Freedom First

True freedom is within your grasp with this powerful wealth creation strategy.

Freedom First challenges you to rethink your ideas about how to become financially free. Drawing on historical financial insights as old as Confucius, as well as lessons gleaned from modern psychology and economics, this book explores a counterintuitive approach to wealth creation: if you want to become financially free, you need to become free first.

Author Matthew Klan walked away from his professional career and the promise of financial security in the pursuit of freedom. Now a self-made millionaire, Klan reveals his two-part wealth-building principle, and shares stories of others who have harnessed the power of getting free first. This book will enable you to:

• Learn the counterintuitive financial insights of the rich
• Understand the traps of not being free: Dependence trap, Debt trap, Income trap
• Learn how to free yourself from what is holding you back
• Free up time and energy to unlock your full creative potential
• Adopt a growth mindset and go beyond the traditional ’passive income‘ approach

Whether you’re a millennial or retiree, this book will teach you the wealth generation secrets of the rich and enable you to become financially free now.

Introduction ix

Prologue xvii

Part I: Putting freedom first 1

1 The primacy of values 3

2 Is it our family’s fault we aren’t rich? 9

3 We can choose what we value 15

4 Dominant Values 21

5 The path of freedom 41

6 Putting freedom first 49

Part II: The traps that come from not being free 67

7 The Dependence Trap 71

8 The Debt Trap 85

9 The Income Trap 109

10 Growth, cycles and the econosystem 131

Part III: Getting free first 155

11 Free from the short term 157

12 Freedom is having more choices 167

13 Buy back your time so you can buy back more time 171

14 Get free, so you can get freer 189

15 Pulling the levers 199

16 Free from tax 213

17 Free to grow 223

18 The path of Freedom First 239

19 Free minds create 243

Index 251

A self-made millionaire in his early twenties, Matthew Klan walked away from a professional career and the promise of financial security and chose his freedom instead, discovering along the way the power that freedom has to create prosperity, a universal principle that everyone can apply. Matthew is an author, entrepreneur, forecaster, investor and sought after public speaker.

DO YOU WANT TO BE FINANCIALLY FREE?

Freedom First will challenge everything you think you know about wealth, security and financial freedom.

We're told that if we follow the safe, secure path we will be financially free. But we won't. It's time to stop being slaves to our jobs, debt and the markets. It's time we stop giving away our freedom, now, for a chance of financial freedom, later.

You will learn:

• How to be financially free right now, not in 20 years.
• How to escape the short-term grind and free your mind to create, innovate and grow.
• How to take back control of your investments with advanced stock, real estate and tax strategies.
• Why you shouldn't save for retirement, or for emergencies.
• Why earning an income, even a good one, may be keeping you poor and why retiring early may not only be easier than you imagined, but essential if you want to prosper.

Packed with real-life stories and expert guidance, Freedom First has a message for everyone, from retirees discovering that after a lifetime of work their savings have only left them dependent on a volatile market, to millennials starting out in a world where many of the old securities are gone. Freedom First shares insights from Benjamin Franklin, Confucius and Napoleon, as well as some of the biggest tech billionaires today. Get ready to discover why: If you want to be financially free, you've got to start by getting free first!