The Ultimate Financial Goal: To Stop Grinding
By: Ben Le Fort
Tags: Productivity, Work, Money, Side Hustle, Personal Finance

The Ultimate Financial Goal: To Stop Grinding

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In my 20s, I was so deeply embedded in hustle culture that I literally had a business called “No Days Off Productions.”

It was more than just a catchphrase; during that time, I truly believed that I needed to be working long hours every day to be successful. If I had a day that I did nothing productive, I would lose sleep over it.

I know, that sounds miserable, and it was. Reflecting back, it’s clear to me that two forces were driving this relentless need to grind every day.

Major emotional and financial trauma that began with me wanting to help a family member and ended with me deeply in debt and resentful. I also had more practical reasons. I wanted to be financially secure. No matter what anyone says, you can hustle your way to career and financial success.

But at what point can you stop grinding and prioritize life overwork?

Read on for my answer to that question.

I was able to grind my way to financial success

As I write this, I am sitting in a house my wife, and I bought for my mom to live in during a particularly difficult time in her life. I know you didn’t ask for proof, but I’ll take any excuse to post a picture of my cat, so here you go.

Trixie (the cat) and Trish (my wife) laying out to beat the heat on a hot August day in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We bought this house in 2018, two years after we bought our first home in Waterloo, Ontario. I was 29 at the time, and the only reason I was in a position to help was that I spent the last decade grinding away, working a full-time job, and various side hustles. Due to my previously mentioned financial scars, I never spent any money, so I had managed to save a sizeable nest egg.

Hard work combined with a high savings rate is a sure fire way to achieve a moderate level of financial success.

There are few things more rewarding than being able to help the people you care about when they need it most. It makes the hard work feel worth it. To me, that’s what financial success looks like.

But at some point, you need to begin focusing on your priorities, which for me meant finding a way to begin prioritizing life ahead of work.

I’m not there yet, but here’s my plan to get there.

Financial freedom is the end of the grind

I’m on vacation (from my 9–5), but I am still working every day (on my side hustle). So, although I am a lot more relaxed about work in my 30s than I was in my 20s, I still work all the time.

Long-time readers know that I have an extremely specific definition of financial freedom, called the financial freedom equation.

Financial freedom= (Investment income + income from work you love) > Your living expenses

Once you balance this equation, you can spend your days doing work you love when, where, and for how long you want. In short, financial freedom is the end of the grind and is the ultimate financial goal. This is a point articulated beautifully by Rocco Pendola in a recent piece published in Making of a Millionaire.

This definition of financial freedom is different from what you would see in the FIRE movement, which relies entirely on your investments to cover your living expenses. Which, as I have pointed out in the past, will take most people a lifetime to do.

The financial freedom equation has three important components.

Your living expenses. Income from investments. Income from work you love doing.

We’ll leave the issue of living expenses to the side for the moment. Not because they aren’t important, but because I could spend 4,000 words discussing how to keep your living expenses in check, which I have done in this article.

Own your income, own your life

The quickest off-ramp to leaving the grind behind is creating an income stream that you control. When I say, “you control,” I mean you pick:

What to work on

When you work

Where you work

Your hours

Who you work with

Unlike building a massive investment portfolio that generates enough income to fund your lifestyle in perpetuity, this won’t take an entire lifetime to accomplish.

I recently wrote an article detailing the “10 commandments” of starting a successful side hustle and owning your second income stream.

You need more than one income stream (your day job and the side hustle) You need exactly two income streams (don’t stretch yourself too thin) You need exactly two income streams (building investment income) Understand your side hustle is not passive Choose a subject you are an expert in Choose the right platform that fits your skillset as a creator (are you a writer, a video creator, a podcaster?) Create a product to build your scalable income Reinvest your profits assets (more on that in a minute) Have a clearly defined off-ramp (know when it’s time to quit the day job) Remember why you started your side hustle ( to have more freedom)

You can get all the details here:

Creating a baseline of passive income

I realized a long time ago that I could escape the grind a lot quicker by taking every penny I earn from my side hustle and investing it in passive investments.

Stocks (through low-cost index funds) Bonds (through low-cost index funds) Real estate (physical and through low-cost index funds)

Then, I treat these investments like they don’t exist. I spend no time and energy thinking about them. Instead, I redirect all my available energy into scaling the side hustle.

Ironically, by spending less time thinking about my investments and more time focusing on making more money, my investments will grow much faster.

Again, since I have an income stream that I own, I don’t need to cover all of my living expenses to slow down my work schedule. The role of investment income while I am young is to provide a nice cushion for slow months and rainy days.

The funny irony of stopping the grind

Here’s my prediction for when I stop working a 9–5 and focus exclusively on my side-hustle:

I’ll probably end up making more money

I spend my prime productive working hours at my day job. I cram in time to work on my side hustle early in the morning and after my son goes to bed. Even still, I’ve been able to scale my side hustle to a point where it makes as much as my 9–5 on a good month.

If I were to work less, worry less, and spend my most productive hours dedicated to my side hustle, my income would scale up much faster.