01
Half free
Replace half of your income from something other than your job, and half your week opens up. This is the first taste, and it is the cheapest rung on the ladder.
A Finance With Phil tool
What's your real
freedom numbers?
When I was getting started, I was so worried about what made sense that I just tried everything. I built this for everyone like me who is still trying to figure it out: see your real numbers, walk up the ladder, and leave with a plan in about 60 seconds.
Start with my timeYour freedom ladder
5 questions · about 60 seconds
What's your monthly take-home pay?
What actually lands in your account each month, after tax. This is the income we will help you replace.
$
Hours you work in a typical week
We use this to put a price on an hour of your life.
What does your current month cost?
Your real spending today, not the dream version. The gap between this and your take-home is your building power.
$
How many months of expenses would make you feel safe?
If income stopped tomorrow, how many months of full expenses in cash would let you breathe? This becomes your safety net, the first number on your ladder.
If money were handled, what would a great month cost?
Everything you would happily spend to live the life you actually want, per month. Be honest, not modest. One rough number is fine, you can itemize it after you see your ladder.
$
01 · Make it real
How could you get there?
Pick a monthly target, then see roughly what each path costs to start and how many it would take. Risk adjusts to your experience and network, and every number is an editable estimate, not a promise.
Risk tolerance
Cash you could put at risk
$
How hands-on?
Experience or network
No experience yet? Buy the edge.
The cheapest way to de-risk any path above is to invest in the skill before the capital. A focused course, a paid mastermind, or a legit operator community usually costs a fraction of the venture, and the right room turns a stretch into a good fit.
Courses & coachingStructured skills and a shortcut past the beginner mistakes.
MastermindsAccountability plus deal flow from people a few steps ahead.
Operator communitiesReal numbers, vendor lists, and warm introductions.
Illustrative 2025-2026 estimates from public sources, shown as ranges to spark ideas. Net figures are after typical operating costs; your results will differ. Not investment advice.
02 · Find your fit
Which path is actually yours?
The math above tells you how much. It cannot tell you which vehicle you will still care about in year three. That is the real question hiding inside "should I start a business or keep my job," and the best lens we have found is ikigai, a Japanese idea for a reason to get up in the morning, often drawn as four overlapping circles. Where all four meet, work stops feeling like a trade.
Sit with the questions below while you compare paths. Write your answers down. The right vehicle shows up in all four circles, not just the one that pays.
01 · What you love
- What work makes hours disappear for you?
- What would you still do after you hit fully free?
- What do you study when nobody assigns it?
02 · What you are good at
- What do people already come to you for?
- What feels easy to you that others call hard?
- Where do you have results you can point to?
03 · What the world needs
- What problem do you see up close that others miss?
- Which path above serves people you actually understand?
- Who would notice if your work disappeared tomorrow?
04 · What you can be paid for
- What have people paid you for outside a paycheck?
- Which of your skills shows up in the paths above?
- What could you honestly charge for within 90 days?
Business or paycheck? Three honest tiebreakers.
Ownership
When something breaks, do you feel energy or dread? Owners collect the upside and the 2am problems. Specialists collect depth, calm, and a ceiling. Both can climb the ladder.
Price of time
Would you rather be paid for your hours, your judgment, or your systems? Hours cap out. Judgment raises the rate. Systems are what the paths above really sell.
Sleep test
Does risk sharpen you or keep you up at night? Your safety net answer was a clue. If these answers disagree with what you clicked above, trust your history, not your mood.
There is no wrong door. Fully free on a paycheck plus investing is still fully free. Match the vehicle to your circles, not to whoever is loudest online.
Then commit: the full power test
Ikigai maps where you fit. For actually choosing, one of our favorite frameworks comes from Graham Weaver's last lecture at Stanford business school. His starting point: you carry two voices. The loud one is fear, your inner critic. The quiet one shows up as energy in your body, and it already knows your answer. He asks for three promises.
01 · Take the nail out
Whatever keeps you stuck is usually one nameable thing, and it falls in one of four buckets: a bad habit, an unresolved past experience, an inherited rule about how your life is supposed to go, or plain fear. Two things keep it in. You have not said it out loud yet, so speak the truth first, that is half the battle. And pulling it out makes life worse before it gets better, so most people spend their energy building a helmet around the nail instead. Pay the worse-first toll. The thing you fear most is usually where your work is right now.
02 · Follow your energy
Passion advice fails because it implies you have exactly one, that you should already know it, and that it must last 40 years. Energy is measurable today, and it is how the quieter voice talks to you. Try his nine lives exercise: sketch nine parallel lives that all start from today, life one being the one you are in. Fill the rest with lives you would jump out of bed for. Then use it two ways. Pull one piece of another life into this one now, and ask which life you would choose if you knew you could not fail. That answer is your richest dream.
03 · Go all in now
The inner critic rarely says never. It says not now: after the loans, after the promotion, once the kids are older. Not now quietly becomes never. Staying hedged, one foot in and one foot out, burns more energy than committing ever will. When you go all in, your identity shifts and the argument between your two voices goes quiet. Burnout comes from friction and misalignment, not from effort. Energy is not a tank you drain, it grows the more you spend it on the right thing.
"You, with energy, all in, as long as it takes, is enough." · Graham Weaver
Watch the full talk · How to Live Your Life at Full Power · Stanford GSB, 33 min →03 · The philosophy
Freedom comes in levels
You do not have to get rich to get free. You climb. Each rung makes work a little more optional than the one below it.
02
Fully free time freedom
Replace all of your income. You still make the same money, but you no longer have to show up. Most people never realize this milestone exists, let alone that it comes before getting rich.
03
Lifestyle freedom
Now fund the life you actually want, not just the one you have. Family, travel, giving, the whole picture, paid for monthly or sitting in a nest egg that never runs dry.
"I kept meeting people who thought their number was huge and far away. Almost every time, once we did the math, time freedom was closer than they ever believed. That conversation is what this tool is."
Phil, Finance With Phil