and secure a stress-free future for yourself.

How to Get out of Debt and Achieve Financial Freedom?

Eric, Personal Profitability

Start by setting reasonable expectations, timelines, and goals for what financial freedom means to you and how you can get there. Cutting expenses is an important part of the equation, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on your income. Unlike expenses, which you can only cut so much, income can increase forever. If you automate your savings and investments, you can make progress toward your big financial goals without lifting a finger. You might be closer to your financial independence number than you realize!

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About Eric
Eric Rosenberg is a finance, travel, and technology writer in Ventura, California. He is a former bank manager and corporate finance and accounting professional who left his day job in 2016 to take his online side hustle full-time. He has in depth experience writing about banking, credit cards, investing, and other financial topics, and is an avid travel hacker. When away from the keyboard, Eric enjoys exploring the world, flying small airplanes, discovering new craft beers, and spending time with his wife and little girls. You can connect with him at Personal Profitability or EricRosenberg.com.





Michelle, Making Sense Of Cents

My top piece of advice for achieving financial freedom is to find ways to make extra money. Yes, saving money and learning how to manage your money are all just as important, but I think that making more money is something that can help you to pay off your debt quickly and reach financial freedom even sooner. For me, I was able to side hustle like crazy and that allowed me to pay off my $40,000 in student loan debt in just 7 months.

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About Michelle
Michelle created the personal finance and lifestyle blog in order to help her improve her finances (one example – due to this, she was able to pay off $38,000 in student loans in 7 months), keep track of her progress, and to help readers improve their finances along the way.




Brian, My Millennial Guide

In recent years, studies have highlighted several ways for Americans to stay positive with their relationship with money. In general, once you get a sense of your finances, do you like what you see? It can be easy to think the worst when you see how much in debt you are in. But there is always a way to get out of even the worst possible financial situations. Try and stay positive no matter how dire your financial situation is, or isn’t. Your financial situation can always improve, it is important to stay vigilant in your financial wellbeing but don’t forget to smell the roses, or enjoy or appreciate what is often ignored.

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About Brian
Brian Meiggs founded My Millennial Guide after 6 years of Financial, Accounting, Mortgage, and Credit Lending experience in Virginia and Washington D.C. Brian has a Finance degree from Virginia Commonwealth University. He’s spent the last 5+ years writing about personal finance and been quoted in several online publications, including Yahoo! Finance, NASDAQ, MSN Money, AOL, Discover Bank, and GOBankingRates.



Andrew, Family Money Plan

When you start on, what I like to call, operation financial freedom, you need to look at what financial freedom will look like to you individually.

On a basic level, you will need to make sure your income from all sources is more than your expenses. So you need to focus on two things.

  1. Lowering your spending and on-going expenses to an amount you feel is realistic, and
  2. Growing your passive income, and other types of income, to a point where it exceeds those expenses.

Start to examine your spending and look at your monthly costs. Question everything about your spending and look for ways to earn more money. Then use that money to build passive income and build your nest egg to the point where you can live of the residuals (like interest or dividends depending on your strategy).

The process is pretty straight forward, like most things it’s sticking to it that can be tricky. But when you take a long term approach to it, you will find that it’s easier to do things in the day to day living of your life.

This isn’t an overnight thing, so make sure you appreciate and understand the road you are starting down. It’s worth it!

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About Andrew
Andrew Daniels is a personal finance writer and founder of Family Money Plan, a site dedicated to helping family live their best financial lives. He is also the co-founder of Trendy Money and Millennial Homeowner.


Lance, Money Manifesto

If you want to get started on your path to financial freedom, it helps to figure out where you’re starting from and where you ultimately want to go. Start by dreaming up your ideal lifestyle. Based on that lifestyle, you can figure out how much money you’ll need to be able to live that lifestyle long term. Once you have the goal set, it’s time to figure out where you’re at now. Figure out what your current income and expenses are, as well as your current net worth. Based on all of this information, formulate a plan to get you to your goal based on your desired timeline. Since you’ll be working toward your ideal lifestyle, you should be plenty motivated to continue working toward your goal over a long period of time. Unfortunately, achieving financial freedom rarely happens overnight. That said, nothing worth having is easy.

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About Lance
Lance Cothern founded his personal finance blog, Money Manifesto, in 2012. He is a well-known personal finance focused freelance writer, as well. He currently writes for U.S. News & World Report, Credit Karma, My Bank Tracker and many other publications. When he’s not busy writing about personal finance, you can find him with his wife and son hanging out at the beach.



