Yes, we could write a blog article after a blog article about how amazing life is when you achieve financial freedom. And it all will be true. Of course, living a life without having to worry about money is a huge luxury. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any downsides. There are! In this blog, we will share the five reasons why financial freedom is annoying.

We share the five reasons why financial freedom is annoying not because we want to complain. We do, however, want to paint an honest picture about achieving financial freedom. To show you that although everything may look amazing from the outside; living such a lifestyle can be really annoying sometimes. It is definitely something to consider when you are thinking about working towards this huge goal yourself.

A little bit about us

Around 13 years ago, we started saving money. We were 25 and 22 years old. We didn’t have a clear goal in mind at that point, but we did know we wanted to be free to travel the world without a deadline. We also wanted to be independent financially in the long term, which meant in our case that we had to come up with a way to ensure our pensions when we would be older. Being entrepreneurs, this wasn’t taken care of for us by the government.

Long story short: we were able to save money fast, invest in rental property, saved more money because of that, and eventually were able to retire before 40 and live from our passive income. We now live on our boat in the Mediterranean.  We are financially free, which means that we don’t have to work for our income anymore.

The five reasons why Financial Freedom is annoying

Since by now, financial freedom may sound like a dream to you, let’s dive into the reasons why financial freedom can be very difficult to deal with once you achieve it.

Reason 1. You háve to enjoy it

This is probably one of the most annoying things when it comes to financial freedom. Since you have achieved the ultimate luxury of not having to work, you will feel obliged to enjoy the situation.

However, life isn’t perfect. We all know that. And even if you don’t have to worry about money anymore, you still will experience bad days. Things will go wrong, you will be negative about situations and have arguments with loved ones. It is impossible to live your life on constant happiness high.

The pressure you might put on yourself having to enjoy it can actually make you feel extra depressed when you don’t. You will probably struggle to allow yourself to be unhappy. Also, it is hard to complain to others when you have a day off. Aren’t you going to sound like a spoiled rat?

Reason 2. You lose your purpose in life

Creating financial freedom is often linked to a big hairy audacious goal you want to achieve. For us, that big goal was to travel the world on our own catamaran. We worked hard to achieve that goal and it took many big and small decisions and sacrifices.

Once you finally achieve your big hairy audacious goal, it can be a very sobering experience. You reached your long-cherished dream and got to the finish line. Now what? Being purpose-driven is probably what got you so far, but it can also be your pitfall. Before you know it, you are getting into long conversations together about the purpose of life.

What we also experienced was that we both were so focused on our sailing dream, that we forgot to create a new mutual dream about the next part. What would be our dream after that? What would be the new goal we strive to?

Reason 3. You have a lot of time on your hands

Having a lot of free time is seen as a luxury in a lot of societies. This comes from the fact that when you work you have to invest time. In fact, you trade your time for money. Time is a scarce good and as always with scarce goods: value increases.

And while having a lot of free time is amazing, it can be annoying as well. Suddenly you have all this time on your hands and no activities to spend it on. Especially if you used to spend a lot of time working, your week has a big hole that has to be filled.

A lot of time on your hands created new challenges to be solved. Such as, what do you like to do with your time? What activities fill up your day or your week? How do you structure your day? How do you make sure you don’t get bored? Combined with a lack of purpose, having an abundance of time can be a very big struggle.

You might end up starting to work again, as we did. And of course, this is totally fine, as long as you do what you want to do. It can be a problem however when you only start to work again because you don’t have anything better to spend your time on.

Reason 4. It’s difficult to ask for money for your products or services

This may be a very personal one, depending on your own character. Some people find it difficult to ask for money for the work they do. Even when they can totally use the money. If that is a thing for you, then it might be even worse once you reach financial independence.

Once you reach financial independence, you have enough money to cover your basic expenses. You might still live a simple and frugal life, but this isn’t always clear for others. It therefore can become even harder to charge a price for a product or service you provide. You are financially free, right? So, what do you actually need that money for? It is a justification issue that you have to deal with. You might need to justify the ‘need’ for that extra money not only towards yourself and towards others. Even if you feel that you are providing a product that has a lot to offer for your clients.

Of course, you could provide your products or services for free. But in our experience, this will attract customers that are not really passionate about your product. Another option is to work on a Pay What You Can basis or – as Mr. Money Mustache does – donate the surplus money to charity.

Reason 5. People assume you’ve been lucky

Well, we can be short about this annoying one. Yes, a lot of people will assume you were lucky or that you were born with a silver spoon. We even got asked once if we were trust-fund babies (spoiler alert: no we are not). And while this might be the case for some, we have experienced that most don’t achieve financial freedom without putting a lot of effort in. It requires NOT buying a lot of luxuries, NOT spending all your money on housing, clothes, gadgets, and whatnot. In other words: it takes effort. And it can be frustrating to learn that others see you as over-privileged, while you actually put in a lot of work and effort to get to financial freedom.

Choose your battles

There you have it: five reasons why financial freedom is annoying.

Hopefully, this blog has been able to show you that there is another side of the coin. It isn’t only fabulous and amazing. And if you start working towards financial freedom, it would be smart to think about these things in advance.

In the end, it depends on the struggles and annoyances you chose for your life. It can be the traffic jams going to work and the fact that you don’t have a lot of me-time or it can be the fact that you need to cope with a new situation in which you lack purpose and feel you need to enjoy every second of your life. The choice is ultimately yours to make and each lifestyle has its pros and cons.