Freedom Floor: The Key to Optionality

In ​Climbing the Wrong Hill​, tech investor Chris Dixon described a career trap that’s easy to fall into—and hard to escape.

Imagine you're standing in a vast landscape with many hills. You choose one and start climbing, always taking the step that leads you a bit higher. That’s how most of us build our lives and careers: we optimize based on where we are now, not where we could be.

The problem is, local optimization doesn’t guarantee the best outcome overall. You might reach the top of your hill and realize a taller, more meaningful one was just beyond view.

But by then, the cost of switching is steep. You’ve built a life around the climb. A higher income means a bigger mortgage. A promotion means more hours, more visibility, more pressure to keep going. People are watching. Dependents are relying. The thought of stepping down feels reckless—like giving up everything you worked for.

You’re not stuck because you failed. You’re stuck because success made it hard to move.

That’s where the freedom floor comes in. It’s not about stopping the climb. It’s about building the ground that lets you change direction before the climb becomes a trap.

When Enough Means Enough

At the side of every swimming pool, there’s a lifebuoy. It sits quietly, usually ignored. You don’t notice it—until someone starts to drown.

​Financial resilience​ works the same way.

For most of my adult life, I lived below my means. I saved, invested early, and made decisions that looked cautious on the surface. I didn’t buy a new car—instead, I drove a 15-year-old sedan handed down from my father-in-law. Most people I knew were upgrading. I was still calling Grab rides.

But when I was laid off, those quiet decisions became visible. I wasn’t panicking. I had time to pause. To think. To ask what I wanted next, instead of what I could get fastest.

Warren Buffett once said, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked."

Preparedness doesn’t feel exciting. Until the tide turns. That’s when you realize how much not needing the next paycheck matters.

What’s the Freedom Floor?

The freedom floor is the point where you no longer need to work for money, at least not to secure your future.

It’s made up of two parts:

1. 12–24 months of runway. A cash or liquid fund that covers your essential living expenses if your income stops today.
2. CoastFI. You’ve saved and invested enough that your portfolio, if left untouched, will grow to fund your retirement. You no longer need to contribute to it.

Together, they give you a kind of financial stability that’s rarely visible from the outside—but deeply felt on the inside.

How to Calculate Your Freedom Floor

To calculate your freedom floor, start by estimating your monthly essential expenses—things like housing, food, transportation, and insurance. For example, if your total comes to $5,000 a month, that's $60,000 a year.

Multiply that by 12 or 24 to get your desired runway. In this case, $60,000 to $120,000 in cash or liquid assets.

Next, figure out how much you need invested today so it can grow into your ideal retirement portfolio. Let’s say you’re in your 30s and planning to retire by age 60. Based on the 4% rule, you would need around $1.5 million to support $60,000 a year in retirement spending. You can calculate how much you need today using the CoastFI formula:

Future target portfolio ÷ (1.07^years to retirement)

In this case: $1,500,000 ÷ (1.07^30) ≈ $197,000.

So, you’d need around $200,000 invested today. If left untouched, and assuming a 7% annual return, it would grow into your target amount by the time you retire. That's your CoastFI number.

Add the two together, and you have your freedom floor:

1. $60,000 to $120,000 in cash or liquid assets.
2. RM200,000 in a well-diversified investment portfolio.

You're not financially free in the traditional sense. You're not “set for life.” But you've ​cover most possible downsides​ and are safe enough to stop. To experiment. To rethink. To rebuild.

And that changes everything.

Why Most People Never Reach It

For something so powerful, the freedom floor is surprisingly uncommon. Not because it's unattainable, but because it's invisible.

1. Lifestyle creep

As people earn more, they spend more. A better apartment, a nicer car, a longer list of subscriptions. What starts as a reward turns into a requirement. The ​gap between income and expenses​ shrinks, no matter how high the income goes.

2. Debt dependency

It’s easy to normalize borrowing—monthly payments feel small in isolation. But together, they become a net that’s hard to escape. When everything is financed, your time belongs to someone else.

3. Directionless saving

Many people save reactively. A little here, a little there. But they don’t know what they’re saving for. They don’t know their burn rate or how close they are to CoastFI. And because there's no clear target, there's no clear signal when they’ve hit it.

4. Social pressure

We measure ourselves by what we see: vacations, homes, upgrades. As ​Morgan Housel​ said, "Wealth is the money you don't spend." Freedom doesn’t photograph well. So we miss it.

The Second Mountain

Author David Brooks describes life in terms of two mountains.

The first mountain is built on success: achievement, income, validation, and growth. Most of us start here. It's where we're taught to climb.

The second mountain is built on meaning: relationships, contribution, values, and depth. It's less about how far you can go and more about what you're willing to stand for.

But here's the part that resonated most with me:

To reach the second mountain, you often have to descend the first.

And descending is difficult when your life is structured to only move up.

This ties back to Dixon’s hill-climbing metaphor. Many people spend decades optimizing their position—climbing, earning, building—without asking if they’re on the right hill to begin with. The longer you climb, the harder it is to change direction.

The freedom floor is what makes that change possible.

It’s not the summit. It’s the safe landing that gives you time to choose a better climb.

What It Really Buys You

After hitting my freedom floor, I didn’t stop working. I just started working differently.

I no longer needed income to fill a future I had already secured. I could use it to build something in the present. Something aligned.

That’s when I shifted focus to Wolo Yoga—the business my wife and I co-founded.

It’s not always smooth. Running a company brings its challenges. But I’m not chasing quick wins or desperate payouts. I’m making ​asymmetric bets​. Testing ideas. Taking risks that I wouldn’t have dared when every dollar had a deadline.

I’m building slowly, but with clarity. That’s the gift the freedom floor gives you. It turns work into a tool, not a trap. It lets you stop chasing and start choosing.

And even now, I sometimes feel behind.

I see peers with newer cars, bigger homes, and faster progress. I still wear old sneakers. I still live simply.

But when I look beneath the surface—at the stress, the debt, the tight schedules—I remember why I made these choices. Because with optionality, I get to play the game at a whole new level.

The Quiet Power of a Floor

The freedom floor won’t make you wealthy overnight. It won’t make headlines or earn applause at reunions. It may not even be noticed by others at all.

But it will change how you see yourself.

It gives you room to stop and ask harder questions. It gives you permission to walk away. It gives you space to move toward work that feels less like survival and more like direction.

You won’t find it by accident. You’ll build it piece by piece, through restraint, intention, and patience.

And one day, when the job ends or the path shifts or your heart calls for something else, you’ll realize: this floor was never about money.

It was about giving yourself a way to come down, so you could finally rise again.