If you dreamed of achieving financial freedom for yourself but don’t quite know how to put it in place, you’re not alone. Many people are in your situation, but the simple fact of the matter is, there is a way to achieve financial freedom, and it’s not that hard. All you have to do is to follow a couple of relatively simple rules.

To achieve financial freedom, what you really have to do is turn “conventional wisdom” on its head. Most people would say, for example, that if you work hard, you can achieve financial freedom. And that may be true, but think about that for a minute; if you work for your boss and you get a paycheck every week, you have to go to your job every day and work those seven or eight hours, 40 hours a week, to get that paycheck. Is that financial freedom? You are trading time for money!

Number one: Build a system that will generate wealth FOR you

Now, think about your boss (or the company CEO, etc.), for a moment. It may very well be, for example, that your direct boss works just as hard as you do managing the business, such that he or she, too, works very hard for the paycheck he or she gets. But what about the person that actually owns that company? Unless you work for a very small company, chances are, that owner is letting someone else run the day-to-day operations, doesn’t have to work very hard (if at all), and still gets income because he or she has turned the management of the company over to someone else.

That’s called “building a system,” and that can be your ticket to financial freedom. In other words, that company owner built a system whereby he or she didn’t have to work very hard if at all on a day-to-day basis and instead can simply sit back and let someone else do the work, while he or she collects a profit. Pretty smart, right?

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to start a company from its inception, work hard for years to get to that point, and then turn it over to somebody else to manage. There are lots of ways to achieve financial freedom with a wealth generating system, and you just have to find the best one for you. Thousands of entrepreneurs on the Internet make a living by letting a “turnkey” system do most of the work for them, as one example. Or, for example, book authors make great livings because they get continuous royalties on books they just wrote once. Find your particular niche, get a system set up where it’s going to start working for you, and sit back and collect the money as it comes in.

Number two: Buy assets, not liabilities

No one says you have to live in poverty, but when you’re still building your worth, another way to achieve financial freedom is to focus on buying assets instead of liabilities. So, for example, focus on sinking your excess income into things that are going to give you a definite financial return, like stocks and bonds, real estate investments, mutual funds, and so on. Save the “frivolous” shopping like a brand-new car that’s just going to depreciate the minute you drive it off the lot for a time when you have money to burn. Take care of your needs as frugally as you can, and sink the rest of your capital into investments that are eventually going to pay YOU.