Terry Tran

近几年中，有很多人问过我相同的问题：你是做什么的？你怎么做的？你为什么这么做？

其实原因很简单。

我喜欢投资和交易，我也想为家人和自己实现财务自由。

我实现了自己的目标，我也鼓励其他人这样做。对我来说，能够帮助别人改变人生，过上更好的生活是件很幸福的事情。

人们常常忘记财务自由会有很多副产品。他们会拥有时间自由、地点自由以及人生经历自由。

财务自由会让你有更多的时间和家人相处，去做喜欢的事。虽然听起来很平淡，但你不用送了孩子上学之后再急急忙忙地冲进早高峰去上班。

地点自由指的是你可以住在任何国家的任何城市，你可以去任何地方旅游。只要你去的地方有网络，你的投资和交易就不会受到影响。

我最热衷的是经历自由，我想要各种丰富的体验。我可以驾驶着直升飞机飞跃尼亚加拉大瀑布，横跨新西兰冰帽山，穿越阿拉斯加荒野，乘着独木舟和座头鲸一同漂游，到斐济追踪诅咒射线，或是到巴厘岛的湍急水流中泛舟。

我说的这些，我都做到了。

人们会把财务自由同很多事物联系起来。一开始，我对“财务自由”的定义是银行账户里有一百万美金。我想成为百万富翁。为什么不呢？

但拥有一百万意味着什么？其实你想要的不是印有总统和名人头像的一百万纸钞，对吧？

你真正想要的是一百万能为你和你的家人带来些什么。换句话说，你想要财务自由、时间自由、地点自由以及经历自由。

很多人不知道我是谁，我先来介绍下自己。其实我没有什么背景，只是一个跟随父母逃出越南战争的难民。我们想要逃到新世界，但是除了身上穿着的衣服，我们一无所有。值得庆幸的是，当我们的小船在风雨飘摇的海上摇摇欲坠，即将沉没之时，一辆货船驶过，我们因此获救。我们有幸在澳大利亚着陆，开始了我们的新生活。那是我第一次品尝到自由的味道。那时的自由，是个新的国家，没有共产主义的镇压。

为了重新开始生活，妈妈同时做了很多份工作，她到工厂做帮工，也到餐厅洗盘子。所以在我很小的时候，追寻财务自由的目标就根植在我的脑海中。我很饥饿，我需要的不是食物，是金钱的成功。

那我是怎样通过交易和投资实现财务自由呢？我会交叉地进行交易或投资，因为它们从本质上来说是一样的，只是时间框架不同。投资的时间更长，需要长期持有等待机会。交易指的是频繁地进行买卖投资。

我相信，如果你没有找到充分的理由，是做不了长期投资的。在你遇到难题或是亏损时，你要么把它只当成一个爱好，要么就会退出。因为你遭受的不仅是经济上的亏损，还有感情上的损失。

对于长期投资者或交易者来说，他们会坚持不懈，克服这些困难。

这是我的经验之谈。虽然我在开始交易时看了很多专业书籍，也参加了不计其数的专家研讨会，但仍苦苦挣扎了两年。账户里的钱都赔光了，余额变成了负数，最终欠下了八万美元。为了追寻梦想，我不得不抵押了我的房子。

虽然付出了很大的代价，但是我真的非常热爱交易，我相信总能找到出路。因为其他人已经做到了，所以我要坚持。不要曲解我的意思，困难是暂时的，我最终克服了他们。

幸运的是，这两年连续亏损给我带来了极为重要的经验。在接下来的五年中，情况逆转，我终于实现了梦寐以求的财务自由，我还建立了一个对冲基金来照顾其他人。

一本书改变了我对财务自由的看法。我曾提到过，每个人对财务自由都有独特的看法，我最初认为财务自由就是成为百万富翁。

但财务自由并不意味着成为百万富翁，坐拥无数的奢侈品，而是指你因投资产生的被动收入可以负担得起你的开销。字面上看很简单，但它却有着深层的含义。

这种财务自由的理解方式不仅看起来可以实现，而且会缓解你的压力。你的目标会变得很简单，而不再是遥不可及的百万富翁梦。

一旦实现了这样的财务自由，其他的一切也会随之而来。

如果你认为你的消费中有浪费之处，依照财务自由的概念，你需要控制支出，从而加速实现目标。

如果你的生活简单、花销不高，那么实现目标就容易得多。你有没有见过那种所谓的成功人士？他们高职高薪却也没有实现财务自由，他们挣得多，花的也多。我见过这种人，我就是其中一员。

我现在的生活很简单，不追求大别墅、欧洲跑车或是名牌服装，但我会四处旅游。我曾梦想走遍一百个不同的国家，和我亲爱的家人朋友一起，体验不同民族的文化和生活。我很幸运，已经在三十个国家留下了足迹。

有趣的是，一旦你感受到了财务自由，你的投资和交易也会发生神奇的变化，因为你变得自由和充裕了，不再跟钱较劲，你会更注重过程。

事实上，大多数成功的长期投资者和交易者，比如专业对冲基金经理，关注的不是资金和回报，而是每天的操作过程，因为资金回报是自然产生的副产品。

我希望有一天，投资和交易能够帮助你实现财务自由。

有些摇头族认为这不可能实现，但我就是个活生生的例子，我没有任何背景，我只是起于微末。

慢点再稳妥点，何必着急呢？

Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom

Author: Terry Tran June 04, 2015
 
I have been asked by a lot of people over the years about what I do and how I do what I do, and importantly for what purpose?

Well, the answer is simple…

I enjoy investing and trading and I do so because my ‘WHY’ is to create financial freedom for my family and myself.

