My humbling journey towards Financial Independence

The struggle

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with money growing up. And why wouldn’t I? I was only 12 when my dad lost his job in Dubai and we had to wind up our rather comfortable existence to move back home – a place I barely knew and couldn’t come to terms with for years, for several reasons, major one being finances. You know it dominates your life, every small or big decision you take, when all your teenage years have been spent struggling to make ends meet. As a result, my ultimate goal in life was to do the only thing I knew works – securing a stable high paying job as soon as I completed my education (Yes, there were no concrete options to work while studying in Pakistan at the time, especially for girls)

Drifting towards comfort zone

I got my dream job even before completing MBA and never really had to look for work. Spent the next decade of my twenties working for this fabulous MNC, learning and growing with phenomenal exposure and accountability. Life was great. I was earning a lot of money and I loved it. However, as self-actualization started to kick in my late twenties, I no longer found meaning and fulfillment in my work. My initial thought was.. hello? This is not supposed to happen. I love my profession, industry, company so why am I feeling this way? May be it will pass. But it didn’t. I didn’t know how to deal with this constant nagging going on in my mind. If not this, then what? If not now, then when?

The lightbulb moment

As I was marinating various career options in my head, none of which involved the 9-5 grind by the way, it felt that in parallel, everyone around was enabling and empowering me in one way or another. Through family and friends, I was exposed to the concept of financial freedom in 2013 via Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad series, which was a paradigm shift in the way I viewed money. Until then, I had never seriously considered the notion of making my money work harder for me. Well, like most of us, I was never taught financial literacy in school – what you do with the money once you make it, how to keep people from stealing it, how long you keep it, or how you can choose to build a life of financial freedom and flexibility where you decide what to do rather than being dictated by your employer who holds the key to your only source of income. This is a game changer once you embrace it fully.

Being a goals and results oriented person, I started putting clear and concise financial goals for myself. When and how I could retire young and retire rich, how much is enough, where do I start, what would be the sources of my passive income, how diversified would my investments be, were some of the questions I asked. The learning curve was gigantic. I knew nothing about any asset class in the beginning. Being totally consumed with my day job, I never even had the time or energy to look into the massive world of investments. Speaking to sales driven wealth managers barely helped. I had to do this and do it myself.

And so I did. Good thing was that coming from a ‘savings driven’ middle class family who had faced tough times, I was good with managing money – keeping spending in check, having decent savings, establishing an emergency fund for the rainy day. It was only a matter of time that I moved from this obsolete mindset of simply ‘saving money’ to one that allows me to grow my money via building assets and generating passive income. I toyed with all asset classes and still do – real estate being my absolute favorite. High risk and high return, just the way I like it. I did lose quite a bit of money starting out in equities, either looking for quick wins, having major FOMO or cultivating this mindset of loss aversion. It takes a while to exclude emotions from trading, doesn’t it 🙂 Overtime, I built a diversified portfolio of real estate, equities, mutual funds, commodities, robo advisory, crowd funding and peer to peer lending platforms playing with allocations along the way.

Taking the plunge

Next came the big and bold move. The one for which you never feel ready, but you got to take the plunge nevertheless. For me, it was going to be sooner than later. Having the clarity of what happiness, success and fulfilment meant to me and how to derive it from the work I do was incredibly profound. Even though I was far from reaching my financial goals, just being on this path gave me the courage and focus on how I’d like my life to be. And so, Unwind the Grind was born. A much needed career development platform for millennials, empowering them to excel in their careers and businesses. I blended my decade long marketing and coaching background to craft engaging experiences through community building events, employee engagement consulting, career coaching, writing, training and speaking. As they say, fortune favors the bold. I brought the same investing principles of having a compelling vision that drives me, being tenacious in delivering it, diversifying as needed and maintaining healthy cash flows to my work as well. Not putting all my eggs in one basket, diversifying the revenue streams, treating cash as king, pivoting and improvising the business model as I go along (especially in a tough and volatile local market) and creating a network of like-minded people, experts and mentors to learn from.

If I can do it, so can you

Today, more than 80% of my coaching clients come to me seeking clarity on what their next career move should be. They either want to change industries, functions or quit corporate altogether to pursue entrepreneurship. And guess what is the number one reason fueling their fears. Finances. They don’t have the financial cushion or safety net needed as they embark on this journey of change and so they keep delaying it in the hope that things will get better on their own. They don’t. What I tell them is what they say should have been taught years ago.

Not having the means to pursue a fulfilling career just because you haven’t been financially prudent or money savvy in the 5-10 years of your career is unacceptable in this day and age. Millennials, especially in this part of the world, have literally grown up with all the privileges one could ever wish for – information and knowledge at their fingertips, working parents who in most cases financed their education, surrounded by well-informed, resourceful people, seeing first hand examples of people who have achieved financial freedom right in front of them.

If you haven’t seriously considered it before, start now. Start young, have clear financial goals, experiment and learn, reap the benefits of compounding as the years go by and live your life in line with the values of freedom and flexibility that you so deeply desire.

About the Author:

Samia helps millennials to know who they are, and achieve what they are capable of. She is the founder of Unwind the Grind – millennial career development platform that crafts experiences through community events, career and startup coaching. She’s an ICF certified strengths based career coach, NLP Practitioner, writer and speaker, based in Dubai. Having over 9 years of experience at Procter & Gamble in brand management and coaching; Samia knows what it takes for Gen Y to excel and succeed in their careers.