Financial Independence and Freedom Aren't Enough: You Need This, Too
“Successful, Profitable…and Not Broke.”
This is the name of my coaching offer — when I’m working with business owners and entrepreneurs to achieve these results. But it’s not just a name for me.
It’s literally what I want for you, for me — for everyone. Because my position is that this is what you want for yourself, too. You may not use these exact words, but I bet your spirit resonates with them when you read or hear them.
For me, “successful, profitable…and not broke,” is a mission and a movement — one that actually undergirds another movement.
It’s a Three-Legged Stool
These last several weeks I’ve been writing about the intersection of money, independence, and freedom. And given how often I find myself saying context matters, I realized there’s something I haven’t yet addressed in this month’s series: financial liberation.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been building two legs of that stool without naming them as such. Two weeks ago, it was “fund” — the idea that your independence is being paid for, sometimes by you, sometimes by others, on a timeline you don’t control. Last week, it was permission — the wait, the pause, the no, as its own kind of funding. Both of those legs are things you have real agency over.
But a stool needs three legs to hold weight. And the third leg — liberation — isn’t something you can fund or grant yourself alone. It requires politics and policies to do their part, too.
Some might say, it’s all semantics: financial independence, freedom, and liberation. Yet, I disagree.
Yes, they all embody self-agency to make the choices that best serve you. But “liberation” means politics and policies are aligned in such a way that the barriers to financial independence and freedom are dismantled.
Otherwise, it’s like a three-legged stool, with either a missing leg or a very wobbly one.
As I said in the past, the modern personal finance movement picked up steam in the 90s, alongside the growth of the self-help movement. Both movements did an incredible job of messaging the importance of financial independence and freedom as an “individual, pull yourself up by the bootstrap” effort. Resulting in a number of best-selling books and television and radio shows dedicated to these topics — while the role of politics and policies was downplayed.
However, I am of the opinion that in order for true independence and freedom to be something that is experienced by all — and not just a few — more attention and effort needs to be directed to liberation, too.
When most people talk about money, it’s usually on an individual level — personal or business — and there’s a tendency to forget that the person or the business is actually part of a larger eco-system. It’s why I wrote two weeks ago that our lived experiences are not just impacted by our own choices, but by those of others.
It’s why when I remind you (and others) that financial success is an inside job, I am taking into consideration the agency you have — along with an understanding that it is also influenced by factors outside your control.
Yes, your identity, emotions, and life experiences and transitions shape the financial choices you make. But there’s no escaping how politics and policies shape the options available to you in the first place.
Today, I’m not writing with answers.
I’m writing with an invitation for you, me, and everyone to focus not only on our financial independence and freedom — but to also spend time pondering what financial liberation looks and feels like. And then to consider what choices we need to make (or make differently) to experience all three.
If I can help you manage this three-legged stool of money, so you can be (more) successful, profitable…and not broke, let’s chat.
About Jacquette
I love to ask questions and spark aha moments. I love to talk about why success with money is about more than just the numbers, and how the cultural impact on the intersection of money, business, and life matters–A LOT! And, I really hope I help people feel seen, heard, and not judged—especially since money is emotional and personal.
