Rentiers 2.0?

I discovered the beginning of the Web in the late 90s and I was immediately hooked. However, at the time, the Internet was much less fluid and user-friendly than it is today. In a way, it was even thanks to the Internet and online brokerage services that I started investing and embarked on the path to financial independence.

The web gives us the ability to generate income anywhere and anytime. I can take a trip to the tropics and still buy or sell stocks if necessary. Thanks to smartphones, I can even do it while lying on a deck chair sipping a cocktail. Likewise, I have the ability to keep an eye on my blog, respond to comments, and even write an article.

Before the 90s, when the Web did not yet exist in its general public version, there were of course already people looking for financial independence or full-fledged rentiers. But we can really say that since its birth, it has radically changed the way we approach this question.

That being said, the Internet has not only brought good things. And somewhere, while giving us the tools to become rentiers, it has also pushed us out of the world of work. It started with e-mails. At first it was funny, we only received a few e-mails per week. We even thought it was cool because it was processed faster than a letter. But little by little more and more people got into it and it is not uncommon today to receive 50, 100 or even more e-mails per day! And that, for stress, is not great.

And then it became possible to work while connecting from home. No need to take a picture. But as if that wasn't enough, in case we weren't at work or at home, but for example at an aperitif, smartphones arrived. And that was the end. No more separation between private and professional life.

Today we are constantly connected. Internet, social networks, instant messaging, emails... it's hard to get away from it all. We have more and more difficulty letting go, being calm, in short, finding ourselves (again).

I always said it, the path to financial independence is schizophrenic. With the Internet we see a new side of this bipolarity: it is the network that forces us somewhere to leave the world of work, but on the other hand it gives us the tools to do so.

In the end, we can still thank the Web: it gave us the motivation and the means to get out of the Rat Race. We are definitely rentiers 2.0.