Tag: Financial Independence
30-Year Bonds vs. Blue-Chip Dividend Stocks
Today is a great moment in time to be an investor. It’s been over 13 years since stocks and bonds had to compete for your investment dollars. If you are searching for a 4% yield, you can now choose between a 30-Year Bond or a blue-chip dividend-paying stock. However, the answer doesn’t lay in numbers;…
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…
Social Security vs. Income Investing
We should not depend on the government. That’s not to say that the government is terrible or plans to ruin our lives. However, the government is not our best source of reliable income; we are. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to create our own happy cash flow retirement system. I wrote an article titled…
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…
5 Takeaways from “Build Your Music Career From Scratch”
“Build Your Music Career From Scratch” by Andrae Alexander is a guide on how to build your music career from nothing. I am a fan of building a creative career independently by leveraging new tools at our disposal. Along with writing, podcasting, and video, music is much easier to start than 10-20 years ago. However,…
The Creative Blogger: Write What You Want
Why do you want to start a blog? For most of us, the reason is to make money. We don’t just want regular income but passive income. However, blogging is tough, and trying to stay abreast to search trends can be a full-time job. You can also fall into the trap of affiliating marketing and…
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…
Bonds for Mom: A Low-Risk Retirement Plan for Mom
As our mothers increase in age, chances are they will receive some kind of windfall. This can be from an inheritance, a life insurance policy, downsizing a home, or cashing in a 401K. As the son or daughter, you will want to ensure this money lasts until the end. Most people will turn over the…
Podcasting vs Blogging: Start Your Creative Career Today
We live in a world where your job simply will not pay you enough. Even if you make $300,000/year, it won’t be enough to live comfortably in your high-income city. You must make additional income, and you can do that either actively or passively. You do the work once as you build a portfolio of…
What is Your Net Worth? How Long Can You Survive Without a Job?
Net worth has become a status symbol; apparently, if you are a net-worth millionaire, that is supposed to mean something. However, having a high net worth doesn’t necessarily mean you are wealthy. There is a massive difference between static and functional wealth. Today, let’s determine your net worth (and mine’s) and see how this money…
The Perfect Life: RV Life & Royalties
What a fantastic time in which we live. Never has it been easier or more convenient to make money from anywhere in the world. However, easier doesn’t mean less challenging. Living the laptop life comes with extreme discipline and consistency. We can merge the ideas of freedom and remote work with RV life. This means…
5 Takeaways from “Podcasting for Beginners”
“Podcasting for Beginners” by Brandon’s Business Guides walks us through the steps to starting a podcast and gaining traction. Podcasts are one of my tiers of passive income from creativity. Podcasts are essential to everyday life because they allow listeners to continue to perform other tasks while listening. Like all other forms of royalties, it…
Feel Special with Special Dividends
Every day as an income investor, makes my life more enjoyable. It’s incredible to receive money from thin air. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money and worked hard to provide for my family. I have worked for the US Government (as a Marine) for over 23 years. I fully appreciate the hard…
Create Royalties While Working a Full-Time Job
Don’t you hate waiting for an annual pay raise for a promotion? That’s what happens when you depend on someone else for income. But I am a realist; most people cannot leave the workforce to pursue a start-up business full-time. We all have responsibilities such as a family, living expenses, or medical needs. However, we…
5 Takeaways from “Copywriting Strategies”
“Copywriting Strategies” by Nicki Krawczyk is a must-read for anyone who owns (or wants to own) a business. Copywriting is in everything we see and is vital to attracting consumers to your product, content, or service. Copywriting is the words you see on advertisements, labels, magazines, commercials, and everything else in between. I write “copy”…
Preferred Shares vs. Common Stocks
There are tons of securities you can buy on a given day. So knowing what you are buying and why you are buying it is vital to long-term success. Most investors will purchase common stocks inside their various portfolios. However, many other options exist, including treasury bonds, Series “I” Bonds, closed-end funds, and mortgage REITs.…
Are You a Dividend Growth Investor or an Income Investor?
How do you like to see your money? This is at the heart of the question, “Are you a Dividend Growth Investor or an Income Investor?” If you like to see your investments always (most of the time) in the green, then you’ll probably lean towards Dividend Growth Investing (DGI). If you want to see…
College vs. Property: Which is the Better Investment for Your Children?
As parents, our children need us more than ever. This goes beyond the ages of zero to eighteen; they will need us until the day we leave this Earth. Why do our kids need us so much compared to yesteryear? The world has changed a lot over the past two decades. Everything is more expensive,…
