 Good day, fellow investors! Today is Simon's birthday. So, Simon, happy 36th birthday! And happy birthday also to anybody else that has a birthday today. However, Simon is 46 years old and an excellent topic as a holiday gift that I think will interest most of you is how to invest in your 40s. Simon has been having a job for more than 10 years and his goal is financial independence. So, let's discuss how a 40-year-old, which I am too, can get to financial independence in the next 10 years. I'll give you five ideas that I have that will lead you there shorter and then a psychological solution to what I think is the biggest obstacle that retains people from getting to financial independence. So, in order to become financial independent it's terrifying to have a job for another 30 years and finally quit the job, which, by the way, from experience your colleagues and your boss will not like so you have to prepare for that because they will be envious, but that's a different story. In order to reach financial independence I will now say the magic word which is diversification. So, my idea is that through diversification, but not the diversification you hear about on media and financial cheats chat, it's my special diversification that leads to financial independence much, much faster. So, let's assume the average 30-45-year-old has a 50k salary, 50k saved, 10k available per year for investing. The goal is 30 to 50k passive income that will lead to financial independence. You will always do something, so you will earn some money on the side because doing nothing is good for a few months, but then it gets boring. Now, if you can invest those 10k per year on top of the 50k you already have and you achieve a 10% return over 20 years, you will get to a million and depending on interest rates will have about 30 to 50k in dividends or income probably. That's good, but 20 years is long. Let's see what you can do in 10 years. If we invest 800 monthly on top of the 50k for 10 years with a 10% interest rate we got to about 30k which could lead to 10-15k in passive income which is not enough. And here comes the diversification part. So, I have 10-15k probably from stocks, you never know if it will happen or not. But then you invest in other opportunities that will probably happen, but again, happen or not. The more opportunities, the more investment paths you take, the higher is the likelihood that you will reach that financial independence goal and that's my diversification. So, let me start by discussing 5 ideas that come to my mind how to reach financial independence sooner and it is also what I have been doing. Now, number 1, you are now in your 30s. You are not the kid anymore that you were in your 20s, which means that you have about 10-15 years of experience and experience is value. Experience is value that you can sell to someone else, you can, I don't know, teach in an evening school, teach on weekends, do something else, write a blog, start a YouTube channel, work on some extra projects for your company on the side or for another company that doesn't really compromise your job. My point is that if you start now something as a side hustle, a few hours per week and you keep it constantly over 5-10 years, after 10 years, I can guarantee you that that side hustle will make more money than your job is doing now or will be giving you in 10 years. Because you will be developing new skills, you will be doing new things and on top of the experience you already have, you will be able to leverage that. You just don't see that and you don't see the value of that. I have started writing investment research 3 years ago. It was the summer, it was very hot. My wife went to a yoga seminar in England. I had 7 days off and I started writing. That led me to, let's say, not yet financial independence total, but to do my own thing, which is enough to enjoy my life and do what I love. So that's one, but 3 years ago I didn't see it coming to that. I then developed YouTube and everything, but if you start something and if you're constant over time, you will perhaps hire someone to do more of the job and you will, with your experience, be able to manage that. In 10 years, you never know what will come out of that. It might be something very big or it might be something small or even nothing, but don't forget diversification, which leads to step number 2. My number 2, I mean always real estate. The good thing with real estate, which you can't do with stocks, is that you can use leverage to invest in real estate. In the Netherlands, you can have 102% mortgage to invest in real estate, which means you can invest practically with no equity. You never know if that real estate will have much more equity in 10 years or not, but then again, something will work, something won't work. If of the 5 things you invest and you diversify to work, then you already are financially independent in 10 years. If 5 work amazing, if just one explodes, again very good. So if you're exposed to such risk reward situations, like buying a real estate on a mortgage, you never know what will the outcome be, but you're exposed to potentially positive things. So with real estate, that's a complete other story, how to invest. I think I made a video, but I'll make other videos how to really select, invest, find real estate that are low risk, high potential reward. But just keep it in mind, like option number 2. Option number 3, of course, stock market portfolio investing in stocks, what we have shown before, that's something we discuss constantly on this channel, so subscribe if you haven't. Number 4, do more with less. About 12-14 years ago, I solved my TV, so I decided to live without a TV. That has changed my life. Instead of watching TV, I did a PhD and so on and so on. So if you stop watching your TV, sell your TV, you will start reading, you will start learning, you will start blogging, you will start developing something and you will have much, much more time. Further doing more with less, you might want to move from the place you live now to somewhere where you can take equity out of the house that will increase your financial independence or that will lower your mortgage payments for the same. So those are all options that lead to better things. Buying a secondhand car. I never buy a new car, I'll make a video on the last car I bought. I always buy 5-6 year old cars, good cars that I drive for another 3-4 years. I save millions over lifetime. That's a video that I will do in a few weeks. So just think about how you can have the same with less or how you can have more with less. That's just about my mindset. We usually are wired to have the same things as our neighbor, keeping up with the Robinsons but that's really when you see it from a longer-term perspective, a waste of time and a waste of money. So really figure out what you want and then follow your pet. Don't follow your neighbor's pet. Number five, take action. Find things that are low risk, high reward. Even if they seem like impossible now, even if you don't see it, let me show you what I think is the biggest obstacle to doing something new and that's knowledge or that's not seeing the end of what will come. So this is what you know. This is what you know, you don't know and the funny thing is that when you start learning what you don't know then you will see that there is so much more that you don't know that you can learn but then you will see that outside the new circle you will find opportunity and as you grow as a person there will be plenty more opportunities to bring low risk, high return, independent investments opportunities to your life. So the key is take action. Every day that passes that you're not taking action is one day that has passed and that you cannot take back. If you take action and if you start learning, if you start going, if you start believing in yourself that you can be independent in three, five, ten years you can be independent. That's my message for today. So again, happy birthday to Simon and anybody else. It's his time to treat us with a Dutch typical dish which is an apple pie or apple tart. So I'm looking forward to the apple tart, Simon. Happy birthday again. Looking forward to your comments on how to invest in your 40s. If you have some other ideas that people can do, please share them in the comments to add value. See you in the next video.