27-year-old founder keeps costs at $1/mo to achieve financial freedom faster

27-year-old Amine Khaoui has built seven products. He killed a few, sold a few, and now he is determined to find financial freedom with his latest product.

To achieve this, he's burning the midnight oil, keeping his costs incredibly low ($1/mo), and adding features when he knows he should be marketing. Maybe you can relate.

Let’s take a peek at his finances.

Pursuing financial freedom against tradition

Amine taught himself to code at 13. And even before that, he was using no-code tools to build websites, aspiring to build his own business.

He made his first dollar — actually $120 — online at 16 with a tech news blog that he monetized with ads. Hearing his dad tell him that he had a check from Google was an incredible feeling for him, despite the six months of effort it took to earn that amount. He was elated.

Amine got into indie hacking in a big way in 2018, while in college. His first product failed, but that didn’t stop him. Since then, he has built six more.

Amine’s parents don’t agree with his entrepreneurial path — he was raised to go the traditional route. In his family, success meant a college degree, a good job, and putting food on the table. But that isn't success to Amine. Success is freedom.

Prioritizing freedom over money

For Amine, freedom is more important than money. Why make $100k/mo, with no time to spend it, when you could make $10k/mo or even $2k/mo working 4 hours per week?

As it stands, he is spending most of what he calls his "best years" sitting in front of his laptop in his home office, working his full-time job. He thinks it's a waste.

He dreams of growing his product to a level where he can quit his job, first and foremost, and eventually, hire a team to free up even more time.

He wants to travel the world doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants.

Seven attempts and entrepreneurship

Here are the seven products that he has built while attempting to realize that freedom:

• Dymolab (alive): $0

• Systemize (sold): $90 MRR (sold as a package with RingsDo and MyDone for $2k)

• RingsDo (sold): $0

• MyDone (sold): $0

• Pondeals (dead): $50 total from affiliate marketing

• Fireopps (dead): $0

• Meetingly (dead): $0

I don’t care how many failed businesses I build. I won’t give up until I succeed.

His current project, Dymolab, is a tool for creating interactive product demos, allowing people to try tools without signing up. It's pre-revenue, with a waitlist where people can sign up. Waitlisters have the option to purchase the product with a one-time payment to incentivize early adopters. That's how he hopes to validate the product.

Meanwhile, he supports himself with his full-time job.

• Dymolab revenue: $0

• Full-time job: $1.2k/mo (software engineer for a French company)

• Personal savings: $3k

The dollar amount of financial freedom

Amine is chomping at the bit to go full time on his product. To do this, he needs to make somewhere between $500 and $800 MRR. That's enough to live comfortably where he lives in Djerba, Tunisia.

That means he needs 13-20 paying users. That seems doable to him, but he remains cautious.

Save as much money as possible before leaving your full-time job. Your chances of failure are bigger than your chances of success.

A guilty pleasure that may delay his goals

The trouble with getting 20 paid users is that Amine has a guilty pleasure. It doesn't cost him money, per se, but it may be costing him revenue.

He spends "way too many hours" building his product without sparing a moment for marketing. For example, this week, he spent three days switching his authentication from local storage to server-side rendering — to the benefit of zero users.

He's a developer through and through; he wants to code and he hates marketing.

Incredibly low business expenses

Amine keeps his monthly costs extremely low at just $1 per month. It's easier than you might think — he's simply utilizing free plans.

• Domain: $12/year

• Database: $0 (Supabase free plan)

• Email: $0 (ConvertKit free plan)

• Hosting: $0 (Vercel free plan)

Keeping costs down

His personal expenses are low too — or at least they may seem low to many. But Amine says this is about average in Tunisia.

• Housing: $0

• Utilities: $15

• Groceries: $50

• Food: $100

• Entertainment: $50

• Internet: $20

• Charity: $30-$300

• Misc: $30

The only thing that's unusual is his non-existent housing expenses. His father has two houses — not because he's particularly wealthy, though he does well for himself, but because housing is cheap where he lives. So, when Amine got married, he was given a place to stay, rent free.

Investing in agriculture and real estate

Amine doesn't currently invest — he doesn't have the option to invest in the stock market right now because his card isn’t international, and he can’t get an international card until he forms his LLC.

But he isn't overly interested in stocks anyway. Instead, he hopes to invest in real estate or agriculture in the future. He says these bring a faster return — at least in Tunisia.

People are building and selling houses like crazy in my city. Others have built wealth from olive oil. And when I say "wealth" I mean $300K+/yr just from olive oil.

Interestingly, he refuses to take out a loan to do so. And why would he? According to Amine, he can buy land and build a 3-bedroom house in Tunisia for less than $70k.

People say there’s “good” and “bad” debt. For me, all debt is bad. Never buy something you can’t afford!

Financial freedom hack: Give to charity

Ready for Amine’s biggest financial hack? It isn't what you might think. It's charity.

Charity gives me a purpose. It inspires me to make more money so that I can give more.

He believes that the more you give, the more you get. And anyway, he says helping people in need makes him happier than buying a new iPhone.

But he doesn’t give his money to some organization just for them to do who-knows-what with it. He prefers to give to people in need personally, face to face. Sometimes it's a few bucks. Sometimes it's $300.

And he says it’s paying off. He makes 4x the average salary in his country and he attributes that to the amount that he gives.

Happiness always comes first

At the end of the day, Amine doesn’t care much about money. He doesn't care if he becomes a millionaire. He wants freedom. And he wants happiness.

In fact, happiness even trumps his desire for financial freedom.

If you’re unhappy today, you won’t be happy when money comes.

He believes happiness comes from being satisfied with what you have and doing what you love with the people you love.

It isn't expensive.

You can follow Amine on X or check out Dymolab.

Please note that the above are opinions. This is meant for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be financial advice.

And if you'd like to be featured as a guest in a future interview for this series, let me know in the comments!