In my post titled You Can Become Wealthy with a Lower Income, one reader commented: I agree with your original commenter, and would personally like to see more stories of people who make AVERAGE incomes because they love teaching elementary school, or working as a substance abuse counselor, or massage therapist or whatever. There are millions out there to whom even a $50k or … [Read more...]
Make Small Progress Every Day
How would you like to achieve your wildest dreams? How would you like to accomplish anything? No matter how large... Ok, perhaps that's an exaggeration. After all, I might want to "be richer than Warren Buffet" but that's very unlikely to happen no matter what I do. But I'm talking big goals that are reasonable, though tough: Becoming a c-level executive of a … [Read more...]
How to Become Wealthy Described in One Sentence
Sometimes we make becoming wealthy way too complicated of a topic. After 25+ years of: Managing my own finances Studying how to manage money Writing thousands of articles and (probably) millions of words on the subject Achieving financial independence Retiring early with sizable assets I'm more convinced than ever that the way to become wealthy simply … [Read more...]
You Can Become Wealthy with a Lower Income
In my third millionaire interview, one commenter was a bit put off by the fact that two of the three interviews featured people with incomes of $500k. He was not rude by any means, but wanted to see some alternative interviews: May I then make the request my own… The interview series has been really interesting. It is useful hearing people’s suggestions and their mistakes. I … [Read more...]
Working the ESI Scale to Financial Independence
As you know, this site is about three easy steps toward financial independence (FI): earning, saving, and investing. In case you want more specifics see What Does ESI Money Mean? and The Essentials of Building Wealth. Separately I've been thinking about the various ways to reach financial independence. In How to Become Financially Independent I mentioned a whole host of … [Read more...]
The Gap is the Key to Wealth
This will go without saying for most ESI Money readers...and yet I have to say it. We've talked a lot about the essentials of building wealth, how to retire early, how to become a millionaire, how to become financially independent, and a whole host of "this is how you become wealthy" posts. There is one aspect of money management that is VITAL to success and is demonstrated … [Read more...]
How to Become Financially Independent
Now that we've had time to hash out the meaning of financial independence, I want to get to the topic I originally was going to write about: how to reach financial independence (FI). As you'll see below, there are many paths to FI and ultimately it comes down to working out a basic math formula. Let's review the key parts of the formula one by one. Financial Independence … [Read more...]
What is the Definition of Financial Independence?
Summary: This post answers the question "what is financial independence?" by providing a workable definition for the phrase. This post was going to be about the key factors people need to consider/manage to achieve financial independence (FI). But we're going to have to save that for another time. The reason we're going to have to wait is because I'm not sure what the … [Read more...]
How to Retire Early
When I tell people that I've retired early I get a variety of reactions. But once the surprise (which is always part of the reaction in some measure) wears off, the questions begin. And the most common one is something like this, "How did you do it? How can a person retire early?" That's what I plan to cover in today's post. Live Like No One Else Before I get … [Read more...]
