Financial Freedom Finally Achieved

Financial Freedom Finally Achieved

Hi guys, we are excited to announce that we just achieved financial freedom. Did you notice we didn’t post last week? That’s because a lot was going on.

This month has been crazy busy overall. We had a lot going on such as business trips, meetings with the client and our legal team,…but we are happy to see that it all worked out, we have signed the contract and finally received the payment a couple days ago, and we can now say that we have achieved financial independence and financial freedom!

Earlier this month, we mentioned we wouldn’t able to blog much because of our Valentine’s weekend gateway, and hosting out of town visitors for the Family Day (Canada) long weekend.

But what we didn’t mention was that we were in a middle of signing the biggest deal ever that was going to guarantee our financial freedom.

We did not want to prematurely talk about it because we are kind of superstitious and didn’t want want to jinx it.

However, we did allude to it a little bit in January in our new year resolution post. This is what one of our goals said:

“Concentrate on what we already have: Last year, when we started blogging, we started learning how to promote a blog on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Bloglovin, LinkedIn, Reddit,…And we soon realized how we had neglected promoting a product of ours that we already had. 

This product has the potential of taking us to the next level, but we had only marketed it to our LinkedIn contacts and universities.  A few universities around the world are using the product, but for free.

Thus, we have now decided to use all our resources to promote the product, not just to people we know, but to anyone who we think might benefit from the product and also to potential paying clients and not just universities.

We also realized the local market is vibrant enough and it won’t cost us much to promote the product locally.  Thus, we plan to put the product out there by joining local user groups, conferences and panels.

So what have we done so far? We only had a LinkedIn page and a website for the product.  But in the past couple of months, we have made some upgrades to the product, updated the website and content, and set up Twitter and Facebook accounts. 

We are actively participating in Facebook groups, have reached out to a local user group leader and have registered for his upcoming user group meeting. Later on, we will talk to him about possibly joining the panel.

Sometimes, we feel like we are David fighting against Goliath, because we are a very small fish going against an industry giant.  But we won’t give up.”

Happy to report that our strategy worked.  Towards the end of the year, a key person in a multi-billion dollar company contacted us with a list of 10  features asking if our product had those features. We replied to him right away telling him our product had those features and some more.

Phone calls and meetings started right away, and within a few days, they started testing our product.  The testing took about a month but it felt like a decade.  We were very anxious, this was an opportunity we had been waiting for.

This is was potentially our first paying client. They have 20,000 employees worldwide and at least 40% would need our product.

On top of that, this is a company that’s growing fast through mergers and acquisitions. In the past 10 years, they have gone through at least 5 M&A’s, about one every other year on average.

The test results came back. They were very impressed. Not only was our product way better, but it was also cheaper.

Due to the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) we signed, we can’t say exactly how much we are charging per license but let’s say our competitor charges its clients on average around $10K per license per year and we will be charging a healthy portion of that.

If you do the math, you can see that we have just secured not only our financial freedom but also Baby99to1percent’s financial freedom.

Financial freedom achieved. Now what?

Family time and the business

So what’s next? Family time and this product are now going to be our main focus. I will be asking for a 1 year sabbatical leave and we will also find a replacement to take over Mr99to1percent current contract.

For now, we plan to hire additional 6-8 employees to help with the business especially with client support. The compensation will be generous as usual, but everything else will be kept lean.

In the spirit of keeping it lean, we plan to manage all of this remotely.  We won’t be leasing a fancy expensive office any time soon 😊.  We hope it won’t be a problem.  I have experience directly and indirectly managing remote teams in Canada, US, India, Argentina, Brazil,…and hubby also has experience directly and indirectly managing remote teams in US, UK, France, India…

Travel will be kept to a minimum and it won’t be in business class, unless it’s a free upgrade 😊.

We have also paused all our other side hustles.  It’s scary to put all our eggs in one basket, but this is something we have to do.

All these measures will hep ensure we don’t quickly run through the money.  It will also help to make sure we continue to prioritize family time. We must ensure we continue to spend time with the kiddo, play and eat dinner with her every night. No nanny or grandma will need to move in with us 😊.

Personal finance

Within the next month also, we will pay off our mortgage. Investing will become a little bit more fun as we will be able to take more risk and not just invest in index funds.

Once things settle down, we will look into becoming silent partners with some local businesses. Why silent partners? Because ever since getting involved in the personal finance community, we learned that it’s ok to slow down sometimes and smell the roses. You don’t have to kill yourself working 80 hours a week, it’s ok to stop playing or slow down when you have already won the game.

And of course, we will continue to be frugal as usual.  The 40-day frugal lent challenge will continue, and after the challenge, we will continue being frugal. We will not upgrade our house and we will not upgrade our 12 and 14-year-old cars until they completely die down.

Keeping it frugal is really easy for us because we don’t like shopping, moving, …we feel it’s really a big waste of our time.

But when we do shop, it tends to get expensive because we want things that will last as long as possible and that we will love and enjoy throughout that time.

That’s why the first house we bought together was/is our forever house and the cars we have bought are our forever cars (until they die down of course 😊).

The one area that we will for sure splurge on is experiences.  We plan to increase our fun budget from $1.8K to $24K and our travel budget from $10K to $30K/year. These were actually our budgets before we became serious about paying off the mortgage fast.

This time we will have an extra person with us (Baby99to1percent) to enjoy all those experiences.  Recently, we were saying how during her first 2 years, she has experienced more than we had in our first 20 years!

Our daughter will grow up way more privileged than we were growing up, and we will make sure she doesn’t take it for granted and that she helps and advocates for people who are less privileged than her.

Blogging

Unfortunately this also means we won’t be blogging as much. We haven’t decided on the new schedule yet, we will go with the flow. Maybe instead of posting once a week, we might start posting about once a month?

We don’t know yet. All we know for now is that this blog is our baby and we don’t want to give it up.

We will also continue to answer any career, money,  business, side hustle…related emails/questions we get.

For blogging related questions, see our monthly blogging reports, they have all our blogging strategies laid out.

The 2 Pinterest community boards we created will stay active:

• ALL PERSONAL FINANCE BLOGGERS
• ALL PINNERS

Nothing has changed, everyone is still welcomed to join. We will also continue to have no rules. Pin as much as you want, as often as you want. Just remember to repin other people pins too when you get a chance.  But to be added, message any member and ask them to add you. Once you have been added, you can add other people too. Happy pinning everyone!

Last but not least, we will also continue to read our favorite personal finance blogs, and check out the forums and Twitter  because well, we are addicted. Once a money nerd, always a money nerd 😊.

Thanks for reading.  Please feel free to comment, share and subscribe! We love ya and wanna get to know ya!

Do you want an easier way to manage/track your finances/investments? The Personal Capital app can help.  Do you want to start blogging? Bluehost can get you started.  Make sure to also check out other resources that we recommend such as books that have helped us get where we are.

Do you want to learn more about us? If so, you can also read these other posts:

1. About us
2. How We Increased Our Annual Income From $0 to $160K to $400K+
3. How we live on 15% of our income
4. Joining the Million Dollar Club/Challenge and So Can You
5. How To Pay Off A Mortgage In 5 Years
6. Our Biggest Money Fight and 9 Lessons Learned
7. Our 6 Financial Mistakes and 15 Lessons Learned
8. How I Paid Off My $40,000 Student Loans Before Graduating
9. The resumes that bring in $400,000+/year (Samples Provided)
10. Financial Freedom finally achieved