The idea of financial freedom can feel like a far-fetched dream — something only a few get to experience after a lucky break, or during retirement after working for decades, but Shao Chun says otherwise.

Over the course of eight years working at Google, Chun lived below his means and consistently set aside up to 50% of his paycheck for investments. That allowed him to build a substantial portfolio worth $2 million, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It.

“You can actually achieve financial freedom while working nine to five,” Chun said.

But when he was laid off in February, Chun realized he no longer had to rely on a paycheck to sustain himself.

Using the 4% rule as a guideline, Chun saw that he could comfortably and safely live off of his investments by withdrawing 4% of his portfolio in the first year and that same amount, adjusted for inflation, in each subsequent year. In theory, this amount would likely be small enough for his portfolio to support him for at least 30 years.

“When you are financially free… you then can then have that flexibility or that air space to actually do what you want,” he said.

Besides the amount withdrawn from his portfolio, Chun also makes money by teaching as a part-time professor at the National University of Singapore, creating educational content for his YouTube channel “9 to 5 Millionaire Mindset” and through his career coaching business.

Here are the four key principles he lives by that’s allowed him to achieve financial freedom:

The first step to becoming financially free is to be intentional about pursuing that freedom.

“What we used to value is stability, [but] given where the economy is going right now, stability is no longer a perk that… companies can provide us,” he said. “The current generation [feels] stuck, [like] they need to dedicate themselves to one particular path, but… your objective is to be free. Your objective isn’t to be loyal.”

“The beautiful thing about our lives right now is that… while jobs no longer provide security… we have so [many] resources that are available online as well,” he said. From learning how to invest to opening your own brokerage account, he explained the internet grants access to free information on how to build your wealth.

So, we want to be financially free. How do we get there? “Short story… is to get rich,” said Chun.

“You must find ways to increase your active income,” said Chun. One way is to know when to job hop when “you’re not learning or earning,” says Chun.

“The other way is to be over employed,” he said. “So you have people working multiple jobs, having side hustles or even working two remote jobs. That’s one way, but the burnout is high.”

When it comes to side hustles, Chun suggests picking something that is a “low lift” or something that complements your skill sets. Ideally, the side hustle will bring in passive income so you don’t have to trade your time for money, he suggests.

Managing your “burn rate,” or how much you spend, is just as important as increasing your income, said Chun.

“If you want freedom, you actually need to be disciplined,” he said. “It’s actually a very popular concept that is advocated by the U.S. Navy SEALs: ‘discipline equals freedom.’”

Although many people want financial freedom, oftentimes our actions do not align with that goal. Behaviors such as seeking instant gratification, living beyond our means and “keeping up with the Joneses” can get in the way of our goal of being free.

Because inflation erodes the value of money over time, it is crucial to learn how to properly invest so that our nest egg can keep up with, or ideally beat the market.

“The [last] pillar of achieving financial freedom is to… not trade time for money, and that’s when you need to start investing,” said Chun.

Respect the “time value of money,” he said, pointing to a basic rule in economics that states the value of a dollar today is worth more than the value of a dollar in the future due to interest, inflation and its earnings potential.

Since 1957, the S&P 500 has provided an average return on investment of 10.26% each year, according to Investopedia. If you invested $1,000 in the S&P 500 in 2013, by April of 2023, your investment would have tripled to about $3,217, according to reporting by CNBC.

“Invest for the long term, not the short term,” said Chun, advising people to avoid the “shiny thing syndrome” and try to invest in your circle of competency, or what you understand. “If you can’t explain the investment to a 6-year-old, that investment might not be for you.”

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When it comes to the most desired job benefits, for many workers, flexibility tops the list. And 22% say remote work, specifically, is the most important benefit in terms of supporting mental health and work well-being, according to Monster’s 2024 Work Watch Report, which surveyed 6,000 U.S. workers and HR professionals.

