Hello there! I am a white-collar early middle-aged man, fed up with the bullshit of working life. Nine in the morning, 6 in the evening, go and come. Deal with nonsense. My life is flowing through my hands. I can’t control my most valuable asset, my time. The question of how to escape this trap has been on my mind for a long time. I was looking for an answer. A few years ago, I discovered the life stories of those who pursued and succeeded in financial independence and read their stories. I decided to walk the road to financial freedom.
I started to save and invest to reach financial independence more than three years ago. The tedious part is that there is no other option but to wait after receiving a salary and investing. Also, due to my age, I started this quest late. By the way, I am married and have two small children. Therefore, I am more interested in the financial independence part of FIRE rather than retirement. Thus l can summarize my goals as being able to take retirement a little bit earlier, being comfortable in retirement, or offering better opportunities to my children.
Until now, my story is more or less similar to other FIRE seekers. However, I am not living in the USA, Canada, or other high-income countries. Instead, I live in Turkey, a middle-income country with very high economic and political volatility. Probably, those from the USA complain about a record high inflation rate of 9.1 percent when you read this. The inflation rate in Turkey is now more than 70 percent yearly! I should add continually depreciating local currency against almost all other currencies in the world thanks to the exotic monetary policy experiment of current political leadership. Do you think financial independence is still an accessible goal under these circumstances?
Most of you will probably say no. I believe it is still doable, and I am trying to do it. Living in this environment creates additional challenges to attaining a financial freedom goal. Nevertheless, I overcome difficulties with an open mind, and those similar to my position may learn some tricks from my experience. For others, I am pretty sure that you may get at least some fun throughout my journey.
I wish I had this level of consciousness and knowledge 15-20 years ago. I would be in a very different situation now and move on with life as someone with many choices. The idea for blogging came from here. I want to share my experience, knowledge, successes, and failures with those who want to walk this path. Also, I think it would be suitable for boredom. I had a long way to go for financial independence. Therefore, I started a blog in my native language two years ago and enjoyed it. If you are interested, then click this. We have a small and vibrant investment society there. Then I ask myself why I shouldn’t share my story and thoughts with more people. So I have decided to start this blog hoping to reach more people. I hope you enjoy the time reading this blog.