Saving money, investing, and financial independence
Welcome to Save, Invest, Become Free! This is a blog for those that have a strong desire to own their own time, their own life. But before you can own your life, you need enough money to buy the lifestyle you want, for the rest of your life. Until you do so, you need to sell your time and effort to others for money and your life choices will be much more limited. The way you accomplish this Continue reading “Welcome!”
We often see articles on the internet about finding your passion. Usually this refers to finding or creating a job you love to do. This is a great concept although Continue reading “Earn Your Passion”
I just completed a nearly three-week global round-the-world trip for work, covering 4 different locations across Asia and Europe. I was able to fly business class from the US to Asia and stay in 5 star hotels. I had local hosts that arranged transportation and very nice dinners. It was a true VIP treatment. Glamorous right? Are you jealous?
But you know what, I would have been happier not going. Continue reading “Would you be happier if you were more important in your job?”
I found the particular method of negative visualization from Stoicism in A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. It’s a nice book that describes the key tenets of Stoicism well. I found a lot of ancient wisdom here that is relevant today, much of which is being rediscovered in our current craze of happiness research. I also think that much of Stoicism will resonate with the financial independence, retire early (FIRE) community so I recommend taking a look.
In this article I’ll delve into a specific aspect from Stoicism called negative visualization. Continue reading “Negative Visualization – A Stoic Method of Gratitude”
Many of us pursuing financial freedom early in life struggle with making the decision to stop our current jobs and make the huge transition into the unknown. This is a big life decision and it understandably makes everyone nervous. And a lot about the struggle is about the numbers. Continue reading “Golden Handcuffs and Early Retirement – The Mental Challenge of Choosing Freedom when Slavery is Lucrative”
Financial independence, especially early in life, is a very ambitious goal. The most reliable way to achieve this goal is through saving a lot of your income and investing it well. But this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s a reliable get-rich-slowly approach that takes many years of consistent savings. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t really enjoy running and I certainly don’t want to run a full marathon (i.e retire after 40 years of work). How can we turn our journey into a half-marathon instead? After all, doesn’t 20 years (or less!) working sound much better than 40?
Continue reading “Gamify Your Journey to Financial Independence”
Anchoring is a psychological term used to describe the tendency we humans have to anchor our thoughts to a reference point, even though that reference point often doesn’t have any meaning and shouldn’t be used to guide decisions. This is an important topic to understand in investing, particularly in volatile assets like stocks or real estate. It’s another area where knowledge of how our mind works helps us fight our natural but irrational instincts. It will help make you a better investor.
Let’s start Continue reading “Mind vs Money – Anchoring”
I thought it was time for a more light-hearted article. We’ve been covering a lot of investing topics lately so I felt like a change of pace.
This article highlights the difference between frugal and cheap with regards to clothes purchases. Many people mistakenly think frugal and cheap are the same thing but they are not. Cheap is looking for the lowest cost with little consideration for anything else. Frugal is concerned with getting the best value. In fact, many people, including myself broaden this even more and think of being frugal as trying to get the maximum happiness for our spending.
This difference between cheap and frugal leads to some interesting contrasts. Continue reading “Buying Expensive Clothes Can Be Frugal”
