Tag: Financial Independence
My Secret Formula to Determine Housing Affordability
The housing market is out of reach for most American households. However, there are still small pockets of affordable places to live—you just need to find them. I have been using an affordability technique over the last ten years that has served me well. It uses a combination of Zillow and Military housing calculators to…
Dividend Investing 104: Building a Dividend Payment Schedule
Few things in life are more satisfying than receiving dividends. Although we invest our money to earn dividends, they are still gifts from heaven. As we continue our dividend investing journey, we begin to fine-tune when we receive our dividends. I have been dividend investing for four years and am still tweaking my dividend schedule.…
Is Homeownership Still The American Dream?
I detest paying rent to someone else. Currently, I am renting a room as I finish the last month of my military career. I am paying $800 monthly in San Diego as my family awaits my return to Florida. I feel many negative emotions every time I pay rent on the first. I am a…
5 Takeaways from “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”
“Debt: The First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber is a generational must-read book for anyone serious about learning the truth about money. This book has changed my view on debt, relationships, money, monetary policy, wars, and capitalism. It is a massive book, clocking in at over 700 pages. However, it is worth the read. It…
Happy Financial Independence Day 3
The American Dream is still alive and kicking, just not in the same way we envisioned. We thought it would be easy (and straightforward) to free ourselves from our jobs. NOT. In 2023, we will have rampant inflation, crazy housing costs, high utility bills, and low marriage rates. So we are getting squeezed and are…
Cursed Retirement? What is Sequence of Returns Risk?
Most of us spend our working years dreaming (and planning) for retirement daily. We know that to free ourselves from bondage, we must have a solid retirement plan in place. Conventional wisdom has us invest 10% into our 401Ks and Roth IRAs over 35-45 years. Hopefully, we retire with $1-2 million, but that is rare.…
Dividend Investing 103: Picking Your Platforms
Your investing platform will determine how much you invest. You’ll have a blast if it gives you many options and tools. You’ll avoid it like the plague if it is old and clunky. I use five different brokerage platforms because they all offer different experiences. These experiences include depositing money, automated investing, instant investing, fractional…
The Magic of High-Yield Index Fund Reinvestment
Index funds pay an embarrassingly low amount of dividends. However, they are a great product to dollar-cost average over a long time because it’s hard to beat their gains. The problem arises when you need to generate income from your index funds in your working or retirement years. Most people cannot live on a 1.5%…
Dividend Investing 102: Picking the Right Dividend Stocks
Now that you know some basic terms of dividend investing, it’s time to jump into picking the right stocks for your risk tolerance and investment philosophy. Welcome back to the Dividend Investing 101 series (101), where we get you into the passive income game. The three types of dividend securities. I categorize dividend investing into…
My Five Year Plan for My Book Business: I’m Creating a Passive Income Machine
I have 930 books on Amazon. Yes, they are high-content books with words and pictures. I published my first book in January 2021 (today is June 19, 2023). When I first started, I aimed to create 1,000 books on Amazon. Well, now I don’t have an end goal because I plan to write until the…
Dividend Investing 101: What Are Dividends?
Have you ever wondered how rich people always seem to make money, even when not at work? This magical existence is what we call “passive income.” One of the major types of passive income is dividends, along with rents, royalties, and automated business. But what are dividends, and why should you care about them? You’ll…
Minimalism is Now a Necessity: We Can No Longer Afford Stuff
We are moving into a new era during the 2020s. We are transitioning from the prosperity era to the austerity era. This new austerity era will take no prisoners. If you don’t grasp how unforgiving this new timeline is, then you risk losing it all. What is the austerity era? This new era represents the…
Saving & Investing 103: What is Your Investment Philosophy?
Once you get past all the mindset quirks of saving and investing, you will need to formulate an investing philosophy. Your philosophy will lead to your strategy, which will be your rock during tough times. Everyone’s philosophy is different, so understanding yours is paramount. Welcome back to the Saving & Investing 101 series (101, 102),…
Saving is Defense: Investing is Offense
Do you know the difference between saving and investing? What is the difference between having $100,000 in a high-yield savings account (HYSA) and $100,000 in an income investing portfolio? Once they get out of credit card debt, most people become savers. Saving comes naturally because you have complete control of your money—there are no risks.…
Saving & Investing 102: What is Your Relationship with Money?
The most essential ingredient to building your wealth is your relationship with money. I hear you thinking, “But money isn’t alive.” Money isn’t what you think it is—it reflects value. The more value you give, the more money you will receive. Welcome back to the Saving & Investing 101 series (101), where we start the…
The Metaverse 117: Return to the Metaverse
With one announcement, Apple restored all the hopes and dreams of a Metaverse-rich future. Their $3,500 headset will increase the general public’s awareness of spatial computing—and the metaverse. It’s been over a year since I wrote about the metaverse. Much of the hype irradiating from the metaverse came from the gold rush into cryptocurrencies. The…
Saving & Investing 101: What is Your Risk Tolerance?
I talk to many people who cannot even fathom moving a portion of their money into a high-yield savings account. They fear the thought of not walking into a brick-and-mortar bank to handle their transactions. Other people I know put everything they had into cryptocurrencies back in 2021. They lost nearly all of their money…
Saving and Investing with $1,000 per Month
Welcome to the big leagues! If you can save and invest $1,000 per month, you will eventually become quite wealthy. I remember four years ago (2019) when I didn’t even have $1,000 in my savings account. Even worse, I had $77,000 in debt; those were not fun times. I remember thinking that having $10,000 in…
Rents Go Up: Which Side of the Equation Are You On?
Rent prices across the United States and the world will continue to rise. There is little we can do as the average consumer. Once institutional investors, foreign interests, and the Airbnb crowd entered the real estate game, it changed the landscape forever. So how do we become homeowners in today’s environment? Even better, how do…
How to Use a Daily Budget: The Best Way to Curb Personal Spending
Do you have your personal spending under control? If so, how do you measure whether you successfully keep your urges to consume at bay? Having financial control is tricky because we all work hard. We feel we deserve certain luxuries when we put so much into work. Some of us may love to spend on…
