My Financial Independence Journey » Entries tagged with "Reflections"
17 Ways to save money without adversely affecting your quality of life
Saving money is essential to achieving early financial independence. But saving money at the expense of wrecking your quality of life is a game that I don’t play. Here are some methods that I have have successfully used to reduce my bills. And I promise no BS about meatless Mondays, biking to work, or taking cold showers. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reflections
6 Ways to Understanding the True Costs of Your Stuff
Saving money is critical to achieving financial independence. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not particularly fond of extreme frugality. I’ve also mentioned that I prefer to make thoughtful decisions about everything that I’m going to purchase. One of the factors that goes into that decision is how much I feel that a given purchase will improve my life. The other factor is how much it costs. Have you ever wondered how much something costs? Probably … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reflections
Insourcing vs Outsourcing
Outsourcing has been practiced by corporations for years. Outsourcing is also practiced by regular people when they pay others to do things for them. Best selling author and shyster (*) Tim Ferriss advocated pushing personal outsourcing to the extreme in the 4-Hour Workweek, the idea being that the less grunt work you did, the more time you could spend building a business.(**) On the flip side, much of the FIRE (financial independence/early retirement) community advocates … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reflections
Identifying the Core Psychological Aspects of Your Life
I’ve mentioned in passing that life can be divided into three distinct spheres, the material (needs), the psychological (wants), and the social. Each sphere contains certain core elements that are central to our ability to live happy productive lives. I’ve already talked about how to identify the core material aspects (aka: needs) of your life. Today, I want to focus on the core psychological needs of your life, otherwise known as wants. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reflections
The Pitfalls of Ethical Investing
From time to time, I hear about people who are concerned about ethical investing. Ethical investing does not refer to avoiding the Goldman Sacs style of investing where you sell a product to one group of people while simultaneously placing bets against the product. That would definitely not be ethical, although it is a shrewd business model. Rather, ethical investing is all about making sure that your investments are properly aligned with your moral and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
A Primer on Federal Income and Investment Taxes
Tax season is upon us yet again. We all pay an exorbitant amount of money in taxes. Seriously, go look at your pay statement and see how much money was ripped out of it by the government. It’s okay if you feel the need to sob uncontrollably while drowning your sorrows in a bottle of vodka after that. I’ll wait. I think most of us are intimidated by taxes, but because we pay so much … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing, Reflections
Financial Independence and Retirement – Let’s get our definitions straight
I am a big believer in first and foremost laying out definitions. That way we’re all on the same page. “Financially independent” is used to define recent grads starting their first job, wealthy investors, and small business owners. “Retirement” somehow applies to people who quit their job in order to work at another job, and to people who quit their job to be a stay at home mom, and to people who quit their job to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reflections
Should Americans Be Forced to Save For Retirement?
I have previously written about American’s poor savings rates. Even the rich are only saving on average 12% of their income. The fact is that these poor habits are leading to a retirement crisis for millions of Americans. As such, there is at least one proposal out there to mitigate this by having the Government force us to save for retirement. Yes, more forced savings, on top of social security, and on top of the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reflections, Retirement
Identifying the Core Material Aspects of Your Life
I like to think that life can be divided into roughly three different spheres: material, psychological, and social. Inside these spheres, there are certain core elements central to our ability to be productive and happy. In a previous post on frugality, I mentioned deliberately and consciously allocating my money towards things I care about and away from those less meaningful, so that the profit from this arbitrage can make it’s way into my brokerage account. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reflections
8 Things To Do Before You Start Investing (or most of personal finance summed up in one post)
The basics. Everything starts with the basics. Personally, I’m pretty excited about dividend growth investing and achieving financial independence. I’m presuming you are too. But before one can embark on this journey, there is a whole universe of personal finance that must be mastered. But fear not, it’s really not that hard. If you’re determined and moderately intelligent (as I’m sure you are, as you’re reading this blog) you’ll blitz through this list in no … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing, Reflections
