With the recent passing of the country’s Emancipation and Independence celebrations, now is as good a time as ever to assess the status of your personal financial freedom. How truly financially independent are you?

To answer that question, firstly you have to define what financial independence means to you. Generally speaking, financial independence means having the requisite amount of savings and investments while you’re alive that will be able to meet your financial goals, whatever they may be, so that you don’t have to be dependent on others. Savings and investments are assets you create with the sole intention of allowing money to grow a profit and, in so doing, satisfy your money goals, not only for now but also the future.

There are many routes to meeting this goal of financial freedom, if you are focused and disciplined and committed to getting there. One of the most efficient ways is through the investment of lump sums through which significant drawdowns for the long term can be made, from time to time, in order to ensure you and your loved ones don’t need to live at someone else’s mercy. But so many people are daunted by the idea of investment. Firstly, they may be risk-averse, fearing perhaps the psychological impact the loss of their investment — which probably represents their life savings — can have on them. This is understandable but there is a way to cope with that kind of anxiety: diversifying your investment portfolio so as not to be too vulnerable to volatility in the market. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you split up your money into stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and so on, you’ll spread out your risks.

However, there’s another, more damaging reason people become daunted by investment, often not attaining financial independence. It has to do with a lack of mental emancipation: the ‘born as a sufferer, die as a sufferer’ mindset. People who embrace this state of mind see the word investment as pertaining to “the bigger heads”. They often also use these statements as well; “I don’t have any money for that,” they will say. “I’m just trying to keep body and soul together; I can’t afford to even save.”

But, consider the inspirational case of Biddy Mason.

Biddy Bridget Mason was a figure from history (1818-1891) who not enough people, especially people of colour, know about. In addition to being one of the first founders of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, she’s also notable for being one of the first black women entrepreneurs and philanthropists in the US. On the face of it this may not seem that big of a deal but when looked at through the prism of her past, all her accomplishments are quite remarkable.

Born into slavery in Georgia, she was acquired by a Mississippi farmer. At 32 she was given as a wedding gift to a Mormon couple, and forced to walk from Mississippi to Utah, tending the cattle behind her master’s 300-wagon caravan. Some years later the master, Robert Smith, moved them all out to a new Mormon settlement in California, during the height of the Gold Rush. While there, Biddy discovered that Smith intended to move them once again, now to Texas, for a workaround of the California constitution that made slavery illegal. Biddy, with the help of freed slaves she’d befriended in California, succeeded in taking Smith to court on a writ of habeas corpus, and won. As a free woman, Biddy and her three daughters moved to Los Angeles where, through hard work and saving, they were able to buy a house in downtown LA. Diversifying her income stream, she worked as a nurse, midwife, and a domestic servant and, with part of the land that was unused, she built passive income by renting it out as temporary resting space for horses and carriages, becoming what is considered today the first parking lot in LA.

She continued working hard, saving and wisely investing, eventually growing her financial fortune (she was thought to have amassed US$300,000, which today is valued US$6 million) through the purchase of real estate, including a commercial building, which enabled her to then build schools, hospitals and churches, not to mention, follow her philanthropic pursuits.

If ‘born as a sufferer’ was a person!

Against the odds Biddy followed the rules of investment closely, which state, firstly, that you don’t have to be rich, of a certain age, or a certain racial extract, to invest. She did her research and, as a free woman, kept her eyes open for financial opportunities, understanding that this would be the salvation of both her and her children. She created various income streams and side hustles by working hard and always keeping her eye on the prize. She invested in real estate. She created passive income. Then, after successfully building generational wealth, she gave back to the community that had helped her.

This is what investment is.

If Biddy Mason could do it, so can you.