If you already have a significant amount of assets, there’re two alternative investing strategies you can use.

First, you can put your assets into really safe securities (e.g. government bonds with less than 1 or 2 years maturity date). You can then live off the interest without working (assuming you have enough money to earn enough interest to sustain your lifestyle).

Second, you can put a percentage of your assets in bonds (e.g. 30%) and the rests in index stocks (or better yet on high-performing ETF). You can then watch your assets grow and just rebalance them each year in normal condition or each 1-2 months during extreme condition (e.g. crisis).

What is rebalancing? Say that you initially decided that you want a balance of 30% bonds and 70% stocks. But then the value of your bonds and stocks grow at different rates. After a while, your bonds-stocks balance is not 30% to 70%. Say that the current balance is now 20% to 80% because your stocks’ value grows faster than your bonds’ value. Rebalancing is the act of restoring the original 30% to 70% balance by buying and selling your bonds and stocks.

Once your interests and dividends can cover your target lifestyle, you don’t have to work anymore.

If you haven’t got a significant amount of assets, then you need to get assets first. There are two ways to get wealth without money.

The first one is to trade your time with money. This strategy can only work if the value of your time is really high. Say you’re an athlete, an actress, a surgeon, or a highly sought software developer, then you can trade some of your time with money that you can then use to invest. If you are passionate about your work, then it’s even better because you wouldn’t mind too much spending time working. But if your work doesn’t earn you much money per time spent working, like if you’re a shopkeeper, then this strategy of trading time with money won’t give you financial freedom, because you’ll be dead first before reaching financial freedom.

The second is to create a sellable product or service. There are two ways that this strategy can work. First, you can sell a cheap product/service (e.g. at $10 price) to a lot of people (e.g. 100.000 people) which yields a lot of money (1 million dollars). Or, you can sell an expensive product/service (e.g. at $100.000 price) to a small number of people (e.g. 10 people) which also yields a lot of money (1 million dollars).

Your first priority is to have enough money to live 3 months without working at your current lifestyle. After that, start investing your assets. Once you get enough money to support your target lifestyle, you’re financially free.