Freedom from other people

"Good-by, proud world, I'm going home,
Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine;
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine..."

(I like the poem "Goodbye, Proud World" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, if for no other reason than it catches the normally gentle man in a bit of a temper.)

I already knew I didn't want a lot of the physical trappings many people think of when they ponder what money can buy. I don't dream of owning a BMW, nor do I want a closet full of Jimmy Choo shoes. I find McMansions depressing. I could go on, but you get the idea.

When I first got on this financial planning kick, I probably would have said that I valued security above everything else. Not so, evidently--I discovered this surprising fact recently when I completed some exercises in the Automatic Millionaire Workbook. It was one of the exercises early in the workbook wherein you're supposed to determine your values and how money relates to them.

It turns out that I really want is to be free--free of living right on top of other people, free of the noise and congestion of modern life. In short, I want the freedom to disengage myself at will from the rest of the human race. I'm not a misanthrope, but there's no denying that crowds and noise are anathema to me, and my idea of hell looks a bit like New Year's Eve at Times Square.

I also want to be free of dependence on someone else for my paycheck. However, I'm not sure I'm the entrepreneural sort...so, I've got that to work out. But it's good to know where I stand.

Security is still important to me, of course. I can have security without freedom, but not freedom without security.