Notes On Thoughts from Inside the Box

One of my favorite blogs is Thoughts from Inside the Box. It’s about Brandon, a 22-year-old (now 25) software engineer from San Francisco who decided to live in a truck to cut his expenses and reach financial independence as soon as possible. 

The biggest obstacle to freedom is money. If you want to live life on your own terms, financial freedom comes first.

Financial freedom is not about having a lot of money, however. It’s more about your ability to live on what’s strictly necessary—which isn’t much: food, shelter, clothes—while giving room to what makes you happy.

From Inside The Box describes this trade-off on a day-to-day basis. As a Google engineer, Brandon can afford expensive rent in the Bay Area, but he decided it wasn’t aligned with his long-term goals (traveling and helping others). He proceeds to buy a truck, renovate it, and use it as a moving house.

My favorite entries describe his lifestyle: how he saves money on food by eating at his company, how he showers using Google’s gym facilities, how he handles his social life, etc. Surprisingly or not, he doesn’t miss out on anything by living this way.

This blog is not just entertaining, it holds an invaluable lesson about personal finance: flexibility is key to escape the rat race. Everyone is in a different situation, but our ability to do more with less, regardless of what society thinks, is what ultimately matters. 

You don’t have to be a millionaire to be free, it’s about the decisions we make today.