Robb, A Richer You

I recommend 3 steps for achieving financial freedom:

  1. Commit to saving at least 20% of your income, and strive to reach 50%.
  2. Lower your 3 biggest costs to help reach the goal above – often this is housing, transportation, and food.
  3. Increase your income as much as possible. Ask for a raise, start a side hustle, or start a business on the side.

If you’re able to save and invest 50% of your income for just 10 years, you’ll be very close to reaching a point of financial independence where you’ll never need to work again.

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About Robb
ARicherYou.com is a website where Rob shares strategies he’s learned on ways to build a successful side hustle, invest your money wisely, and save money on big purchases (he’s received close to $20,000 in free travel).




Aaron, Three Thrifty Guys

I feel that the quickest and surest way to financial freedom is ownership. Whether that be a business, or property or investments – people who are interested in achieving financial freedom need to practice one of these things. Of course, you can save your way to financial freedom – but the way I am going about it is through running a business (we have a publication + online properties). I’ve also owned rental property, so that is another way to have money coming in. The goal is to obtain extra streams of income coming your way that offset all your expenses. When you have achieved this, you are financially free. Of course, a chunk of savings is a good idea too – but ownership is a sure way to becoming financially free.

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About Three Thrifty Guys
They run a personal finance site devoted to helping folks keep a few more dollars in people’s pockets.


Sarah, Sarah Titus

Ten years ago I was homeless. Today, I make multi-millions online from the comfort of my home. It’s not been an easy journey, I tell you that, but it’s been one that has been worth every second I’ve spent cultivating a life of saving and earning more money.
The number one thing I started doing after my ex-husband left our family was to get out of the homeless shelter. I began watching every penny I had. Before, I would get lazy and buy things here or there, never thinking it mattered. Well, it DOES! Dollars add up and before you know it, you’re in major debt like I was. As I was watching every dollar spent, I realized how little I REALLY needed to survive. I didn’t need fancy things or fast food all the time. I just needed to cover basic living expenses for me and my two little ones.

After that, I began trying to earn more money. For me, that was selling in an online shop. While I had been selling for years prior, I took it seriously and started my OWN shop online and began working it full-time. I had over 600 products and was making really good money. I saved every penny I could that was extra. My goal was one year’s living expenses.

Then, I started blogging. Started making money from that. Saved every penny. Eventually got myself out of debt and went on to pay cash for a brand new SUV. Finally, I was where I wanted to be. Nice home. Nice car. The good life.

It won’t happen overnight. But it’s all about not giving up and taking things one step at a time. Start slow. Start with watching your money. Where does it go? Can you cut things out? I recently ditched a $90 satellite TV bill for Hulu and Netflix. It’s $20/month total now for me and saves me $840/year. I took off long distance on my home phone plan. I have a cell phone where I can use long distance for free if I need to. Little things like that all add up over time.

Once you have your bills as low as they can humanly go, THEN start earning extra money. Not before. Because what does it matter if you make more money if it all flies out the window anyway? So, start with getting everything as low as you can.

After you’re out of debt, out of the mess, and you’re at the good life you want, you can start scaling back hours. I literally only work 9-10 hours a week and make really good money online, all while being home with my kids. You don’t have to work your life away, you just have to be super specific and productive in the time that you DO work, so you get ahead quick.

Whatever you do, don’t give up. You can do it. It took me many years and maybe it’ll take you a few years to get to a breathing point too. That’s okay. You didn’t get in the mess you’re in overnight and it takes time to dig your way out. The best thing is to not give up. You’ll get there if you keep trying, one step at a time.

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About Sarah
After being homeless, this single stay-at-home mom wouldn’t let anything stop her from going after her dreams. Now, Sarah Titus makes $5 million/year online working part-time. She is most known for her ability to save money, completely rock sales in a Shopify store, and create beautiful printables that help moms organize the chaos in their lives.



Chonce, My Debt Epiphany

My best advice for someone looking to achieve financial freedom is to give up monthly payments. Our whole society is built on the fact that you can buy stuff now and pay for it later. Every time I am faced with a purchase small or large, I am tempted by myself and others to just finance it or use a credit card. Don’t fall for this trick! When you say no to most forms of debt, it frees up your money and allows you to actually choose what you do with it. Instead of having to make payments on your furniture, car, television, etc. you can actually live and enjoy your life.

