You can afford anything. You just can't afford everything.

Every choice that you make carries an opportunity cost. Every choice comes with a trade-off.

And that doesn't just apply to your money. It applies to your time, your energy, your attention.

It applies to any resource that you manage. And this leads to two questions. Number one,

what do you value? Number two, what choices are you going to make as a result of those values?

Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice. And that's what this podcast is here to explore.

My name is Paula Pan.

I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and I am recording this from a hotel room in Tokyo, Japan.

It is currently September 2019, and if you've been a long-time listener, as you know,

I am taking the month of September 2019 off

from producing new podcast episodes. I'm referring to this as my September sabbatical.

So I'm taking this month off from creating new episodes. And instead, I am re-airing some episodes

that we originally aired a while ago, episodes that many of you may have missed. And so today's episode

is one that we originally aired almost exactly three years ago. We originally aired this in

August 2016. This episode that you're about to hear is one in which we talk about the seven

stages of financial independence.

Now, what does that mean?

In the financial independence community, many people, when people are having conversations

around this concept, people tend to talk about FI as a binary yes, no, you've reached it

or you haven't.

That's the concept that a lot of people have around it.

I really disagree with that framework.

...