Funding the Adventurous Life
We used to worry about every dollar spent. But then we learned to stop fretting and live well through value spending, putting our efforts where it matters most.
Here’s how we made major and repeatable changes to our spending habits without materially changing our enjoyment of life.
Continue reading “Value Spending: How to Really Save Money”
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 promised at the end of our post on spending tracking that we’d also be addressing and tracking one’s net worth. I’m a man of my word, so here we are.
Net worth is defined as total assets minus total liabilities (debt). Simple enough right, so why the post?
First, there’s some nuance involved in the categorization of assets and debt.
Second, and most importantly, despite the relative ease in calculating net worth, I speculate that very few have taken the time to calculate their own. Guys, forget early retirement. Failure to take note of the reality of your finances can leave you very much hosed by the fatty knot of life. Deliberate attention and a hard look at “normal,” however, can flip the script. There’s no better time than today, and we’re here to help.
Continue reading “Net Worth: It’s Really Going to Matter…Someday”