1. Get a financial advisor - It is important to take note in the background of financial advisor, observe which cash flow quadrant they are from. Rich dad’s cashflow quadrant defines E-S-B-I as in E-Employee, S-Self employed, B-Business, and I-Investor. Most of the financial advisors are from the cash flow quadrants of S and E, meaning they are either self-employed or working for a financial institution such as bank or insurance company. If you want to be a successful business owner, probably this financial advisor who comes from S or E  is not the best to give you advise. However if you want to excel as an employee, the mentioned first two might just be fine to get you started.
2. Pick up a few books – When picking up books, it is also important to note on the background of the author. It is important that we take advice only from the person who has already been successful in financial life. Robert Kiyosaki and Adam Khoo are best example authors that write good books about achieving financial freedom. Adam Khoo is a self-made millionaire who made his first million at the age of 26 years old. One of his popular books is Secret of The Self Made Millionaire. While Robert Kiyosaki is a successful business owner and real estate investor, and his best selling book around the world is the famous Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrants.
3. Play the Rich dad’s Cashflow 101 Game – This game is available in both PC version and board game.  The game basically simulates peoples role in financial life.  The goal of the game is to escape from rat race – as in escaping the typical middle class life of working for money in order to pay off debts. Playing this game you will learn some basic on reading income statement, expense, and balance sheet. Best thing about this game is that it simplifies so much that it is easy for beginner to understand as well, however in order to win the game, it takes a bit of financial literacy, which one will learn in the process of game play.
4. Making Mistakes – Schools punish students for making mistake, yet the best way to learn is by making mistake. The more mistakes you make, the wiser you are. People who never make mistake are not that they are smarter, it is because they never attempt to succeed. So try taking action now, make your own mistakes and learn from it. Financial literacy learnt through experiences is priceless lessons one could ever learn in life.
5. Join Seminar – Probably this is the highest priced investment in pursuing of financial education but could well worth the investment in long run. One good thing about attending a seminar is that most of them will get you involved in many useful training and interaction sessions. You don’t get this by listening to coaching audio and books. Besides, during seminar you get to know others who also have a same passion and interest as you. You can hardly find people who are as interested in money as you from the office.
6. Online articles – Good thing about online article is that they are all free, all you need is to spend a bit time looking for good information. Web site like Ezinearticles.com and articlebase.com have abundant of well written articles focus on financial topics.  However, be warned that most articles might just be well written but not technically proven, so just treat it like a reference and try applying it (with no cost involved of course) and see if it works in real life.

Financial Freedom

Financial freedom is achieved when one is able to live in his mean without earning an active income. In other word, one’s passive income is more than enough to support his desired lifestyle. Passive income is defined as income earned without one actively involves in the income generating activities, while active income is income earned that requires active involvement in the income generating activities. A person who is financially freed, can choose to work or not as long as he wants but still live in his desired lifestyle - indefinitely.

In the Action Plan to Financial Security (Part-2), action plans are defined to come out with income streams that could support one’s basic lifestyle. In order to be financially freed, one needs to come out with higher passive income streams that can support their desired lifestyle, freely. To be able to spend freely, one usually don’t need worry too much on his spending habits and the amount he spends. However this is very subjective, to some people, to be able to spend freely, he wants to be able to buy luxuries and still have abundance of money left to support his lifestyle. While for some other people, to be able to live and spend freely don’t require that high of a cost.

Action Plan to Financial Freedom

Since to be able to live and spend freely are subjective and depend on the person’s desired lifestyle, in your action plan, you need to list of the desired items and state the costs involve, such as below:

1. Upgrade to a higher range car with a monthly commitment of 1,500 to 2,000. Totally around 18,000 to 24,000 per year including higher insurance cost and maintenance fee.
2. Buy a home/condominium in a good neighbourhood with monthly instalment of 2,500 to 3,500. Totally 30,000 to 42,000 per year, including miscellaneous costs.
3. Buy the luxury items you always wanted like jewelries, watches, handbags, clothes and etc. Try to give an estimated lump sum total for these item, say 20,000 per year.

Total expense in above 3 desired items = (18,000 to 24,000) + (30,000 to 42,000) + 20,000 = From 68,000 to 86,000

These are my ideas of luxuries. If you have more desired items, you may list it down into your action plan and add to the total expenses, after all, the definition of financial freedom is very subjective from one person to another. Since this is the extra from your basic lifestyle, it also means you need additional income streams that could generate as much as 68,000 to 86,000 per year.

