Everyone talks about financial freedom, but before you can chase it, you need to define it.

In Chapter 1 of How to Retire on $3K a Week, strip away the hype and ask a far more powerful question:

What does financial peace actually look like in real life?

This episode introduces the true goal of wealth; not money for money’s sake, but time, choice and control.

You’ll also hear why $3,000 a week became the benchmark (and why your number might be higher or lower), and an eye-opening comparison of pension vs self-funded retirement that may shock you.

If you’ve ever said, “I’ll feel secure when…”, then this episode is where you finally put a number to it.

 

P.S. Ready to design your own path to financial freedom?
Grab your copy of How to Retire on $3K a Week now! 👉 howtoretireon3k.com.au

Timestamps

  • 0:00 – Why we made it $3,000 a week (not $1M in the bank)
  • 1:12 – Financial freedom isn’t about being rich, and what it’s actually about
  • 2:03 – “Choose your own adventure”
  • 2:45 – The sad reality of retirement on the pension
  • 3:31 – Why comparison is the thief of financial peace
  • 4:10 – This book isn’t about us; you are the heroes and we’re the guides.

 

Transcript

Bryce
Hey there folks, welcome to the How to Retire on $3,000 a Week podcast where Ben and I are unpacking the behind the scenes stories on what has turned out to be our life’s work in our third book. Ben, the first chapter on the goal, this one here is really important on how we framed up the book because we deliberately made it $3,000 a week, not how to make a million bucks, how to make two million bucks, because we really want to land the plane on what does it actually mean to get financial freedom on your day-to-day life once you actually achieve it?

Ben
Well, that’s right, because you can build up in property with capital growth, you can build up a significant size portfolio, but unless you liquidate that, how much you’re actually going to have available when you’re in your active phase of retirement. So the $3,000 a week, as we know, came off the back of the old book, “The Armchair Guide to Property Investing“ and we’ve just used indexation and inflation and and made sure that it was not going to just be a standard retirement we’re going to step it up a little bit and have a little bit of aspirational goal and and that’s how we landed on $3,000 a week. Now we gave a little insight into how marketing works because we’ve clearly got a book that says $3,000 a week on the front cover but we went to a fair bit of we went to some lengths in that chapter just to go all right that’s what what sort of prompted you to pick the book off the shelf.

Bryce
But to be honest, it doesn’t need to be 3000. It can still be 2000, which was our book 10 years ago, or it can actually be 500 bucks a week. It’s actually choose your own adventure. Whatever’s meaningful to you that actually enables you to trade time for money, know, stop trading time for money. That’s the whole point. And we really wanted to nail that home very early on in the book.

Ben
Yeah, and I love the table in there and know credit to the Association of Superannuation Funds in Australia where they’ve sort of documented what is comfortable retirement, modest retirement and age pension. That should be a reminder to everyone. It’s a reality check. It is. And so, when you’re using exertion income, the modelling and data usually suggest that you would peak out at your peak earnings around ages 51 to 53 and then what usually happens is, you know, is the younger generation coming through in their careers or are you going to go down to four days a week or whatever that looks like? So that’s what they’re sort of saying. It peaks before 55. So I think from that point of view, you’ve, but you started to build up, you you’re probably got a little bit less debt on the family home and you’re starting to live a little in your early fifties and maybe a couple of nights out for dinner and a few, you know, you’re upgrading the expense holiday that you’re going on and maybe it’s a five-star resort, not a four-star resort, the kids may not be around long, so you’ve got a little bit more discretionary spending on holidays so, but if you cut that off and then you look at what wealth you’ve got at the end of the day, that’s what’s gonna generate that income. So you’ve gotta make sure that passive income is comfortable enough to accommodate the lifestyle you’ve probably become accustomed to while you’re still working.

Bryce
Well said, so, we talked about comparison being the thief of joy. We’re very clear on the fact that a lot of property investment books have the author as the hero. we’ve done that on both of our books, been very deliberate to take the reader on a journey. In this case, the listener on the audio book, they take them on a journey where they feel like the attention and the focus is on how they can achieve it, not on our success stories. And I guess, we really wanted to encourage people to think about what financial peace actually means for them and I think, look, I think we covered it I think we set that up. I reckon we move on to chapter two. So folks, we just want to encourage you to go and get your hands on this book. We’re going to unpack some more in future episodes. But if you go to any good book retailer or go to howtoretireon3k.com.au, we’ll have a list of ways that you can find it there. Or, of course, download the audiobook. Let’s get on with chapter 2.