If you’re just starting out, the best thing you can do is get on a budget. I know it this sounds like such basic advice, but a budget can truly change your life. There is nothing like having a plan for your money and knowing exactly where it’s going. People don’t reach financial freedom by luck or accident. They have a clear plan and strategy and that starts with a budget.

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About Chonce
Chonce is a personal finance blogger and freelance writer who enjoys sharing debt stories (as she and her husband work their way out of $40,000 in debt) along with talking about saving, budgeting, conscious spending and improving your financial house.



Kamilah, Focused Spender

I did a mix of things. I created a budget in order to give all of my money specific assignments and then I used a cash flow spreadsheet to put that budget into action. I soon learned that bringing in extra income was also essential, so I started getting side jobs. The most impactful one being tutoring jobs that allowed me to bring in a few hundred dollars every month.

I would say if at all possible, live on a little less than you earn and always pay yourself first! The easiest way to do so is to create an auto-transfer on payday and send money to a savings account. The key is to ignore that account. I promise you, you won’t even miss the money and in no time, you’ll have way more than you could have imagined.

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About Kamilah
Kamilah O’Brien is the creator of the YouTube channel “Focused Spender.” She is an operation and financial nonprofit professional with the proven ability to create and optimize operational systems as well as manage billion-dollar budgets. Upon graduating with her Masters of Public Administration in General Finance from NYU, Kamilah had over $65,000 of student loan debt. After realizing her salary wasn’t enough to conquer her debt, Kamilah researched and tested several strategies to help her achieve financial freedom. In just three years time, Kamilah paid off her student loan debt with her signature system. Today, Kamilah is a corporate Senior Financial Manager, speaker, and consultant. She helps minority women stop living paycheck to paycheck by maximizing their savings, investments and debt payoff. It’s her mission to help minority women determine and achieve their long term financial goals while reshaping their financial habits.




Alexis, Fitnancials

Create a strict budget that you’ll realistically use and follow. Many people create budgets hoping they’ll only spend $100 on food each month, and closer to the end of the month they realize they’re over $300 in their food budget. Set a realistic budget that you can actually follow. This way, you won’t beat yourself up if you don’t reach your goal. If you tend to spend a lot on food, say $400 a month, make your food budget $300. The next month, make it $200. Go in slow increments, instead of taking your food budget from $400 to $100 in 1 month.

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About Alexis
Alexis Schroeder is the owner of FITnancials, a blog dedicated to serving women who want to achieve financial freedom and grow their online business. With budgeting and numerous side hustles, Alexis paid off over $40,000 of student loans and debt in under 5 months. If you want to pay off debt, start a new career, you’ve landed in the right place.




Nicole, Frugal Chic Life

I achieved financial freedom by simultaneously cutting expenses, controlling spending, and increasing my income (without the dreaded lifestyle creep). My shining achievement thus far has been paying off nearly $100,000 of student loan debt in just under 5 years.

The first step is to determine your ‘why’, which is the reason for pursuing financial freedom. There may be moments when you want to give up and throw away the whole budget! Having a compelling ‘why’ helps you maintain focus on the end goal. I also recommend taking a retroactive look back at spending. More than likely, you’ll be surprised by how much you’re spending at the grocery store and for quick, convenience meals. Next, budget your money down to the penny and craft a plan of action for spending. Also, don’t overlook your ability to increase income through additional part-time work and side hustles. Finally, at the beginning of a financial journey, it’s critical to set goals and maintain accountability for achieving those goals. It’s helpful to have an accountability partner or someone on a similar journey that you can do periodic check-ins with.

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About Nicole
Nicole is a money coach, wife, mother of three, makeup enthusiast, and lover of all things personal finance. She started FrugalChicLife to document her journey to financial independence (FI). There is more to life than working 40-50 hours per week, paying bills, buying a bunch of stuff that we don’t need, and retiring at age 65. By ditching debt, living frugally, and building wealth she has been able to work less, live more, travel frequently, and spend time with family. The highlight of her journey thus far has been paying off nearly $100,000 of student loan debt in just under 5 years.



