Summary: This is a famous proverb attributed to Seneca the Younger. The path to financial freedom involves lots of small, smart decisions made at the right time. Money rarely falls into anyone's lap. But you can make your own luck.

This includes:
- Having sufficient, liquid cash savings to take advantage of brief opportunities to make abnormally-good returns.
- Actively monitoring such opportunities and acting on them efficiently.

I'll collect a few examples in this post.

Gain: On $100,000 over 5 years the difference can be thousands of dollars per year.


Details:

1. Monitoring unusually high interest rates. Especially 3-5 year term deposits

For example, during a financial or liquidity crisis - which can be quite brief - financial institutions will sometimes need to lock in funds ASAP and will offer abnormally high interest rates for a very brief period.

Australian savers can now only get around 3.1% for a 5 year term deposit. But during the 2009 Global Financial Crisis Westpac actually offered 8% for a few weeks.

Australians are unlikely to see term deposit rates get above 6% for decades. So if there is ever another brief spike due to a financial crisis, you'll need to act fast.

Those who capitalise on such opportunities aren't lucky. They are just well-prepared.