The same steps you need to follow in drawing out an action plan to become financially free; list out as many income opportunity ideas you can come out with, the step-by-step descriptions, targetted income for each, deadline to realize each income stream, etc and then total up these passive incomes. It is also make sense to expand the same passive income streams that provide you the financial security. Since you have the experience and also the know-how, it will be easier to think of innovative ideas to expand the existing passive incomes. Below are some general ideas to improve the existing income streams:

1. Part time business – Look out for expansion business opportunity. Look for greater innovation for higher business income, or improve business efficiency and reduce cost. If the business is easily duplicated, it will be easier to expand (open new branches).
2. Internet business – open to more internet business opportunity, there are a lot of ways to improve internet business revenue. Upgrade your existing web site in appearence. Improve sales letter effectiveness. Optimize internet traffic so more people get to know your product. Create more intellectual properties/product.
3. Blogging – Enrich the content of your existing blogs by providing more informative and unique contents to attract more audience. Besides, one also can use other third party services to improve the blog’s viewing traffic such as article submission to reputable sites, press release, link exchange, etc.
4. Dividend – top up to existing stock ownership, one also can increase the return in stock dividend. However, in order to largely increase the dividend return to support the desired lifestyle, investment capital is also huge, approximately half to a million.
5. Real estate rental income – acquire more positive cashflow income. Again, in order to largely increase the rental income to support a different lifestyle, one needs to acquire many more of such assets thus require more intensive upfront investment capital and time to raise the capital.

If you have successfully completed the action plan to become financially free – total additional passive income that is more than enough to cover your desired lifestyle expense. Then congratulation! you have made the first of a thousand steps to achieve financial freedom. You may start to work on the steps defined immediately. Along the journey, you need to constantly review your progress by referencing the action plan. For easier review, it is also a good idea to come up with an exhaustive check list of steps or items that are done or to be done. To end this article, I wish the best of luck to our financial freedom!

There is a saying…

~~ A journey of thousand miles starts from a single step ~~

Financial Security

Financial security is achieved when one person’s total passive income is able to cover all his basic expenses. Passive income is defined as income earned even you don’t actively work for it, while active income is income earned that requires active involvement in the income generating activities. People who live within financial security can live the most basic lifestyle without earning an active income, for as long as he/she wants – indefinitely.

Examples below are some of the very basic expenses need to be covered by total passive income in order to live a basic lifestyle:

1. Home and car loan plus interests
2. Transportation related cost like petro, car maintenance cost, insurance cost, public transport cost, etc
3. Food, groceries and basic home suporting items
4. Home utilities include water and power.
5. Satellite TV subscription fee. If it is your basic need, then you should include that as well.
6. Children expenses like school and tuition fees.

Of course, with a longer expense list and higher cost, it will naturally take a higher passive income to achieve financial security.

Action Plan to Financial Security

In order to achieve financial security, we need to come out with a plan on how we can build additional income streams. In order to build additional passive income, we need to be constant look out for income opportunity. Below are some examples of high level description of income stream you can start building:

1. Look out for business opportunity and build a part time business during free time.
2. Internet business opportunity. Start a internet business selling your own product or other peoples products
3. Write blogs to earn advertising income
4. Invest in high dividend stocks to earn dividend income, however to earn decent income through stock dividend usually require very large investment capital – approximately few hundred thousands.
5. Invest in real estate such as condominium, apartments, and shoplots to earn rental incomes. However real estate investment usually require high upfront capital as well. Zero downpayment purchase that provide positive cash flow are difficult to acquire but not impossible.
6. Fix deposit. Due to economic outlook, the FD rate is no longer attractive, at least for another 1 or 2 years. If one truly commited to achieve financial security, this method is not recommeded.

The above are my ideas of generating passive income and it is not limited to just above. If you have some better ideas, do write it down into action plan list, list down as many income stream ideas as possible. For each of the idea it is also important to state; the steps you need to take, targetted income amount for each, how long required to achieve each income stream objective, deadline, etc. When you have listed down all your income streams ideas with all mentioned inputs, total up all the targetted passive incomes. Are the total passive income streams enough to cover your basic expenses? If yes, then congratulation, you have just finished your very first action plan to become financially secured. You may immediately start taking the step one-by-one.

The next part is on financial freedom, which is the ultimate goal in our action plan…