Shana, The Wealth Vibe

I achieve financial freedom by increasing my income and taking control of it through budgeting. I have increased my income through various side hustles such as GrubHub, Instacart, TaskRabbit and Upwork. I’ve been able to pay down $55,000 in less than 2 years because I committed my budget to pay down debt. All the extra money I earned from side hustling could have been blown if I didn’t focus my budget on debt payoff. It’s important to be intentional about your money—how you earn it and how you spend it. Without that intentionality, you can’t achieve financial freedom.

My advice is to set your intention on financial freedom, create goals that will allow you to achieve financial freedom, and take action by increasing your income and budgeting.

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About Shana
Shana Green started working in the gig economy in October 2017 when she realized that she needed to earn more money to dig herself out of $108,000 in debt. She started to supplement her postdoctoral fellowship income to help her get out of debt faster. She creates videos on The Wealth Vibe YouTube channel to help other people eliminate their debt, grow their income, and build their wealth. She shows how working in the gig economy can help you live your best financial life.



Jon, Compounding Pennies

My piece of advice would be to remember that small things add up to big things over time. If you can remember this, you will come out ahead in all areas of life. When saving money, saving $20 a month doesn’t seem like a lot, but over 20 years it is close to $5,000 before adding interest into the mix.

The same idea holds true when spending money too. If you go over your budget $100 a month, in 10 years you overspent by $12,000!

It even works with your health too. If you eat 200 extra calories a day, you are going to gain over 20 pounds in a year.

The bottom line is that small things make a difference in time. You won’t see them in the moment, but over time, the results will show. So don’t think that saving a few dollars won’t matter because it will in time.

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About Jon
Jon Dulin is a personal finance expert with over 15 years experience helping people take control of their money. On his website, Compounding Pennies, he helps readers change their finances one day at a time so they can achieve their dreams.



Amy, Women Who Money

Taking control of your finances can be overwhelming, but it’s one of the most important things you’ll do in your life! Start by writing out your short- and long-term goals and use them as a guide to making financial decisions.

Track your expenses and start using a budget. Pay off debt and begin saving and investing for your future as early as possible to take advantage of compound interest and time. Increasing your household income while not increasing your spending is one of the best things you can do to grow your net worth.

Understand that this is a long journey, not a weekend trip. You’ll make mistakes – but always keep learning and working toward your goals. Find a mentor and ask for advice!

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About Amy
Amy Blacklock is co-founder of the websites Women Who Money and Women’s Money Talk and the founder and blogger behind Life Zemplified. She also writes frequently for Wealthfit, and her work has been featured on GOBankingRates, Yahoo Finance, MSN, Nasdaq.com, and Considerable. Amy escaped the cubicle life in early 2018 and now devotes herself to passion projects and family.





Yanely, Miss Be Helpful

I’m a first-generation Latina who is also a first-generation college graduate. My name is Yanely Espinal and you can find my youtube videos on my channel called, MissBeHelpful. Financial freedom is very important for me especially in my late twenties as my father is nearing retirement age and was never able to set up a 401k and never had the type of job that offered a pension. As an immigrant with limited education and limited English speaking skills, he often settled for part-time work or jobs that paid just enough cash to get by month to month. This means that I am not sitting with my siblings to figure out his retirement plan. Witnessing this first-hand has been critical for me and has really pushed me to challenge myself financially. The first thing I do is fund my retirement account through my employer up to the amount that my company will match. I’m fortunate to have a 401k that will match half of my contributions up to 10% of my income, so I contribute 10% and automatically save 15% because of this! In addition to that, I fully fund my Roth IRA each year which means another $250 per paycheck in 2019. It is not easy to do, but I make the sacrifices I need to make in order to make that work. For example, I could have a car and my own apartment right now. But, to save money I use public transportation and share an apartment with a roommate. Instead of going to out for lunch everyday, I cook all of my meals at home and pack my lunch each day. These small changes to your lifestyle can have a HUGE impact on your finances. My advice to someone at the very beginning go their journey towards financial freedom is to challenge yourself to live frugally and simply. Most Americans live an average lifestyle in which they take vacations often, lease cars, have expensive phones and watches, etc but when they come to realize that they will not have enough money to maintain that same lifestyle in retirement, it tends to be way too late! The earlier you can begin investing money in the stock market through your employer or on your own with an IRA – the better off you’ll be!

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About Yanely
Yanely was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and is one of the first in her family to graduate college. After two decades of school, she still can’t believe that she never had a class about making smart money decisions! Now, she’s on a mission to help young people learn financial literacy in a fun and engaging way! After completing Teach For America, Yanely paired her love for teaching with her passion for financial literacy, creating a unique YouTube channel for people to engage with topics like students loans, credit cards, budgeting, investing and saving for retirement.