If you’re looking for a job that’s either fully remote or offers remote work opportunities, “employers tend to desire some specific skills,” says Toni Frana, FlexJobs’ lead career expert. You’ll want to include those on your resume to signal that you have what it takes to succeed.

Here are three skills to include and how to showcase them.

One critical skill to include on your resume is communication.

“I think that when you don’t see each other and you’re not noting nonverbal cues and you don’t have that office water cooler talk,” says Frana, “really having a good handle and a sense of how to build rapport and how to initiate communication with members of your team” is important. It helps things to run smoothly on the team.

There are various ways to highlight your communication skills.

“Sometimes it’s really easy and it will actually be in the job description,” says Frana, adding that, “they might specifically call out negotiation. They might say, you know, ‘experience using a platform like Slack.’” In these cases, you can include your specific experience with those.

But if nothing is called out in particular, use your best judgment in terms of what the job will need. If you have to lead a team virtually, include successes in doing that. If you have to work with clients remotely, illustrate how you’ve done that.

Organization is another key skill to highlight if you’re looking for remote work.

If you want to do your job well while working apart from your team, “you certainly have to be organized in your space and to be able to produce the outcome that they’re looking for,” says Frana. You have to keep yourself on task.

When you’re writing your resume, highlight ways you’ve kept up with your team’s goals while working at home. Consider including a line in your resume summary like “seamlessly prioritizes key tasks to meet organizational objectives and KPIs,” says Frana.

When you’re writing your bullets under each job title, you can also start a bullet with “organized” or “organize” and then give “the scope of what you did,” she says.

Finally, flexibility is key in remote work.

“A lot of times, job postings will talk about needing to be able to work in a fast-paced,” ever-changing environment, says Frana. Use cues from the description to see what the employer is looking for.

As with organization, you can include a line in your summary like “quickly adapts and is flexible in fast-paced, changing environments,” she says.

If you want to include this skill in a bullet under a specific job, “you could use the word ‘pivot’ to illustrate flexibility,” says Frana. Consider writing a bullet like, “easily pivoted based on data analysis around key projects that were being executed,” she says.

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In 2017, Leena Pettigrew was gifted her first houseplant — a golden Pothos, notoriously easy to care for — and killed it.

Five years later, she tried again. She and her husband Marquise were redecorating their home in Houston, and they needed to fill its empty corners, she says. She drove to Lowes and bought a couple of succulents.

The hobby blossomed into an obsession, and then a side hustle: After her home became “overrun” with 8-feet-tall Monsteras, she looked for ways to sell her extra houseplants online. She found home décor marketplace website Palmstreet, and started auctioning off her plants on livestreams there last June, she says.

From July 2023 to July 2024, Pettigrew brought in nearly $148,600 in revenue, or an average of $12,380 per month, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. She stores up to 1,000 plants at a time in her garage, she says.

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Pettigrew, 44, works about 20 hours per week sourcing, selling and shipping the plants — in addition to her full-time I.T. job, where she makes roughly $90,000 a year, she says. She also is a paid consultant for Palmstreet, where she helps train new sellers.

The side hustle is profitable enough to replace Marquise’s former full-time income, they say. The couple now runs the Palmstreet side hustle together, along with five contract employees, from their garage-turned-greenhouse.

Here’s how Pettigrew built and maintains her lucrative side hustle:

To develop her green thumb, Pettigrew spent a lot of time on YouTube, she says: She and her husband would lay in bed on their phones, watching plant-care and bass-fishing videos, respectively, before going to sleep.

Selling her houseplants proved more of an administrative process, she says. As she unloaded her extras, finding local buyers on Facebook, she realized she enjoyed the interactions. But creating an actual business — sourcing and buying inventory, keeping organized track of each customer sale — took time and effort.

“I spent hours and hours tracking every purchase and expense in spreadsheets,” says Pettigrew.

