A person who has an astronomical amount of money, accumulated through unethical means, will remain a slave of money without real financial freedom.

MANY people believe that the love of money is the root of all evil. In the long history of mankind, there are many examples of how money led to the destruction of many societies.

Even now, whether we like it or not, we live in an age where life is centred on money.

We need money to buy things, be it for our necessities or our desires.

We may ask ourselves, why we do have to work, and spend eight hours or more at our office, even though we may not like the environment, our superiors or our colleagues?

The fact is we must go to work every day, simply to earn money to live. We need money to maintain our health, to pursue our studies and much more.

Some say money cannot buy us happiness, but truly, do we feel secure, safe, calm and happy when we find out that our bank account is zero or even negative?

Seen in the right context, money can give us a meaningful life, to develop our abilities and pursue the things that we enjoy in our life.

The real problem in our society arises when money is fuelled by an inner human attitude called greed.

So we have siblings quarrelling over inheritance, parents forcing their daughters to marry rich men, and politicians selling their integrity, self-esteem and trust of the people, simply for the sake of money.

Some people even live by the creed that money can buy everything in this world, and as such, they are unable to determine how much money is enough for them.

Nevertheless, the people’s perception towards money has changed over the years because we have become more aware of personal finance issues, which help us understand the concept of financial freedom.

Some people see financial freedom as having more than enough money to cover their cost of living, without having to work actively. While for young people, they may see financial freedom as the ability to earn sufficiently without the need to burden their parents. It could also relate to the freedom of being able to do things whenever we want to.

People do not want to worry about money should something unexpected, like the loss of a job or a natural disaster, strike.

According to personal finance experts, financial freedom is a term widely used to describe the state of having sufficient personal wealth to live by, without having to work actively in order to fulfil basic needs.

In other words, financial freedom is achieved when we no longer need to work for money, but we are still earning income in our bank account. This type of income has been defined as “passive income”. Technically speaking, in order to achieve financial freedom, our passive income must exceed our monthly expenses.

There is, however, a misunderstanding that financial freedom means being rich. It is certainly not about one’s net worth.

As an illustration, a person would achieve financial freedom with an income of RM50,000 a year, while another who earns RM1mil a month, can still be constricted in the realm of financial “slavery” because he is debt-ridden.

Furthermore, the idea of “freedom” must also mean freedom from unethical conduct and values, where one is prepared to earn money at the expense of one’s integrity.

A person who has an astronomical amount of money, accumulated through unethical means, will remain a slave of money, and thus he does not have real financial freedom.

Our attitude towards money is influenced by our religion, culture, values, socio-economic status and other variables. Thus, just being able to manage our money correctly from a technical aspect is insufficient.

True financial freedom is achieved when one has the ability to resist and control certain things in dealing with the sources and uses of one’s money, hence partaking the righteous decisions in whatever situation, either in prosperity or in hardship.

The Holy Quran talks about the person who will receive forgiveness and reward from Allah when he is able to deal with his wealth or money freely without being constrained by prosperity or adversity.

The verse reads: “Be quick in the race for forgiveness from your Lord, and for a Garden whose width is that (of the whole) of the heavens and of the earth, prepared for the righteous, Those who spend (freely), whether in prosperity, or in adversity; who restrain anger, and pardon (all) men; for Allah loves those who do good.” (3: 133 – 134).

Certainly, one who can deal freely with his money in prosperity or adversity is the one who has achieved financial freedom.

Mohamad Azhar Hashim is a Fellow at the Ikim Centre for Economics and Social Studies.

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