Wendy, Wendy Valencia

Our method for achieving financial freedom was to pick a plan and stick to it. Our plan is 3 fold:

  1. Pay off debt (we’ve paid off over $200K – just by organizing our money).
  2. Have good jobs with good incomes that we LOVE.
  3. Save and invest 25% of our income every month.

My advice to people just starting out on their journey to financial freedom:

Create your own path and follow your own plan. If you don’t like the routes described in a particular plan or formula it is 100% okay to design your own way. If you don’t know what you are doing in the beginning, it is okay to follow a plan laid out by some financial guru, but with time and experience and the understanding of your own complex situation, it is okay to adapt that plan to fit your own life.

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About Wendy
Wendy Valencia is the owner of Organize You, a business designed to show you how to organize your life so that you can easily accomplish any goal. In her blogs and on her YouTube channel she regularly showcases her own journey into areas where she has personally struggled, such as personal finance and weight loss. She shows you that it is possible to reach any goal simply by creating an organizational system designed for the purpose of achieving what it is that you want to achieve. Using the methods she discusses in her blogs and on her YouTube channel, she herself has paid off more than $200,000 in debt and lost almost 100 lbs. She gets into the nitty-gritty details of everything and shows you exactly where she herself has succeeded and failed. She shows you the entire process of goal setting so that you can see that life does have its ups and downs and success is merely about doing the little things that work over and over until you achieve what it is that you want to accomplish.


Jason, My Money Chronicles

To reach financial freedom, you need to get to the point where you have more money than debt. To get there you should eliminate your debt as soon as possible.
I’d tell them to start. It’s not going to be easy (I’m still on my journey). Figure out how you want to attain financial freedom and get to work ASAP!

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About Jason
Jason Butler is the owner of My Money Chronicles, a website where he discusses personal finance, side hustles, travel and more. Jason is from Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Savannah State University with his BA in Marketing. Jason has been featured in Forbes, Discover and Investopedia.




Jennifer, Mama Fur Fur

The ways I am achieving financial freedom for my family are by dedicating a portion of our money every month to investments creating a passive income stream in terms of dividends/returns for long term future growth and creating multiple passive income streams of income with my side business ideas such as Ebooks/Blog/Youtube channel/Digital courses and products. Creating incomes where you do not give up your time in exchange for money is key, and that is why investing plus business ideas is the winning combination!
If you are at the start of the journey, start by knowing EXACTLY how much you need saved and invested total to live off the interest growth every year on autopilot. Work out in your budget what is the bare minimum you could live on keeping the four walls and living expenses if you didn’t need to work for a living, and then multiply that amount by 25 as the rough total amount you will need invested or saved. Place this total amount on a vision board or keep a note of it in your journal or even your purse – memorise it and start to imagine it happening! Once you see that your goal is smaller than you might have realised, then the magic to make it happen can appear!

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About Jennifer
Jennifer Kempson, aka Mamafurfur, is a 30-something Scottish Author, Money & Success Blogger and Youtube Creator with a passion to help others create the work-life balance & lifestyle they wish with time & financial freedom, sharing Smarter spending, saving and lifestyle strategies. Currently, the UK Top Money Youtube Creator 2018 as voted by her peers in the UK.




Janet, My Twenty Cents

To achieve financial freedom, I’ve worked on building various streams of income. Right now, I have about 5 sources of income and the large majority of them are passive too, which is great. My best piece of advice is to figure out what you love, and spend your time building it into something that could earn you income in the future. Break boundaries, we are living in a digital era now so everything we’ve learned about finance and what is “normal” is changing as we speak.

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About Janet
Janet is a CPA from Canada who quit her job to live her best life. Currently, she is working on completing her PhD studies while living abroad and travelling whenever she can! She also blogs about personal finance and wants to help others achieve a financially-free life




Alison Geisler, Baby Stepping 2 Freedom

My best piece of advice for people who are just starting their journey to financial freedom is to create a budget. Without a budget, achieving your financial goals is essentially impossible. A budget allows you to know where your money is going, what you need in order to reach your goals, and gives you the freedom to make informed decisions about how to spend your money. So many people out there feel overwhelmed by their finances because they have no idea what is happening to their money. One day it’s there and the next day it’s gone. Once you have a budget in place, you are able to SEE your money and financial goals are drastically more attainable!