At PlantCon Houston, a fair for houseplant enthusiasts, she met another seller who convinced her to try Palmstreet, which was called PlantStory at the time. The platform, which promised to take over much of Pettigrew’s administrative work, offered two options: a traditional online store and a livestreamed auction system, where she could sell plants on camera in real time.

Pettigrew listed a couple plants on her online store, but taking photos and writing descriptions for each one took time. She tried the livestream feature, and her on-camera presence felt awkward and stiff — until Marquise, who was arranging plants next to Pettigrew, started making jokes.

He made Pettigrew laugh, which made her appear more at home to the livestream’s 55 viewers, the couple says. That auction lasted about four hours, and sold 53 plants, according to a Palmstreet spokesperson.

Two months and several successful livestreams later, the couple sat down to develop a more comprehensive business plan, says Pettigrew.

Today, Pettigrew sells roughly 100 houseplants per livestream. With an established audience and reputation, she can sell larger, more expensive plants, she says: starting at $30, rather than her old starting price of $5. Her Monsteras go for upwards of $115 each.

The extra income allowed Marquise, who now occasionally hosts his own livestreams, to mostly step away from his full-time job: running an auto repair shop co-owned by the couple. He still works about six hours per week there, largely for friends and family who “coax” him to take their appointments, says Pettigrew.

Running the auto shop full-time was stressful, Marquise says. Employees were dependent on the couple for their livelihood, and customers were often unhappy — concerned about their car, the bill or when they could get back to work.

In contrast, managing contract workers for Pettigrew’s side hustle — she started hiring people this past spring — is a less stressful experience, she says. The workers only rely on them for part-time work, so the business’ success doesn’t feel life-and-death. The job is less labor intensive, and the customers are largely easier to work with, says Pettigrew.

Together, the couple has five streams of income: Pettigrew’s I.T. job, Palmstreet selling and consulting, the auto shop, and a virtual mechanic gig Marquise picked up with his spare time.

The money helps keep the auto shop open. It’s also recently funded a couple weekend trips around Texas to preserve their sanity, they say: When you both work from home, with your side hustle in your garage, it can be hard to unplug.

If the side hustle ever outpaces her full-time salary, Pettigrew wants to sell the auto shop, move to Florida, open her own greenhouse and hire enough staff for her and Marquise to only need part-time work. It could happen within the next year or two, she says.

They’d spend their remaining time on other passions, like volunteer preaching work, adds Pettigrew.

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that Pettigrew says her reputation on Palmstreet helps her sell more larger, expensive plants.

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For two years, Ryan Hogue’s side hustles made enough money for him to quit his full-time jobs.

Hogue was a senior web developer at a nonprofit called CharityEngine and an adjunct web developer professor at George Mason University in northern Virginia. He made more than $117,000 per year from those jobs — but started developing passive income businesses on the side, hoping to earn money for travel, fun and his future family, he says.

In 2018, those businesses out-earned his full-time income: He made nearly $135,600. The same thing happened the following year.

Yet despite his growing success, he stayed employed — partially because quitting felt outside of his comfort zone. “My parents’ … understanding of money was kind of imposed on me,” says Hogue, 35. “They’re savers. They couldn’t fathom not having a 9-to-5 job.”

DON’T MISS: The ultimate guide to earning passive income online

Hogue finally left his web development role in 2020: CharityEngine asked him transition into a new role, and he saw it as a sign to take the leap, he says. He left his adjunct teaching role after finishing the fall 2021 semester.

In retrospect, he could’ve done both sooner, he adds: The more time you dedicate to building passive income streams, the more money you can make.

“Life was good, but I was directly trading my time for money, and I knew it wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to be,” Hogue said during CNBC Make It’s SXSW panel in March. “By the time I left my day job, I was probably a year-plus overdue.”

Now, Hogue makes $11,400 per week in mostly passive income, according to documents reviewed by Make It. Here’s his advice on when to leave your full-time job in favor of a side hustle, and when it’s smarter to stay.

