Tag: financial education
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…
Living on Dividends in a Destination RV: The New Definition of Luxury Living
The American public wants to reduce housing expenses at a time when it costs money just to breathe. Housing costs (owning and renting) have shot through the roof. At the same time, finding steady work with full benefits and a path to promotions is much more challenging. What are we to do? Well, we can…
Creating Passive Income in Your 40s: Learn to Make Money in Your Sleep
We should all strive to become financially sophisticated in our 40s. Financial sophistication includes knowledge of taxes, business, interest rates, leverage, real estate, and dividends. The ultimate goal of this financial sophistication is to create passive income that arrives in our accounts while we sleep. This passive income frees us to make even more money…
Selling Covered Calls for Vacation Money: How to Expedite Your Savings Rate
Do you hate saving for your annual vacation? I used to loathe putting my hard-earned money into a slow-moving savings account that earned 0.01% interest. I traded that saving strategy for a dividend-focused plan. Now, I use my $2,200 per month passive dividend income stream to quickly save for any vacation I choose. Even better,…
Be Selfish Until You Become Selfless: The Road to Sustainable Dividend Income
We all want to donate to charity, give to churches, and help family and friends; however, all these endeavors come at a cost. As a young Marine, I helped my mom financially, not understanding that I was actually holding myself back in the long run. This article is for the many people who want to…
Health Savings Accounts vs. Series “I” Bonds: The Best Value for Your Children
We all want to protect our children from financial ruin. We would love to lay the financial foundation for them to follow throughout their lives. However, we must understand these complex products to assist them. Nobody can substitute for us learning the financial information we need to help others. One of the best ways to…
Creating Passive Income in Your 30s: Learn to Make Money in Your Sleep
I’ll be as honest as possible: your 30s are the toughest decade you will face. You will be challenged from every angle; work, marriage, kids, and housing will all play on your fears. However, this is also the perfect time to establish passive income streams that will last a lifetime. As you settle down in…
