Thank you for taking the time to comment on my blog entry. I agree that you need a vision and a discipline to follow it, despite the ups and downs of life. However I do find a lot of people I've met (and I'm in my 50s now), have put aside their own personal accountability and only focus on their faith. The issue there is that unless you are willing to crunch the numbers on what your actual realistic costs are, you can't have anyway to know if you are heading in the right direction. So despite your commitment to your journey, you need a map. Spending the time to know your numbers will give you the path and then to add your vision and faith to that, has to result in success.

I would challenge any reader to apply this filter to any vision though.... "Be careful what you wish for because when you get it, you might not like it". I have that issue from time to time. Right now I am saving to purchase real estate in Latin America with cash. However I've never lived there, so I have to spend time to AirBnB in that region for months to determine if my goal is worthwhile. I'm lucky enough to be at FI now which has taken me 20 years to achieve. But on the path to having multiple homes around the world, I have to be realistic that if I want to apply myself to achieving that, it should be something that I really want. Otherwise I'm just accumulating liabilities that I may not need.

How will I get there? Since I already have the assets in place to generate income, and I have amassed enough wealth to never have to work ever again, the assets generate sufficient surplus wealth to allow me the option to speculate like this. But if I had just ventured on some path without the goal of acquiring income generating assets 20 years ago, I would not be in this position today. I didn't do anything super smart to get there - I just didn't do anything stupid.

So I agree with your premise, but would add that faith, vision & motivation is a needed part of the equation, but you have to add the "don't be stupid" factor to this. FI is not anything that you have to be some super genius to achieve. You just can't be stupid, and with a long game plan, you will be completely self-sustainable and independent and never have to worry about where your next dollar will come from.

Good luck and god speed.