Funding the Adventurous Life
Most strategies for spending less involve some degree of shaming or a fist-pounding and stoic stance of extreme willpower. But in absence of a complete mental overhaul, what other strategies do we have? The robots, of course. Welcome to the power of automation, our new best friend.
Continue reading “Automation: The Dirty Little Secret to Spending Less”
This week we’re taking another look at your specific questions. Today we examine the thorny subject of income and how much is needed to pursue financial independence, how we fund our lives without a job, the best option for medium-term saving goals, some discussion of real estate investing, and a requested expansion on last week’s post about emotional fragility, plus plenty more.
Here’s what you wanted to know…
Continue reading “Your Questions Answered: Volume 2”
Hey guys. I know that 2020 was a hard year. And 2021 only seems like a continuation of that trend. It’s easy to throw up our hands or hunker in a ball, suck our filthy, calloused thumbs, and wait. But that’s not the solution.
Despite everything that happened in 2020, the S&P 500 returned over 18%. For those of you with money in the market back in the late February and March, I hope you held your breath and squeezed your butt cheeks while the sky was falling. During that time the S&P 500 fell over 30% from its recent highs, with several pucker-inducing drops of 10%+ per day! For those who stuck to the plan and avoided market timing, you did just fine.
For instance, someone with $1 million dollars invested on January 1, 2020 ended the year with approximately $180,000 in gains for doing nothing other than owning an index fund. That’s real, folks. Of course, we have to pay tribute to the inevitable years this will not be the case (where we could lose just as much as we made), but over time, history shows us that the market returns approximately 7-10% per year, on average.
These are the simple little things that we did every year. The result? We were able to walk away from paid work in our 30s.
Does financial freedom appeal to you?
Here’s how we can set the ball rolling in 2021.
Continue reading “Your 2021 Guide To Actually Saving Real Money”
I stand up on my bike pedals in the fading sun of a late spring afternoon. Facing what feels like gale-force winds, I can’t wait to get home and have a discussion with my significant other, who just so happens to be my wife.
We’ve been texting all day, popping off with ridiculous reinterpreted and borderline inappropriate emojis. I told her about how my boss, who in a very important meeting discussing a new research project, explained to a company executive from Houston…
“Well Gary, this stuff is complicated. It’s like trying to figure out your wife.”
Fortunately, I understand my wife fairly well. She is rooted in a strong desire for security, so something like financial stability is very appealing to her. This day at work in 2015, I’ve been reading Mr. Money Mustache, like all day. I’m convinced that we can now super-charge our path to a corporate exit, and we can make work an optional part of our lives, forever. Now, I just have to do some convincing.
This should be easy, right?
Continue reading “Help! My Significant Other Is Terrible with Money!”
This week I am very pleased to bring you an exciting interview with a climber and young professional that you don’t know: Neil Phillips.
As a matter of fact, I’m 100% positive that you don’t know Neil Phillips, because that’s not his real name. And I get that too, because I also don’t use my name. Money and jobs and the internet are like oil and vinegar. They don’t mix. As a matter of fact, we’ll discuss a bit about the taboo of money, and why Neil and I think it’s so damn hard to discuss personal finance.
Neil is a young professional, rock climber, and has many interesting stories and suggestions for anyone trying to get the upper hand with their money.
In this interview we discuss Neil’s desire for financial strength, his story of eliminating debt, pursuing financial independence, and preparing for a year-long road trip. And of course, we even have some good-ole-fashioned climbing talk.
Let’s go!
Continue reading “Neil Phillips: Money as a Means to an Incredible Journey”
Okay friends, let’s do an interview, shall we? This week I bring you Bethany Macke, a climber and trainer with a unique approach to correcting muscle imbalances and mechanics, an often-overlooked foundation to building movement skills. Bethany, along with her husband Adam, bring more than just a different approach to training. She also has an interesting story of change, adversity, and building meaningful work, even during the pandemic. And sometimes change comes in high doses. In the age of Covid, there’s much we can learn from Bethany’s resiliency, and mastery of the career and personal pivot. And of course, we even discuss a bit about the freedom of financial strength.
One quick note: Bethany has a lot of great little nuggets in this interview, so it’s a long one. Please let me know in the comments or via email if you’d prefer to see interviews this long broken into two or more parts. Or maybe you prefer it all in one place. Let me know!
Let’s go!
Continue reading “Bethany Macke: The Powerful Art of the Pivot”
The following are fictional narratives of many of the character traits, decisions, and habits that either my wife or I have exhibited, or those observed or communicated by readers of this website. Let’s examine together some of the many common scenarios where young people set the ball rolling on a path to destroying their finances.
Continue reading “How to Destroy Your Finances in Your 20s and 30s”
The often-touted rule-of-thumb for achieving financial independence is to secure 25 times one’s annual expenses via intentional saving and investing. Even though these are simple systems, we know from the second or third grade that multiplying things by 25 produces much bigger numbers than the thing itself (our spending in this case). Therefore, it seems absolutely outlandish to imagine saving that much money! Outlandish, I tell you!
So, as with many difficult endeavors in life, the tendency is to focus too narrowly on the distant target, and then immediately get overwhelmed. And in doing so, we may never start in the first place. Behaviors remain unchanged; the status quo is preserved.
How can a series of simple systems be implemented to change our lives forever?
Continue reading “The Simple Systems to Kicking Monetary Ass”
Hi guys. Many in the financial independence community see a new car as the sunlight and garlic to an otherwise sublime fiscal vampire existence.
Thou shalt not buy a new car!
Well, thankfully there are no rules in financial independence, so we bought a new car. Twice. In three months. And we learned a hell of a lot in the process about how to get a good deal.
Continue reading “How to Get a Fantastic Deal on a New Car”
Hi everyone. Welcome to the first installment of me sharing stuff on the internet that I’ve either enjoyed, questioned, or am too lazy to write myself (yet).
Continue reading “Clipping Chains Clickable Content, Volume 1”