The 7 Levels of Financial Freedom

**Rashad Bilal** (0:00)
Let's talk about the seven levels of financial freedom chart.

**Troy Millings** (0:05)
I think you get to the seventh level if you steal some labels and masters real quick. But I do want to ask you, if a person doesn't have breathing room or stability, like what can they do to get to that sixth or seventh level from the conversations you've been able to have with Robert Smith and Steve and Tyler, etc. Like what are some of the patterns that you see?

**Rashad Bilal** (0:26)
Well, let's go through each one.
So the first one is clarity, right? It's like you've just identified where you're at currently, and you identify where you want to go. That is actually beneficial. You're actually already ahead of the game. Seventy percent of the people don't even really even know where they're at financially or where they want to go, right? So that ability, that's why meditation is extremely important. Having some level which is just calm down for a minute and take things through. Clarity, very important. And then self-sufficient, where you're actually able to cover your own expenses without outside support, right? And then the breathing room.
Breathing room is when you really start to pick up momentum, where you can actually, you're no longer living paycheck to paycheck. I would say at this point in time, you would have probably six months of liquid expenses saved.

**Troy Millings** (1:26)
The reserves, yep.

**Rashad Bilal** (1:28)
So now you get to the point where you got $40,000, $50,000 saved, right? So now it's like, I can breathe, right?
If something happens today, I'm okay, right? I'm not okay forever.

**Troy Millings** (1:43)
Yes.

**Rashad Bilal** (1:43)
I'm not living paycheck. Because when you live in paycheck to paycheck, it's very difficult to think clearly, because long term, you're in survivor mode.
When you're in survivor mode, it's extremely difficult to process things, and you can justify anything when you're in survivor mode as well. So that's why you never want to be in survivor mode, or when you're in survivor mode, you want to get out of survivor mode as quickly as possible. You hear this once again, this is permeated in a lot of things that we grew up in, where it's like, I had to do what I had to do with my daughter, got to eat, right? What does that mean? Yeah. Your daughter has to eat, so I got to die?

**Troy Millings** (2:28)
Or you could have made better choices along the way, knowing spending all your money at the club for four weekends in a row could have led to devastation.

**Rashad Bilal** (2:35)
But that's the survivor mode, right? So, and then stability.
So, now you're not living paycheck to paycheck, but you have no bad debt. You're fully funded your emergency fund, right? No debt, fully funded your emergency fund. Now you're stable, right? Flexibility is wasted two years off, right? I could take 24 months off. I'm good, right? You know, I got $200,000 saved in the bank. I'm good. I could take two years off if I want to, right?
Financial independent. Now you can pretty much just live off of your assets.

**Troy Millings** (3:15)
Yeah.

**Rashad Bilal** (3:15)
Whether that's real estate, whether that's stocks, whatever.
Well, now it's to the point where it's like your assets, worse come to worse, you can live off of that. And then the abundance on the wealth side is when you have more money than you'll ever need. So the key to get to that point, I think, is, well, it's all through investing, right? It's all through investing and making early sacrifices early on. We talked about this before. Keep your expenses low.

**Troy Millings** (3:41)
Yes.

**Rashad Bilal** (3:41)
Always to raise your income. Invest as much money as possible, because then you start playing multiple games, right? Where it's like, OK, if you get to that million, now you double that million to 2 million, right? But now you double that 2 million to 4 million. Now you double that 4 million to 8 million.
You just need one more flip. You need one more flip.

**Troy Millings** (4:04)
You double. Expenses law.

**Rashad Bilal** (4:06)
You get to the 10 digit. Once you double the 8 to 16, now you're out of here.
Now you're out of here, right? Now that that next flip is 32 The next flip is 64

**Troy Millings** (4:20)
Levels, yeah.

**Rashad Bilal** (4:21)
The next flip is 108 You're out of here at that point in time, right? But you might not ever get to it. Really, you got to get to 8
But you might not ever get to 8 if you buy a big home, if you go on 30 vacations. Yeah.