“Money is just liquid freedom”, I said to my 12 year old son. He didn’t have a clue what I meant. You may not understand what I mean by liquid freedom either so let me explain.

First let’s look at the word liquid. In the world of finance the word liquid is defined as “in cash or readily convertible into cash without significant loss of principal”. So liquid literally means money.

Now that we know the definition of liquid we can look at the word freedom. Freedom is defined as “The power to determine action without restraint.” What a beautiful concept. Every human being has a limited amount of time on this planet and freedom is so precious because it gives us the opportunity to decide how we will spend that time.

Having defined liquid and freedom all we have left to do is combine them: The power to determine action without restraint, converted into cash. That is liquid freedom… the power to determine action without restraint converted into cash.

Want to send mosquito nets to Africa and save a million lives? It’s possible if you have the money. Would you like to brunch on the Champs-Élysées tomorrow? Drive a race car? Travel into space? It’s all possible… with enough money. With money you have the freedom to choose whether you will be playing golf in Scotland tomorrow. Without money the choice is made for you.

So the next time you put a dollar bill in someone’s tip jar just think of it as passing along a little drop of liquid freedom.