Pay for College with Real Estate 101: Real Estate vs. 529 Plan
College costs are skyrocketing every year, and there is nowhere to hide. Sure, your kid may get a full scholarship, but chances are they will have to pay some costs out of pocket. As parents, we have to also worry about our retirements and college for our children. This financial situation is tough to put…
CryptoCurrency 107: How to Invest During a Downturn
Not every day as an investor is supposed to be amazing. There are going to be times when it is hard to look at your account. However, as investors, these are the times that we need to buckle down and review our reasons for entering the market. Cryptocurrencies have been having a hard time recently,…
CryptoCurrency 106: The Importance of El Salvador
On June 9th, 2021, El Salvador officially passed a law to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. Furthermore, the country is also committing to Bitcoin mining that uses renewable sources. This is a huge announcement and one we need to dissect as we continue to evolve our investment thesis in cryptocurrencies. So first off, what does…
How to Write 1000+ Words Every Day
Ahh, so you want to call yourself a writer? How cute. To earn the distinction of being a writer, there is one major accomplishment you will need to achieve. You will need to write. Yep, that’s it. All you have to do to call yourself a writer is write. Indeed, when I was starting, I…
5 Takeaways from “Smart Couples Finish Rich”
“Smart Couples Finish Rich,” by David Bach, is the book I wish I had read when my wife and I got married in February 2006. It would have been nice to prepare financially and mentally for what was going to come. Meh, no use crying over spilled milk. Every couple should read this book, whether…
Investing for Dividends 105: How Do You Want Your Dividends Served?
Having options can make you feel more powerful than you truly are; however, sometimes, options can prove to be just what the doctor ordered. I have five entirely different dividend accounts, and each one serves me my dividends in another way. Welcome back to the Investing for Dividends Series. You can find the other articles…
Don’t Gamble Your Retirement Away 3
Here we are again, talking about my favorite topic, retirement. I always have some form of retirement thought process flowing through my mind. There is so much to prepare for, but the main thing that crosses my mind is money. This is the third in the Don’t Gamble Your Retirement Away series (part I, part…
The Magic of Passive Income: Your Money Works for You
We all should dream of someday being financially free from the confines of the workplace. We may dream of a beach, island, or lake—no matter, it’s definitely not an office cubicle. But how do we get there? Is saving our money in a 401k going to get us to a lifetime of financial freedom? How…
The Magic of Royalties: Random Riches
I have been feeling a bit magical recently. I have felt the magic of dividends and the magic of rents, but lately, I have been touched by another: the magic of royalties. I am entirely new to this form of passive income, so let me explain. I never knew that a standard person could earn…
Basics of Design 106: Typefaces & Colors
We are approaching the end of our Basics of Design series (101, 102, 103, 104, 105), and we have some major topics to discuss. So today, we jump into typefaces (fonts) and colors. Typefaces come first. There are six styles of typefaces. The styles are sans serif, modern, slab serif, old-style, script, and decorative. Never…
The Magic of Rents: Consistent Wealth
Ahh, wouldn’t it be nice to sit back on your chair, relax, and still make tons of money? I guess that would be the ideal way to receive cash passively. I never thought about passive income this way until a strange event happened in my life. My wife and I had just bought our third…
Basics of Design 105: Proximity
The fourth and final principle of design is proximity. Proximity is something you must be aware of, especially if you have multiple points of interest in your artwork or design. Proximity is the act of physically moving items together to show a relationship. If they are close, they form a group. This information should all…
The Magic of Dividends: Guilt-Free Spending
Did you ever have a best friend that you could count on through thick and thin? Isn’t it great to be able to trust someone and make decisions based on that trust? Well, there is a way to rekindle that trust in the form of monthly income. Having monthly income coming in consistently is like…
Basics of Design 104: Alignment
Welcome back to the Basics of Design series (101, 102, 103). Today we discuss the easiest of the four principles and the one that we can mess up the fastest. Alignment has two basic rules that fall under it. 1) First, alignment covers the alignment of the text on the page. Just like when you…
The Golden Handcuffs of Lifestyle Inflation
Being rich is a fantastic feeling and an underrated experience. I never thought I would go into a department store and buy almost anything I want—with cash. Here is my favorite quote on what being wealthy is. Wealth is having excess income vs. expenses. Simple enough. So it is not necessarily the amount of money…
Basics of Design 103: Repetition
Are you ready to learn more about design? This is part three in the series (101, 102). Today we cover something ubiquitous, but you don’t notice until you learn about it. It’s called repetition. Repetition is using various techniques, such as color or design, to make the art flow together. On a one-page document, like…
When Life Gives You Lemons… Make Passive Income Lemonade
I started from nothing. I remember working at McDonald’s during high school for $4.25/hour and being happy with my paychecks. My parents raised me to have a strong sense of core values and discipline. However, that’s all I left the house with when I joined the Marines in 1999. I met my wife one day…
Basics of Design 102: Contrast
Here we go with our first principle of design: contrast. We use contrast to attract the reader’s eye and also lead them along with the page. If we did not use contrast, everything would seem important, or everything would seem unimportant. We can use contrast with color, size, weight, boldness, fonts, etc. We want to…
Happy Financial Independence Day!
Today we celebrate! We celebrate our freedom from the tyranny of the workforce. No longer do we have to grind five days a week, 22 days a month. It was a long road to get to this point, and most of us didn’t make it out. The few who survived and can call themselves financially…
Basics of Design 101: Don’t Leave Home Without It
I never knew that I had a creative streak. I grew up in the US Military and had never really had to exercise my creativity throughout my career. As a technician, I had to come up with some unorthodox methods to solve some issues, but never creativity as a design aspect. Then, I went and…