I’m old enough to have started work in 1977 and was fortunate enough to build a career and was in continuous employment throughout my adult life.

For most of that time, I did everything the way I was supposed to. I worked hard, showed up every day, and climbed the ladder one careful step at a time. On the surface, I had what many people might call success—a steady job, a reliable wage, and the respect that comes with holding a responsible job.

But something was missing.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful. I knew I was lucky to have stability, especially in a world where so many struggle just to get by. But deep down, there was this nagging feeling I couldn’t shake—the sense that I wasn’t truly living life on my own terms. I spent my days following someone else’s rules, working toward someone else’s vision. The truth was, I didn’t want to just earn a living. I wanted freedom.

I wanted to call my own shots, to wake up every morning knowing I didn’t have to answer to anyone but myself. I wanted to stop feeling like a passenger in my own life and finally take the wheel. But I also knew that freedom meant more than breaking free from the nine-to-five grind. It meant finding a way to build financial security on my terms—without trading all my time and energy to achieve it.

That’s when I started developing an investment strategy that would transform my life. Definitely late in life but gold dust to my younger self if I had the knowledge back then! It works at any age and I’ll show you how.

It’s a system so simple it requires just five minutes of attention a year, yet powerful enough to grow my wealth steadily over time. It gave me something I’d been searching for all along: the ability to control my financial future without letting it consume my life.

This is the story of how I developed that strategy and why it works so well. It wasn’t easy. There were moments of doubt, fear, and plenty of missteps. But along the way, I discovered that investing is actually easy if you have the right strategy and it gave me the freedom that I yearned for for virtually all of my adult life.

If you’ve ever felt like there’s something more waiting for you, like your life doesn’t quite belong to you, then I think you’ll see a part of yourself in this story. It’s a journey of reclaiming control, of taking risks, and of building a system that gives you both time and freedom.

This isn’t just my story—it might be yours too.

Colin Hardwick

January 2025