Creating a budget can be simple:

  1. Write down all your recurring bills
  2. Review bank statements to determine the approximate amount of additional spending you have (for items such as groceries, gas, clothing, etc)
  3. Using that amount as a guideline, set an amount you are going to spend
    in a month for those specific spending categories
  4. Subtract all those amounts from your income

VOILA! You have a budget and you know where your money is going!

It’s important to prepare for your first few months of budgeting to be a little difficult. It’s guaranteed that you forgot to account for an expense or you under/over estimated another expense. DON’T GIVE UP! After you stick with budgeting for 3-4 months, you will have a much better grasp on your finances. Knowing where your money is going makes paying off debt, saving, and investing simple!

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About Alison
Alison is the founder of the blog and YouTube channel, Baby Stepping 2 Freedom, where she shares her financial journey as well as financial tips and tricks that help you reach your goals. Alison and her husband paid off $125,000 of debt in 28 months through living life on a budget and simplifying their finances. Alison has a “no nonsense” approach to stepping towards your life of freedom by reducing your expenses and increasing your income.




Lany & Bert, Dividend Diplomats

If the goal is to eliminate your debt in pursuit of financial freedom, I would find every way possible to pay off the debt. Especially if the debt is high interest rate debt, such as credit card and student loans. Finding every dollar you can to help pay off your debt is instrumental in this journey. Evaluate every expense in your budget. Is it necessary? If not, cut it. If it is, shop the expense around to ensure you are getting the right level of services for the lowest price possible. Also, while auditing expenses, find a side hustle or another way to increase your income. It could be as simple as answering surveys online or as intense of starting a blog/freelance writing.

In the end, the impact of reducing expenses + additional income = additional cash flow to pay down high interest debt (or consider investing if it is low interest debt).

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About Lanny & Bert
Lanny and Bert are two Dudes in their thirties who are passionately saving, investing and living a frugal life to financial freedom.


Mike Rosehart, 25 and Free

The secret to unlocking wealth is Spend Less, Earn More, and Maximize Returns on the difference.
master and work the only 3 levers to control your wealth: What you spend (Spend Less), What you Earn (Try to Earn More), and maximize the returns on the difference (Return on investments in savings).

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About Mike
Mike Rosehart is Canada’s Youngest Early Retiree, an Ivey Business Graduate, Youtube Social Media Influencer, Entrepreneur, and a Real Estate Investor in London, Ontario with an 8-Figure real estate portfolio comprising of over 50 buildings.
Mike is an expert Joint Venture Strategist with a wealth of experience in finding off market private deals, flipping, renovating, and managing the bottom line – focused on cost control and maximized return on investment.



Ling, Finsavvy Panda

Many of us naturally think it’s impossible to achieve financial independence. We come up with 1,000 excuses to why we can’t save money or build wealth. Those excuses go something like this…“I’m born poor, I’m too busy, there’s no time, it’s too hard, wealthy people got lucky, etc.”

I was one of them.

Over time, I learned that changing your money mindset and adjusting your views is the first step to becoming financially free. Once you adjust your views, you’ll be more open and willing to find ways to save money, make extra money, increase your income, invest, and everything else that contributes to building wealth.

It’s also important to find the right balance so you don’t overwhelm yourself. For example, if you focus too much on saving money, you probably won’t be open to the idea of increasing your income and vice versa. With that said, maintain a good balance between saving, earning and investing while spending on the things you enjoy in life.

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About Ling
Ling understands the financial struggle of living in an expensive city. She spends her time learning about personal finance in hopes to live a life where she doesn’t need to worry about money. She looks for creative ways to build wealth which includes investing, saving and making money while balancing a healthy and active lifestyle.



