Tag: financial education
Setting Yourself Up for a Healthy, Wealthy Retirement: Only You Can Save Your Future
Retirement planning is serious business; YOUR retirement is even more crucial than everyone else’s. You won’t survive long if you don’t prioritize your retirement over everything else. This may sound selfish; however, it is the truth. No one is coming to save you. To have a healthy, wealthy retirement, you’ll need to start planning today.…
The Earned Income Trap: And How to Avoid It
Have you ever gone to Walmart on a Wednesday morning and seen tons of people? I always wondered how these people would be away from work at this time. I worked for the United States Marine Corps for 24 years, during which I never had time to go shopping throughout the day. I was stuck…
Start Your Debt Payoff Journey 2: Is Budgeting That Bad?
Getting out of debt is the best feeling in the world. I remember how I felt when my wife and I paid off $77,000 in debt; it was a fantastic time to be alive. Please read “Start Your Debt Payoff Journey: Defeat Toxic Consumerism.” Somehow, the American dream became synonymous with debt. I don’t know…
High-Yield Savings Accounts vs. Standard Savings Accounts: We Should All Love Yield
I’m embarrassed that I even have to write this particular article. I mean, come on, we should all want our money to earn as much interest as possible. However, I understand many people have reservations about switching to a high-yield savings account, typically from an online-only bank. But it’s time to overcome our fears and…
Index Funds vs. Income Investing: The Best Way to Retire Early
Do you want to retire in your early 50s? That is an excellent time to call it quits and focus on family and friends. But how can you retire this early without a solid financial plan and a massive bank account? One way is to follow the FIRE movement (Financial Independence Retire Early). The FIRE…
Get Off The Fence. Get Into Dividends!
What are you waiting for? How many years must you spend in the workforce before you realize it’s all a game? Even worse, it’s a game you cannot win. Even if you work 40 years to accumulate $1 million, can you live on $40,000 annually from investments? Most people will get nowhere close to $1…
I Achieved Work-Life Balance: I Stopped Working
Why do we work? Every human should want to be productive and add value to society, but can we achieve this by working a corporate job? In essence, we work to pay bills. Along the way, high-paying jobs lead to high-flying lifestyles. Someone convinced us to work until we were 65 years old. The Industrial…
Paying All of Your Bills with Income Investing: The Magic of Passive Income
Paying bills sucks, but it is a necessary part of our lives. How can we create less friction when dealing with our expenses? The best solution, I found, is to pay bills with passive income. Why is passive income important to your overall financial health? Passive income is money you receive without exchanging time for…
Paying Your Cable Bill with Dividend ETFs: It’s Time to Pay Your Bills with Dividends
Do you still have a cable bill? I have a Direct TV bill plus three or four streaming services. All of these bills can be expensive and annoying. Part of me wants to cancel these services, but I don’t because I have the resources to pay for them. Instead, I concentrated on building my passive…
Rental Income vs. Social Security: What’s Best for Your Retirement?
Social security is heading toward insolvency; can it be saved? We do not know what the future holds; however, there are things in our purview we can control. I used to be a full-on government-retirement-plan lover. My goal was to serve 30 years in the Marine Corps, do another 20 years in the federal civilian…
Paying Your Car Note with Mortgage REITs: It’s Time to Pay Your Bills with Dividends
I hate having a car note; I hate it with a passion. However, the Marine Corps placed me in a bind, and I had to purchase a used car on the fly (in 2022). Luckily, I have my trusty dividend portfolio to assist me in making this payment. The magic of income investing is you…
Creating Passive Income in Yout 70s: Learn to Earn in Your Sleep
Earning passive income in your 70s should be the easiest thing on Earth. You should already have a plethora of money and assets; all you must do is convert them into income. Your 70s should be a time of joy and relaxation, not stress and frustration. One of the best ways to solve any problem…
Paying Your Cell Phone Bill with Dividend Stocks: It’s Time to Pay Your Bills with Dividends
I love having the latest Samsung flagship phones but hate paying for them. Luckily, I can use high-yield dividend stocks to cover this expense. The best part of dividend investing is using it to pay your expenses. Eventually, you can use dividends to pay all your bills, making you financially free. But let’s not get…
Creating Passive Income in Your 60s: Learn to Earn in Your Sleep
There is nothing cute or funny about being broke in your 60s. It’s not amusing to still have to work a full-time job when you have grandkids. As a retired 44-year-old, I do not say this to offend people but rather to rally them toward a mission of financial freedom. Worst of all, if you…
Paying Your Auto Insurance with Business Development Companies: It’s Time to Pay Your Bills with Dividends
During my 24-year military career, I never struggled to pay bills, and I never had to use credit cards to survive or pay utilities. However, that doesn’t mean everything was golden. We used our credit cards for emergencies, which ended up biting us in the rear end later. Although we always had food on the…
Every Day I Wake Up to More Income! Income Investing for the Win
I started working at age 16 during the summer of my sophomore year in 1996. I continued exchanging time for money until the summer of 2019. In June 2019, I began exchanging time for assets. These assets then paid me money that I could use to purchase more assets. I retired from the military in…
Paying Your Water Bill with Preferred Shares: It’s Time to Pay Your Bills with Dividends
You become financially free when you can pay all of your bills with passive income. Once you reach this point, you become work-optional. My wife and I achieved financial freedom in October 2023, when I retired from the US Marine Corps. At that moment, I had passive income from a pension, dividends, royalties, and rents.…
Happy Cash Flow Retirement 12: The Four Steps to Becoming Free
I write this article as a free man; I will never have to go to work again. However, the circumstances were quite different when I wrote “Happy Cash Flow Retirement (part 1)” in April 2021. I didn’t retire at age 42 because I was smart or worked hard. I didn’t retire early because I completed…
Paying Your Electricity Bill with Closed-End Funds: It’s Time to Pay Your Bills with Dividends
It’s time to pay your bills. The standard practice is to receive your paycheck and pay your highest-ranking, most urgent bills first. What if we could change the process entirely? What if we could pay all of our bills with dividends? Once we can pay your expenses with dividends, we are incredibly close to becoming…
Creating Passive Income in Your 50s: Learn to Earn in Your Sleep
We shouldn’t have too many worries in our 50s. In fact, our main concerns should be improving the lives of our loved ones and how to enjoy our wealth. However, too many people struggle financially in their 50s. To put it bluntly, you are behind the power curve if you depend on a job for…
