Welcome to the annual edition of our plan for how to achieve financial independence and retire early (aka F.I.R.E.)! Every year at least one time, I like to take everything I’ve learned about aspiring to a level of financial freedom and meld it all together into one big plan - OUR plan - my “money design”! It's possibly one of the most brilliant things I'll ever create - a blueprint for living off of passive income for literally the rest of our lives! Why do I do this? For both my sake and yours. I’m a big believer that knowledge is only as valuable as your ability to apply it to something useful. For me, I like the challenge of crunching the numbers and seeing if everything we're doing (or will be doing) is truly going to work out or … [Read more...] about Our Plan for How to Achieve Financial Freedom – January 2017
Planting the Seeds of Human Capital: Your Greatest Investment
As the year comes to a close and I become another year wiser, I realize more and more how secondary money really is in the grand scheme of life. “Most of us” know this to be true about all the cliché things like bigger homes, more expensive cars, luxury jewelry, and so on. But what’s harder to define is that grey area in the middle … the place between having just enough for both now and the future, but not compromising our other priorities in life. This is a difficult line to walk. In general, a lot of us believe that striving to work harder and earn more is a good thing. Most of the time it is … so long as we are not missing the mark completely. Want to know what I’m talking about? Hop in the car and go visit the local … [Read more...] about Planting the Seeds of Human Capital: Your Greatest Investment
Does a “Percentage of Remaining Portfolio” Retirement Withdrawal Strategy Work?
Even after writing my last ebook "How Much Money Do I Really Need to Retire & Achieve Financial Independence?" which talks a lot about retirement withdrawal strategies, I still like to actively comb through the Internet and see what sorts of other ideas are out there. One of the least talked techniques that I've come across (but I see them mentioned in forums like the EarlyRetirement.org) is one where you simply take out a "Percentage of the Remaining Portfolio". Note that this is drastically different from the traditional 4 Percent Rule that most people follow. With the 4 Percent Rule, you take out 4 percent of the "initial" portfolio balance, not the remaining portfolio balance each year. What's got me thinking about this … [Read more...] about Does a “Percentage of Remaining Portfolio” Retirement Withdrawal Strategy Work?
Travel Hacking Chapter 3: Getting the Hotel and Rental Car for (Almost) Free!
Hello and welcome to another edition of what is becoming both an exciting hobby and lucrative financial opportunity: Our conquests in travel hacking! For anyone unfamiliar with this term, “travel hacking” is when you attempt to get free or near-free deals on your travel expenses. You do this by taking advantage of big credit card sign-up offers and optimizing the rewards points to get the best deals possible. As I mentioned in the original post, I decided to give travel hacking a try after looking over our expenses for the year and concluding that we needed to find a way to save money on our annual family vacation. We really enjoy our vacations and enjoy traveling to new places. So if I’m able to apply even just a few of the travel … [Read more...] about Travel Hacking Chapter 3: Getting the Hotel and Rental Car for (Almost) Free!
What’s the Fastest Way to Get Rich? Simple: Save MORE!
How can the average person become rich as fast as possible? You might think you need to be some kind of stock-picking wizard, or that you need a "guy" to manage your money for you. But in reality, that's often not the case at all. Study nearly any early retirement story and you will find that the truth is painfully very simple: To get rich faster, you need to save more money. A LOT MORE money! So then: Why does everyone focus on investing over the actual act of saving? While investing is a VERY important part of growing your wealth and eventually turning it into passive income, there is a limit. As we'll talk about more later in the post, history has taught us that there is an upper limit to what the average person can expect for … [Read more...] about What’s the Fastest Way to Get Rich? Simple: Save MORE!
Good Scary Movies to Watch This Halloween – 2016 Edition
It's time to put aside hardcore saving tips and retirement planning strategies for a few minutes and talk about something a little more seasonal: Which scary movies are the best to watch this Halloween! Aside from cinnamon apple cider donuts and carving pumpkins, scaring myself silly watching a boat-load of horror movies is one of my favorite things to do all throughout October. And why not? It's cheap entertainment! Most of the major TV channels get into the "spirit" (... bad Halloween pun ...) by re-running marathons of all the horror classics. Or if you're keeping up with modern times, there are plenty of good options via Netflix streaming, Amazon Prime, Redbox, and even YouTube. (I've come to learn that if you simply type in … [Read more...] about Good Scary Movies to Watch This Halloween – 2016 Edition
F-You Money & Talent – The Only Unemployment Insurance You Have
Recently a friend of mine was let go from his job. It was one of those situations where he worked at the same place for 11 years and worked his way up the ladder. Then, one morning, he was asked to come up to the front conference room. Without much of a reason or excuse, he was told he was done. Hit by a train that came out of no where. I’m always a little unsettled when I hear the news of someone I know and respect being let go from the job they've worked so hard at. Perhaps it's because it reminds me of just how vulnerable we all really are when it comes to this thing we call employment. One of the hard truths that we must accept about our jobs is that they're really just paradigms made of glass. As we get better and … [Read more...] about F-You Money & Talent – The Only Unemployment Insurance You Have
Ebook 5: How Much Money Do I Really Need to Retire And Achieve Financial Independence?
Thanks for checking out my ebook! Feel free to learn more about it by reading below. Or if you'd like to order a copy (either digital or print), you can use this link to jump straight to Amazon. “How much money do I need to retire?” … Isn’t that the magic question? No matter what your plan is or how you intend to go about achieving financial freedom, we’ve all got some idea of what the “number” is. Inside of our heads, we all have some amount of money that we think we need to shoot for in order to finally feel secure enough to be able to quit our jobs. But how many of us really know what our number is based on? How did you come up with your goal? Are you assuming that you’ll need the same amount of money in retirement that you … [Read more...] about Ebook 5: How Much Money Do I Really Need to Retire And Achieve Financial Independence?