Kim, Free to Family

The road to financial freedom begins with you…your actions and even your thoughts. Believe it or not, those thoughts usually come from past memories of money—even if they are now forgotten and buried—during your formative years. This is why one of the first steps in becoming financially free is to go back in your mind to the earliest moments that you can even remember when money began to mean something to you and you begin to understand its usefulness. Think of when you were old enough to understand that money could create pleasure (ice cream, candy, toys) and also create pain (fights between parents or longing for something they couldn’t afford). This is when money made its first impression on you. The way you manage and manifest money starts with You, Yourself and YOU! What are your first memories of money? What are your fears of money? Did you know that your childhood has pretty much shaped who you are as a person in the area of money?
I know that there is a lot of practical tips out there on “how to get out of debt”, but before you make a budget or meal plan or figure out your expenses vs. income, you need to check your mindset. To me, this more than just math and numbers. DO you have a belief that food, money, time, etc. is “hard to come by”? If you do, understand that this is NOT a fact but a belief. Know, right now, that your beliefs keep you where you are. You have as much power as anyone to create the life you want and you absolutely deserve to have enough of those resources for you and your family. You see, our mindset towards money is the single most important factor in our success with it. For many of us, including me, we grew up with a poverty mentality. You may not think you have this issue, but I assure you, if you spend without a budget, are afraid to look at your credit report, if your money is spent before you get it, or if you are constantly waiting for payday to do something, then you may have what is called a “poverty mentality”. None of these things leads to abundance. Being frugal and resourceful with your money does NOT promote a scarcity mindset. It is totally the opposite. It is a creative (and responsible) way to take full advantage of the resources and opportunities that come our way. It allows us to walk along the path of abundance and to opt to live a life to the fullest, exuding happiness, generosity, creativity and inspiration, while talking advantage of the waves of opportunities that come our way. Learning to spend less does not mean that you need to promote a scarcity mentality. It is about telling your money where to go! It doesn’t mean that you go around saying you are “broke” or “can’t afford” things. It does, on the other hand mean that you choose to see the limitless possibilities in the world and choose to focus on “what is working”. You have the power to manifest abundance while ensuring that the money you have now is used wisely and in the most resourceful way possible.

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About Kim
Kim at FREETOFAMILY is an author, blogger and lifestyle vlogger and most importantly a mother and wife who promotes value-driven intentional living. She is a career educator who loves helping to teach and inspire others to tap into their own amazing potential. She began sharing frugal living and simple living tips on YouTube and now enjoys helping others strive for “BETTER” every day. Her and her family enjoy living a debt free life while pursuing their passions and creating passive income.


Lauren Bowling, Financial Best Life

The biggest key to financial freedom is clearing out your debts. The sooner you pay those off, the faster you can start acquiring cash for the things you do want, like buying a home or travel. Don’t delay in paying it off – make a commitment to tackle it sooner rather than later, and watch how much better your life gets.

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About Lauren
Lauren Bowling wants to live in a world where everyone has at least $1,000 in a savings account and cheesecake calories don’t count. As the blogger behind FinancialBestLife.com, she’s been featured in digital outlets such as CNBC, Forbes, The Huffington Post, CNNMoney, Elite Daily, Business Insider and more.

Key Takeaways

The majority of people aiming to achieve financial freedom believe that they have to sacrifice a lot to create financial stability for the rest of their lives, in order to retire early, or simply to not worry about their earnings anymore.

Our advice: don’t plan out your financial agenda based on hearsay.

That’s right. You have to pursue whatever motivates you to achieve financial freedom and have patience. It takes perseverance and dedication to take control of your expenses and to finally arrive at the point where you don’t have to care about your income anymore.

The majority of our 20 experts emphasize that regardless of how many hurdles and difficulties you must overcome to achieve financial freedom, don’t forget to stay positive. In all situations. If you have a dream to fulfill as well as clear and realistic goals and aims set, you will experience a more pleasant journey to financial freedom along the way.

Be honest with yourself when it comes to expectations. You should focus on authentic and realistic expectations about your success instead. The general consensus out there is that being disciplined (e.g. putting as much money as you can aside) and coming up with a plan will help you reach your aims and goals. What’s more, you should proudly embrace frugality, just like these experts who have already paved the way and proven that financial freedom is not a myth.

Reaching financial freedom is a gradual process: make a timeline for each of your tasks and goals in order to utilize each hour, day or month in the most effective way possible. Just like how you would do with the money earned and saved during your entire journey. Time is both invaluable and priceless, and you should allocate the most of it toward earning. So use your time (and money) cleverly. Earning extra money is necessary, therefore, you should watch your money: small amounts spent on a daily basis add up and can have a larger impact on your finances if calculated annually. You could invest your money in something, for instance.

Another common piece of advice given by the 20 experts on how to achieve financial freedom is to do side hustles. Visit Appjobs.com and find all part-time and side job opportunities available in your city.


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