What are the advantages of being rich? or being financially free?

Life is one big picnic and you keep going to the Bahamas for a vacation? Cruise? You can eat and drink whatever you want, whenever you want?

Well that’s the myth that the media creates for you – wealth porn is a part of the overall financial porn. So what are the real advantages that one has being financially free?

1. No need to tell lies: You are not ‘looking’ for money making opportunities – you have a choice of what to take and what to ignore. This is not really easy if you have a job. If you don’t like some parts of the job that you do, you cannot do anything about it. A new job will again bring a package of some good things and some bad things. When you are financially free you can choose your clients and the work that you want to do. It is a huge de-stresser.
2. No travelling in the same direction of the crowd! I take 6am flights and 9 pm flights – from and to Mumbai. I travel a distance of 38 km in 40 minutes. Impossible post 7 am! Similarly for meetings, you can pick and choose the timings far more sensibly, If you were doing a job such flexibility is not available.
3. No queues at DMart or Reliance Fresh. Have you seen how empty they are at 10am on a working Wednesday? well, you can zip in and out in 20 minutes flat especially if you know what you want to buy and know where it is and you are one among the 3 customers in the whole shop!
4. You get a lot of time in choosing your food, exercise, etc. which people in jobs find very difficult to do. Most of them will not have the flexibility. You can choose what you want to eat, cook, and choose to go for a run at 3pm on a winter afternoon just to get some Vitamin D! Yes at some stage you realize that taking care of one’s health is a very very selfish thing to do, but not doing anything is very cruel on the caregiver – whether it is a sibling, spouse, or an off spring…
5. Improved social life – just within your first circle – meeting your parents, kids, sibling, friends – you get time to talk with them or meet them far more often.
6. Peer pressure is reduced: of course depends on whether you live for an inner scorecard or an outer scorecard, but surely the need to buy the latest dress, shoe, phone,…or whatever on which you will be judged is much lower without a big set of colleagues!
7. Your health improves also as a result of slowing down. In this world where slowing down is considered to be a bad sign, we come as fresh air!

Maybe there are more…but this is what I could think off the cuff at 5am!