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Are You on the Right Path? Codie Sanchez from Contrarian Thinking is someone I enjoy following via her newsletter and numerous podcast guest appearances.  She generally talks about building and especially buying “boring” cash flowing businesses that I think would greatly appeal to the FI Community. I’m highlighting her here for a Twitter thread she recently posted on checking in weekly to determine if she’s on the right path in life, as I think it can be useful for you. From Codie: “Every Sunday I have a little ritual where I check in to make sure I’m on the right path. I use a framework

Travel Rewards Updates Our team worked hard to update and streamline the free travel rewards course on the ChooseFI website and now it’s available as a series of 6 blog posts (instead of a 20-part email series) you can digest quickly and easily to get started maximizing travel rewards.  Get started with Part 1 now and there’s a link at the bottom where you can navigate to Part 2 and beyond… Two FI Resources Our good friend Cody Garrett, an advice-only financial advisor at Measure Twice Financial, continues to add tons of value to the ChooseFI Facebook group.  Here are two posts that I

Put Your Finances on Autopilot The entire reason this newsletter exists is to compel you to take action to make your life better. Today my ask of you is this: Find at least one thing in your financial life that you do on a recurring basis where if you invest a few minutes today you could put it on autopilot for the rest of time. I call this “frontloading the sacrifice” though that’s overplaying the difficultly level calling it a ‘sacrifice,’ but hopefully you get the picture: What can you spend a few minutes on today to eliminate that decision or time

Brian Feroldi’s Book Releases Today We’ve been excited for months about the preorder for Brian Feroldi’s book, “Why Does The Stock Market Go Up?: Everything You Should Have Been Taught About Investing In School, But Weren’t.” Well, good news is, as of today, this is a preorder no more because today is the official release of the book and it’s available everywhere books are sold! Simply put, this book is incredible. I think it vaults instantly into the top tier of essential personal finance books, and is a must-read for anyone who wants to, among other things, understand the stock market,

What is a Share of Stock? Brian Feroldi’s book, “Why Does the Stock Market Go Up?” releases next week and while recording our episode with him, I brought up a sentiment I’ve heard distressingly often in the FI Community: “I just don’t believe in investing in the stock market. It all seems like gambling.” My response is usually something like this: Owning a share of stock means you are a part owner of that company. A company like Ford broke ownership of their company into 4 billion little pieces, each piece represented as one share of their stock. If you

Community Feedback and Tips 1) Paul wrote in and I wanted to share since the quotes he posts daily to Instagram are really profound. I’ve bookmarked his account and I suggest you do as well: “Brad, Love reading these emails. It’s a gentle reminder to keep motivated. The luck surface area note (from last week’s FI Weekly newsletter) is great. I haven’t heard that term before. But the sentiment is true. You have to be ready. A way to keep myself personally on track, I’ve been posting a quote every day on an Instagram account I created. I post myself every morning. Helps keep

Challenge Your Thinking I genuinely enjoy ideas that challenge my preconceived notions and though it will probably appear otherwise with the 2 links I’m including in this section, I’m not trying to build a case against home ownership. I thought these articles were worth your time as a way to challenge your thinking on this important topic: Why Renting is Sometimes Smarter than Buying Why I Don’t Care About Our Home’s Market Value (Nor Should You) Increase Your Luck ‘Surface Area’ I’m both intimately aware of how much luck factors into success and simultaneously always looking for ways to increase

Spring Decluttering On the ChooseFI website we just published “7 Decluttering Tips to Organize Your Life” as part of our March ‘Spring Cleaning’ month, and I really recommend you check it out. I get intense psychological satisfaction from decluttering and turning a room into an “oasis” that’s free of clutter, so this article speaks to my soul. Laura and I got started decluttering our living room in an effort to turn this room, which is normally a source of stress, into one that is actually enjoyable to spend time in. Community Success Stories My favorite part about the FI Weekly is

Going Outside 365 Days Per Year I don’t usually go back and listen to our ChooseFI episodes after publication, but I made an exception for Episodes 364 & 365, which I think is our best two episode stretch in the history of the show. If you haven’t had time to listen to them yet, download them on your podcast player of choice. I got this great email from Greg which added on to a theme from Episode 365: “Hey Brad, Loved the discussion on the latest episode, #365, about the magic of getting outside. I 100% agree, and I think

More Advanced Online Security In the November 30th newsletter I included 8 simple tips for online security which I think will put you ahead of 95% of people in terms of online safety. But as Jonathan recently spoke about on the podcast, those are certainly not enough, as he was a victim of a ransomware attack that went through the router controlling his home network. A friend of mine is a cybersecurity expert and he was quite impressed with Jonathan’s explanation of how we should all “block port forwarding in the router for UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)” and he sent me

Financial Tracking Spreadsheets In early January I wrote that we all should do an annual financial audit to have a sense of where we are with our personal finances, both in terms of net worth (assets & liabilities) and your income statement (income & expenses). However, at that time I wasn’t able to provide spreadsheets that could be used to make the exercise dramatically easier for you. Luckily our good friend Brian Feroldi reached out with his financial spreadsheet templates that are available for you to download completely for free. This is a good time to remind you that Brian’s book,

What is Coast FI? In trying to make the concept of Financial Independence relatable, I often look for those ‘eye opener’ moments for people, and the concept that I was initially surprised resonates so deeply is what’s known as ‘Coast FI.’ But upon further reflection, it shouldn’t be surprising at all. Because Coast FI is both intuitive and a really powerful concept. You’ve reached Coast FI when your investable assets are large enough where they will grow to your ultimate FI Number by your intended retirement age (either early or a more traditional date – your choice of timeline of