Hogue felt confident leaving his full-time jobs because he could answer “yes” to these three questions, he says:

• Does your side hustle have multiple streams of income?
• Does your side hustle make more dollars per day than your full-time job?
• Is your full-time job preventing you from growing your side hustle?

“I think you should wait and hold onto your day job for as long as you can,” says Hogue. “You will know when it’s time to leave when attending your 9-to-5 job impedes further growth of your side hustles.”

Kathy Kristof, whose blog Sidehusl has reviewed more than 500 different side gigs, offers another important question to ask yourself: Do you have the desire and financial ability to withstand bumps in the road?

“This means you need to have a certain amount of savings or another form of economic cushion — like a spouse who has benefits and enough income to float you when times are tough — to survive an extended period,” Kristof says.

For Jamie Inlow, it was a simple analysis: Building a side hustle while working full-time was tiring, and she was more passionate about one than the other.

Inlow balanced her jobs as a higher education consultant and a part-time student program coordinator in Virginia with her side hustle, a property management company called Be Still Getaways, for two and a half years.

She knew it was time to leave her other jobs and run Be Still Getaways full-time when she noticed she was starting to behave differently, and realized she could afford to pay herself a salary — in her case, $72,000 per year.

“I knew I was ready to quit my job when the demands of working full-time and working for Be Still Getaways was starting to affect my mental health and my ability to be present for my family,” Inlow told Make It last year.

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Bridgit Mendler’s path from Disney Channel star to space startup CEO started with — quite literally — an accident.

The 31-year-old is the CEO and co-founder of Northwood Space, a company based in El Segundo, California that aims to mass-produce ground stations — otherwise known as the antennae that communicate with space satellites. It’s a far cry from her youth spent as a child actor and recording artist, known for roles in Disney Channel shows and films like “Good Luck Charlie” and “Lemonade Mouth.”

“While everybody else was making their sourdough starters [during the Covid-19 pandemic], we were building antennas out of random crap we could find at Home Depot … and receiving data from [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] satellites,” Mendler told CNBC on Monday while announcing her startup.

Mendler was still acting on screen as recently as 2019 — but her new career path began more than a decade ago, when she unintentionally marked a box on her University of Southern California college application.

“I’m studying anthropology,” Mendler told ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in 2015. “But it was an accident … I was doing the application all on my own. I think I didn’t really understand how it worked. I put down like five different things that I would potentially want to be in as a major, and I got my acceptance letter, and it’s like, ‘You’re in anthropology.’”

The educational field resonated with her: Despite dropping out of USC in 2016, she later pursued a master’s degree in humanity and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She’s now working to complete PhD and juris doctor programs, she wrote in a post on social media platform X on March 7, after this story was first published. According to her LinkedIn profile, those programs are respectively at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Law School, where she said she served as co-president of the Harvard Space Law Society between 2022 and 2023.

“I have two engineer parents,” Mendler said at an Atlantic Live event in 2018. “My mom’s an architect and my dad designs car engines. So there was a lot of math-y science-y talk when I was a kid.”

Her off-screen experiences lend credence to Northwood, which she co-founded with her husband, CTO Griffin Cleverly, and head of software Shaurya Luthra — whom she referred to as her “two favorite ground nerds” in a LinkedIn post.

The startup is already on the radar of several venture capital investors, raking in $6.3 million in initial funding from firms like Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Also Capital and Humba Ventures.

Some of Northwood’s early employees have track records at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies and aerospace technology company Northrop Grumman, Mendler noted in her LinkedIn post.

“At Northwood, we’re rethinking infrastructure for satellite backhaul from the ground up. We have our sights on building a data highway between earth and space,” she wrote, adding: “We have a lot of work ahead of us but that’s the fun part.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Mendler dropped out of USC in 2016, and include her statement on social media platform X that she has not yet completed her PhD or juris doctor studies.

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