As it happens, I have also helped inspire others to do the same, which gives me great joy, knowing I have been able to help change someone’s life for the better.

People forget that financial freedom has multiple by-products. They are time freedom, location freedom and life experiences freedom.

Financial freedom allows you to have time for your family, time to do what you love -which may be to just do the very simple things in life, like taking your children to school without rushing back to work or simply enjoying a stroll in the park.

When I say location freedom, I mean being able to be located anywhere in the world, whether it be to live or to travel and still be able to pursue investing and trading, as long as you are able to connect online to execute your trade orders.

The one thing I am most passionate about is the ability to have experiences freedom, which simply means I get to experience activities like taking a helicopter flight over the Niagara Falls or over the ice cap mountains of New Zealand, hiking through the Alaskan wilderness, kayaking with the humpback whales, chasing mantra rays in Fiji, white water rafting the rapids in Bali…

I get to live life fully is what I am really trying to say.

People associate financial freedom in multiple ways. Even for myself, I remember chasing ‘financial freedom’ and my definition was to have one million dollars in my bank account. I wanted to be a millionaire. Who doesn’t?

But what does having a million dollars actually mean? I don’t think you really want a million pieces of paper with deceased famous presidents and other famous people, right?

What you really want is what this million dollars can do for you and your family. In other words, you hope it gives you that financial freedom, time freedom, location freedom and experiences freedom I just spoke about.

For those who don’t know my story, I came from a very humble background. I was what one would classify as a refugee child who had just escaped the Vietnam War by wooden boat with his parents, seeking a new world with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Luckily we survived this treacherous journey in the rough seas as our boat actually began sinking but was rescued by a cargo ship who happened to sail past. We were fortunate to have landed in Australia to begin rebuilding our lives. That was my first taste of freedom. Freedom in a new country, without communist oppression for the very first time.

So from a very early age, seeking financial freedom seemed to have been ingrained into me because I saw with my child’s eyes my mother working multiple jobs at factories and washing dishes in restaurants to make ends meet and rebuilding a financial future.

So it was my intention from a very young age to ensure I could look after her once I grew up and hence this desire to become independently financially free drove me. I was hungry, not for food, but for financial success

Enough about me, so what is your ‘Why’ to become financially free through trading or investing? I will use trading and investing interchangeably as I believe it is essentially the same thing apart from timeframes. Investing just involves a longer timeframe for holding onto an opportunity you have found. Trading means you buy and sell your investing opportunities much more frequently.

I believe that if you don’t find a big enough ‘Why’, your chances of long term investment success is diminished because you will either treat it as a hobby or when the going gets tough and you make some losses (which is inevitable, by the way, even for the very best on the planet), you will quit because you have suffered not just a financial loss but an emotional loss.

For those investors or traders that succeed long term, their ‘Why’ enables them to get through these tough times and keep on going.

This was my experience. Although I read all the books when I began, attended numerous ‘guru’ seminars all around the world to learn all I could about investing and trading, I struggled for the first two years. My account not only went nowhere, but it went into the red to the tune of about negative eighty thousand dollars which meant I had mortgage my home to pursue this dream.

That was a lot of money but I loved the game so much and I knew there just had to be a way because I had heard of others who had done it, so I just kept on going. Don’t get me wrong, I had my doubts but my ‘Why’ was big enough to overcome this temporary defeat.

Luckily, after those two years of experiencing consistent losses but learning valuable lessons on the way, things did turn around over the next five years and I achieved that financial freedom I was seeking and eventually founded a hedge fund to look after others as well.

A very important book also changed the way I saw financial freedom. I mentioned earlier that everyone has their own perception of what financial freedom means to them - I thought being a millionaire was financial freedom when I began.

I learned that financial freedom is not about just becoming a millionaire, accumulating all the toys and luxurious goods you can get your hands on, but simply to gain enough passive income through your investments to cover your expenses in life. Such a simple but yet profound definition.

Not only does this way of viewing financial freedom seem very achievable, it also relieves the pressure you place on yourself because you can now strive for this simple goal when you begin, not some distant arbitrary millionaire dream.

Once this is achieved, everything else becomes a by-product of now enjoying your work.

This definition also allows you to adjust your expenses down if you believe there is a lot of waste in your spending habits and hence can speed up your journey to your own financial freedom, whatever that may be.

So it makes it much easier if you live simply and have low expenses. Not sure about you, but have you ever seen very high corporate income earners who, on the surface, seem very successful because of their position and high salaries, but never seem to be financially free simply because of very high daily living expenses? I have. I was unfortunately one of them in my previous life as a corporate employee with a large major bank.

I now live very simply; I don’t chase fancy big houses, European sports cars and branded clothing etc. etc. But I do travel well as I have a dream of setting foot on over a hundred different countries to experience the natural beauty of wildlife and history this world offers and really experience the joy of living through my travels with friends and family I love. I have been lucky enough to have set foot on over thirty different countries to date.

Funny thing is, once you feel the financial freedom, your investing and trading actually improves dramatically because you not only feel free and abundant, but you can now focus not on the money but on the process.

In fact, most long term successful investors and traders, including professional hedge fund managers, focus not on the money and returns but on their daily processes, and the money and returns become the by-product which naturally occurs.

I hope, over time, investing and trading becomes your path to the financial freedom you seek. It has for me.

For the naysayers who say it can’t be done, I am living proof that it can be, even from a very humble background and a very bad start.

Begin slowly and safely. What’s the rush?

本文翻译由兄弟财经提供
文章来源：http://www.traderplanet.com/articles/view/168484-trade-your-way-to-financial-freedom/