The price of security

I’m 1.5 years into the freelance / contractor lifestyle. Up until then, it had been ~15 years of full-time employment at various consultancies, ‘working for the man’.

I reflect on the notion of ‘security’ that kept me attached to full-time employment. The security of a monthly salary, of career progression, of medical benefits and a stable pension. The security of knowing ‘what comes next’. With the ‘security’ of a stable job, I thought it gave me the headspace to turn my attention elsewhere.

But there are a quite a few issues looking at things this way, and it’s only from experience that I’ve started to appreciate these:

1. There is no such thing as a secure, stable job.
2. The price of ‘security’ was - for me - a lack of control, freedom, motivation, accountability and a slower path to growth.
3. Financial security comes from managing my spending, being effective with my time, investing and exploring alternative revenue streams — not from a ‘stable job’.

There’s no such thing as a secure, stable job.

You work hard, you hit your targets, you’re good to other people, you get promoted. And then the game resets. Rinse, repeat, reset. I saw fellow colleagues who had literally devoted their lives to work. Decades of working so hard they hadn’t ‘had time’ to invest in relationships, in personal interests, in communities, in wealth creation, in their physical, mental or spiritual health. And after 1–2 years of not hitting their targets they were let go. Businesses are commercial entities, let’s be clear on that. Perhaps other industries are more forgiving, Consulting isn’t one of those (nor would I expect it to be).

The price of ‘security’.

My full-time job lulled me into comfort. And comfort breeds complacency. I was complacent about where I was going, what I was doing, why, and whether there could be a better way of doing things, a more meaningful way. Pain and discomfort are strong motivators to get you moving.

Financial security comes from managing my spending, being effective with your time, investing and exploring alternative revenue streams.

Wealth means living within your means, spending less than you earn. It means having passive income that exceeds your outgoings so that you don’t have to work for money. Financial security means investing so that your money is working for you. Financial security means exploring alternative revenue streams so that you’re diversifying your risk and growing your skillset. Financial security means being as effective as you can with the time to money ratio, or getting to a position where your income is not dependent on the amount of time you need to spend working (Robert Kiyosaki’s ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ and ‘Cashflow Quadrant’ awakened me to this way of thinking).

For me, financial security (or working towards this) gives me freedom from / at work. I am driven by the goal of financial independence and the journey to get there.