Free micro guide · 9 pages · 10 minutes to read, 15 to work through
You Do Not Need A Million
If you have ever run a retirement calculator and closed the tab, you were calculating the wrong thing.
Written by Nikita Balanov. Fifteen years on a payslip, a seven-figure portfolio, no company sold and no inheritance.
9-5 Fastlane
Micro guide
You Do Not Need A Million
Nikita Balanov
9 pages · 10 minutes to read, 15 to work through
You will probably recognise this
Who it is for: Anyone who has looked at a freedom number, felt slightly sick and quietly decided it was not going to happen for them.
You ran the numbers once. The number had six figures in front of the decimal point.
You closed the tab and did not open it again.
The number was not wrong. The question behind it was.
When I first worked out how much capital I would need to be free, the number was enormous. It looked like something that happens to other people, people with different parents and different accents. I remember thinking, genuinely: this is not going to happen for me. That reaction is completely normal and it is also based on a mistake.
The myth
I need a million euros before anything changes.
The reality
Nobody actually wants a million euros. A commenter put it better than any financial writer I have read: people do not want to be millionaires, they want to be day to day wealthy. Those are two different targets with two completely different plans and almost everybody is chasing the wrong one.
What is inside
- The Freedom Life exercise: what you actually want money for, written in plain words, before any arithmetic
- Converting that into a monthly number instead of a terrifying lump sum
- The Freedom Ladder, six rungs, starting with the one that sounds silly and is not
- The capital required at 4%, 6% and 8%, with a blunt note on why you should plan with 4%
- A worked example: the life that costs €4,000 a month and the work that pays €1,000
From here to there
What you walk away with
You have a Freedom Life in words, a monthly number and the capital that produces it.
Who wrote this
Nikita Balanov. Fifteen years in sales. Started knocking on doors in a town of two thousand people in South Estonia, then spent five years renting carpets to restaurants for €700 a month. Best year later on was €243,000 against a €50,000 base. Today holds a seven-figure portfolio that pays a five-figure monthly income.
No inheritance. No company sold. No exit, no options windfall, no crypto. A payslip and about five decisions.
Verifiable: the career is public and dated on LinkedIn, both companies are on the Estonian business register, the numbers come from real payslips.
You Do Not Need A Million
If you have ever run a retirement calculator and closed the tab, you were calculating the wrong thing.