Category: F.I. Mindset
Financial Freedom is a Mindset, Not an Account Balance
I didn’t feel financially free when I was $77,000 in debt. I was earning over $100,000 at my day job, but I still felt behind. However, once I started to read articles on passive income, compound interest, and getting out of debt, I immediately knew I would free myself and my family. That was back…
Middle-Class Investing 111: Middle-Class Investing COMPLETE
The Middle-Class Investing 101 Series was super fun to write and develop. Investing gets a bad reputation among the middle class. People believe investing is about taking all kinds of crazy risks and flying by the seat of your pants. In reality, it is the exact opposite of this scenario. Investing is about creating a…
The Great Family Reset: The Independent Person Experiment Failed
It was an experiment for the ages. The idea was to send a person out of the home at age 18 and see if they could make it in the world. They used words like “be independent,” “go build,” and “become a man” to entice us into the world alone and without resources. A few…
Middle-Class Investing 110: Create a Wealth Generator
We have come a long way on our investing train, and we arrive at our final stop today. Now that we know exactly what to do with our money, we need to make a lot more of it. But we don’t want to do all the work; we want our investments to carry the load.…
Middle-Class Investing 109: Create a Paycheck with Income Investing
We have finally made it to my favorite type of passive income—income investing. Although we took the long way, it is necessary to understand how we got here. Income investing is not for the faint of heart. That’s why starting with interest from high-yield savings accounts is good, and slowly work your way forward. Welcome…
Your Daily Routine is Your Success
I always tell my wife that life is supposed to be tough. Every day you should be challenging yourself in many aspects of your day. Life isn’t about getting to a magical point where you become comfortable. We can call this the “fat and happy” stage. In fact, life is about the exact opposite of…
Middle-Class Investing 108: Why Dividend Growth Investing?
Today, we will dive deeper into the world of wealth-building. Sadly, most middle-class folks will never buy individual stocks. The purpose of dividend growth investing is to build a nest egg that also pays you. In addition to a steady paycheck, your dividend payments grow over time to combat inflation. Does this method sound too…
Middle-Class Investing 107: Capture the Market with Index Funds
You must build the mindset of an investor; it doesn’t come naturally. We have gone from broke to saving throughout the Middle-Class Investing 101 series (101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106). Now, it’s time to dabble in the stock market. However, we need to understand the long-term advantages and disadvantages of simplified investing using index…
Middle-Class Investing 106: Using Bonds to Create Safe Cash Flow
As we start understanding assets, we see value in safely accumulating more things that produce money. Just because we are middle-class doesn’t mean we can’t have access to some significant investment products. Treasury bonds are the safest investment instruments we can buy; we can purchase them directly from the US Treasury (like large institutions). Retirement…
Middle-Class Investing 105: Start with Savings & Interest
Becoming a big-time investor doesn’t start with buying dividend stocks and real estate. First, you must appreciate every dollar you earn. The purpose of every dollar you earn is to earn more dollars. That’s right; your money makes you money. The first place we can start earning income from our money is in the banks.…
Middle-Class Investing 104: Building a Solid Retirement Plan
We all strive to leave the workforce with more cash flow than when we started. However, along the path to retirement, life happens. We hit multiple recessions, lost jobs, had children, paid for college, and bought a house. These events can derail our retirement dreams, but only if we do not fully flesh out our…
Middle-Class Investing 103: Create Additional Streams of Income
To sit comfortably in the middle class, you must create additional income streams. Holding one or two jobs in the household is risky. Rich people understand the power of having multiple streams of income. It is how they continue to accumulate wealth, even during a recession. Welcome back to the Middle-Class Investing 101 series (101,…
The True Power Couple: How to Build a Passive Income Marriage
Let’s start 2023 by dissecting what made marriages stronger 60-80 years ago. These topics are sensitive, but let’s focus on the financial side of the house. Somewhere along the lines, someone convinced the middle class that having two working parents was the path to financial success. But will having two working parents lead to marital…
Middle-Class Investing 102: Budgeting to Financial Freedom
There comes the point where we all must settle down, create a budget, and follow it. Whether this time comes in your 20s or 70s, it SHOULD happen. But why has budgeting become such a bad word? How have credit cards become a staple of middle-class families? It’s no accident that credit cards have become…
Middle-Class Investing 101: Investing is Essential for Freedom
There is nothing wrong with being firmly in the middle class. I am happy sitting in the middle because I can fly under the radar. As middle-class people, we get ourselves into trouble by trying to act like we are rich. Keeping up with the Joneses is a losing proposition on all fronts. However, we…
The Biggest Book on Passive Income Ever 3!
What is the point of working hard to build passive income? Couldn’t we achieve the same results by getting a high-paying job? Yes and no. Money is money, no matter how it arrives in your account—this is true. But the magic of passive income is you can do whatever you want as it grows inside…
Don’t Gamble with Retirement 9
It’s always exciting when I add to the “Don’t Gamble with Retirement” series. It is one of my longest-running series, and I love documenting as the world changes. I wrote the first article in a series in February 2021, when we were in a raging bull market. Today, the stock market is in the opposite…
LBYM: Live Below Your Means and Increase Your Savings Rate
“Living below your means” gets a bad reputation. People hear these words and assume you need to eat grits, make honey sandwiches, and recycle toilet paper. But that’s not the case at all. Living below your means simply means creating cash flow through your household. It also means that you do not subscribe to the…
New Year’s Passive Income Resolution 2023
What a fantastic year we had in 2022. Yes, the stock market crashed, but things still lined up in our favor. That is the magic of passive income—it helps protect you from downturns. I started the year bullish on cryptocurrencies and still feel the same. They will be a significant part of our transition to…
Will Being Cheap Make You Rich?
Most of us grow up with a sense of happiness about our surroundings. We don’t understand how rich or poor our family is, nor do we care. We enjoy playing with our friends, eating with our family, and not having many responsibilities—we call this childhood. We can live like this for 10-12 years until we…
