Thoughts on finance motivation

It seems that nowadays everything has to do with money and that's the only thing that gets people moving. I remembered when there was blogs arisen and no one was really interested in high profits but mostly just cover server costs and getting exposure. I recently an article explaining the new financial idea that Henry David Thoreau introduced in his famous book Walden. In his diaries he manages to do 2 things that most are striving to do retire early and do what you like the most, freedom. Most of the time everything we do has do to with how to get money to support that activity , how to free up time and do what you like the most, problem starts with attachment of things, status and feelings. We have some basic needs to be covered but that simple fact gets all messy and creates many more problems because what is a need for you might not be same urgency level for someone else and while food will be a primary need for most, TV cable or vehicle might not be for others. But imagine you are able to go through that part and discover you can quite your job in order to do what you like (an that as well might help create another source of income) but usually the first feelings that arise are fear and discomfort and that is pretty natural as we tend to avoid uncomfortable situations and just be or do where we feel the most comfort.
It seems that we are so worried about living life the way others dictate it that we forget to live it the way we want it. That's how fears are built in the first place, people will tell you that if you do not do this or that you won't be successful and what does it mean? Is that what we want? What's the interest behind everything we do apart money to sustain the way of living some are telling us to live? I mean I've fell in the trap too. It is ok to feel this way you just need to understand that you should do what you want and not attach to the status or financial thinking behind that.
I few days ago I donated blood and that got me thinking of the monetary system as a way to store value and exchange it. Remember Walden, basically Thoreau was one of the first persons to think of time instead of money, how much time do I need to work to sustain my way of living and if I managed to keep it simple and basic I can basically work 1 day a week to sustain my way of living and still have lots of free time to do what I like the most. Do you really need to commute for 2 hours to work on something you don't really like to be free to do few things on 2-3 hours a day and the spend most of what you earn on the weekends?
Now this got me thinking in a conversation I recently had with a friend who is in high school, he is 16 years old, he is been telling me he wants to be a programmer, so I gave him few programming books to read in his spare time, then he is always telling me how much time he has spent playing video games and that he would love to work creating video games, so I remembered the books... has he read them? No.... has he studied for high school and get good grades to be a software developer at university?.. No. What has he done? Play video games and hope that someday he will be working creating them. So I told them that things in life requires small sacrifices and lots of efforts to happen. I won't blame him because I used to play Age of Empires 2 and Gran Turismo 2 like 8 hours a day while I was in high school, the order of things was inverted. I studied first and then played.
I'm not trying to judge him but I just want to give him advise on how to do the same things but have a greater impact. That is how financial game is played as well, you don't necessarily need to save money, invest and pay debt all at once, but rather have an strategy set up with clear goals and then do that a lot if times and with a repeatedly effort you will end up with great results. I'm kind of sick of all the get rich by doing this simple 5 things posts/articles or stop doing this.... none of them are telling the truth, if you save 20 USD every month you will end up having just 240 USD by the end of the first year, that is great but it is not enough to retire early, maybe if you do that for 20 years you will have near 50 thousand USD and that might not be even close to the 1 million (or 2 millions) for today standards. But then I remember the Rich dad, poor dad book and the only thing that I feel is valuable from it .... what are you doing to make it happen? .. maybe save $50 a month.. maybe work extra or build up an empire... in any case it seems that you have to go further than others, do that multiple times at least for a decade and you will be set for retirement depending on the living standards.

@raserrano - Developer

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