Hello and welcome back to the Money Vault and new weekly Wednesday show where we dig into the archives to give you one of our classic episodes from back in the day.

Damien, welcome back. How are you doing? I'm good Andy and this week's Money Vault comes from back in July 2021 to nearly five years ago.

It was episode 327 where we did a whole piece on financial independence and the steps to take to get there.

So this is one of those pieces that is evergreen and so we've brought it back for the money vault.

So you will find a link to the best budgeting apps article on the money to the masses website that I mention in the piece.

That's been fully updated.

So you can click through to that and find a budgeting

app if you don't already have one. So if you go back to podcast 144, I did talk about how to

achieve financial freedom and financial independence. And it was my view on ways you could do it,

but it was much more hypothetical in terms of rather than steps, but things

you should try and aim towards in terms of generating income, etc., that can replace what you

receive via your day job or your business. And the idea of trying to build a cash machine,

so you can go back and listen to that. But today, what I wanted to do is I wanted to run through

something that's high level, but is a bit like a recipe.

So people can see where they are on these steps through life to be able to achieve financial freedom.

And then these steps, you have to realize you can move backwards and forwards in this journey.

So you need to find out where you are.

If you're at step one, great, complete step

one, then you move on to step two, et cetera, et cetera. But you do move backwards and forwards because things happen in life and sometimes they are set back. So if I start with step one, step one is what most people would say is build a budget. Okay. So if you've not done that, you've not done step one. So everybody needs to try and do step one first of all.

But rather than think of it as a budget, as I've said in past episodes probably a long time ago, so most people won't have heard it, is don't think of it as a budget. Think of it as a spending plan. So how are you going to spend your money? Where is it going to go? How is it going to be divided?

What are you going to spend your money on? How much discretionary spending have you got? There are a range of apps out there that can help you. So once you've built your plan, then you've obviously got to look at your benefits you might be able to receive. So go to entitled to. You'll Google that. You'll find the website. and you can find that very quickly via a tool.

It will tell you the different benefits you may be entitled to, you'll Google that, you'll find the website, and you can find that very quickly

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