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FI Family Taking Action I genuinely love reading each and every response I get to this FI Weekly newsletter, so please keep hitting reply and passing along your wins and ‘1% better’ changes! In that spirit, I wanted to pass along an incredible email that David wrote in: “Hey Brad – I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say that you guys have altered the trajectory of my life. That’s not to say that it was negative before finding ChooseFI. Just that it was uninspired. ChooseFI helped me put perspective on my life’s purpose and, somewhat paradoxically, has created a mindset

Saving on College I don’t usually say things like this, but Jonathan and I have been in a real groove on the ChooseFI podcast recently, pumping out high-quality episodes with some of our all-time favorite guests. After doing this for nearly 6 years it would be easy to get complacent, but we’re honestly just having a blast right now and I think the quality shows in these episodes. If you haven’t listened to the show in a while, now would be a good time to get back into it!  A particularly interesting show was Episode 386 with the Millionaire Educator

1% Changes Make a Huge Difference One concept we’ve talked about over the last 5 years on ChooseFI has resonated above all: The aggregation of marginal gains. Small 1% changes you make at the margins aggregate into massive positive change in your life. It’s time to start looking for these small improvements in every aspect of yourlife, not just financial. Many of my recent wins come in the area of health. Here are 3 quick examples: Not consuming any food after dinner (or at least 3 hours before sleep). This is the simplest, yet most impactful change I’ve recently made

The Simple Path to Wealth JL Collins is our most downloaded podcast guest of all-time, and his book The Simple Path to Wealth is nearly required reading for every member of the Financial Independence community. I saw a great post on Twitter by JRod Money with a curated set of 10 quotes from the book that will help you build an empowering wealth building mindset.  Some of my favorites: “Money can buy many things but nothing more valuable than your freedom” “Stop thinking about what your money can buy. Start thinking about what your money can earn.” “The market always recovers. Always. And if

Financial Independence Day I’m sitting down to write this email on July 4th, and in honor of Independence Day here in the US, I wanted to pass along some inspiring stories of Financial Independence your fellow FI Community members wrote in: Taking Action LJ & Tiffany wrote: “We’ve wanted to write for a while now but wasn’t sure how to. So, this 1% better is actually the accumulation of the last 3 years. My wife and I got married 3 years ago and decided to pursue FI together. There have been sooo many decisions that we’ve made since that day

Returns Over Time Morgan Housel recently published an article called “Keep it Going” on his blog at the Collaborative Fund, and it highlighted the power of sustainability in training for athletics and how it ties to investing. Here is a quote from Morgan’s article: “For the highest levels to be attainable over time, the process has to be sustainable. Which is exactly how good investing works too, isn’t it? The most important investing question is not, “What are the highest returns I can earn?” It’s, “What are the best returns I can sustain for the longest period of time?” Compounding is

Success and Sharing the FI Love A FI Weekly reader, who goes by the initials SMN, wrote in an amazing story of how they reached early retirement, prioritized their life and have spread the concept of FI to family and friends: “Long overdue update from faithful listener from the beginning… the tldr; I DID IT!! I hit the “retirement button” in late 2020 and haven’t looked back since, big thanks to Choose FI for all of the inspiration, motivation, and hack-ifications along the way! While it may not have been exactly to plan, the COVID shutdown provided me with the

Starting the Journey to FI in Your 40s Brian wrote in with a story that I wanted to share in its entirety since it’s so relatable and shows how anyone can get started on the path to FI at any point by making small 1% decisions that add up to something extraordinary. Brian in his own words: “My 1% feels like one million percent! In September 2020, I decided to address $45k in debt. I committed to a more frugal lifestyle, applied almost every dollar possible towards the debt, and paid it off by May 2022. This freed up about

Buy Nothing Project My brother and sister-in-law are expecting their first baby and one of the most interesting parts of watching them prepare for the arrival is how much success they’ve had using their local Buy Nothing Project group. They’ve essentially sourced everything they’ll need for the baby through the Buy Nothing group for their local community. And I mention that community because that’s what I’ve been most impressed by; there are true community ethos as each group represents a precise location, and it’s amazing how community members look out for each other (they’ve made friends in the group who message

Optionality My family went to Busch Gardens, an amusement park here in Virginia, this past weekend and buying tickets was interesting because there were so many options for memberships and season-long passes. We found that the season-long pass was only $10 more expensive per person than a one-day pass, so this seemed to be a clear winner since it provided options for a tiny price premium. If we loved the park (which we did!), then we could go back as many times as we want this summer essentially for free. I’m a big fan of paying small, nearly insignificant premiums

Twenty Investing Lessons Learned Michael Batnick, co-host of ‘Animal Spirits,’ one of my favorite investing podcasts, released an article I enjoyed called ‘Twenty Lessons Learned’ in response to the recent downturn in the stock market.  Here are some of my favorites, but I suggest you click to the article and read all 20: Survival is the most important thing. Your portfolio must be able to weather euphoria, panic, and malaise. Nothing is risk-free. The S&P 500 is down 16% year-to-date. Intermediate-term “risk-free” government bonds are down 20%. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Past behavior is. You didn’t know

Tax Loss Harvesting Andrew wrote in, “Hey Brad – I love the newsletter! My 1% this week was doing some tax-loss harvesting with the market being down. I hadn’t ever done it before, so I read up on it a bunch and traded my VTI losses of $2.6K and then bought VOO. At my 20% effective tax rate, that saves me about $500 at tax time. After a painful tax year, I am happy to find $500 in tax savings!” I can’t give financial or tax advice here in the newsletter, but tax loss harvesting is something I’m considering with