Updates & Inspiration for Your Financial Independence Journey

The Essence of FI I was listening to the All The Hacks podcast episode with Morgan Housel and the following quote from jumped out to me as the essence of the financial aspect of FI: “I’ll leave you with one financial hack that might disappoint you, but it’s the only hack that works and it works incredibly well in finance. You want to do well with finance? Spend less money than you make and be patient. That’s 90% of what finance is, and if you can actually do those, you have a black belt in finance.  It’s the only hack that I think really truly works in a way that moves the needle.” It prompted me to reflect on what FI truly means to me.  It certainly isn’t about being cheap, pinching pennies, or living a deprived life in any way. It’s about finding value in everything you purchase, making intentional decisions, and taking action to make life better.  It’s about long-term thinking and the power of simplicity, compounding, and autonomy. It’s about spending time with people you love, doing things that challenge, inspire, and energize you. Simply put, the path to Financial Independence is the road to freedom and a better life. But make no mistake, it

Books I’m Enjoying (Plus a Quote) I’m currently reading two of the best books I’ve read in my entire life (shout out to the FI Weekly community for recommending them!); reading these will definitively make your life better, so first check if your local library has them, but if not, the Amazon links are: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life by William Green In the “Beyond Rich” chapter of Green’s book, this paragraph jumped out to me, as it touches on so many things we talk about at ChooseFI: “Money can provide an invaluable cushion, a lifeline, a critical defense against uncertainty and misfortune.  But it’s not enough.  We also need the mental fortitude and resilience to weather those storms and rebuild in their wake.  For most of us, the quality of our lives depends less on our finances than on inner attributes such as equanimity, acceptance, hope, trust, appreciation, and determined optimism.  As John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, which he dictated after going blind, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.” Two

Take Action The main reason ChooseFI exists is to inspire you to take action to make your life better. Small changes compound to something significant, and you’ll be amazed how wonderful it feels to get started taking control of your life! A friend of mine recently found the FI Community, and he asked for ideas he could implement today to get started with some quick but significant wins. Here are the items we talked about for huge impact, but minimal effort (and this represents a small fraction of easy things YOU can do no matter where you are on the Path to FI): Look into refinancing your mortgage. Admittedly this isn’t minimal effort to complete, but getting a quote is nearly effortless and you potentially could save hundreds of dollars every month in mortgage payments. Change your cell phone carrier to either Mint Mobile or Republic Wireless. If you’re still with a legacy carrier, this can be a massive savings every month! Open an investment account at a place like Vanguard or M1 Finance. My friend thought he needed to wait until he had $3,000 to invest in the VTSAX mutual fund, but I told him about the exchange-traded fund symbol VTI which is nearly

Live Event with Paula Pant If you haven’t yet listened to ChooseFI Episode 330 with Paula Pant, it is quite likely the most important podcast on real estate you’re going to hear this year! Paula explored why this time it truly is different in the overall housing market, and gave us detailed, actionable steps on how to navigate this market both as a buyer and seller. I’m also excited to announce that Paula and Jonathan are co-hosting a ‘virtual live event’ next Monday June 28 at 8pm ET to help you “discover how you can make more money without going back to school.” You can register for the live event at Affordanything.com/career Turn Everything into a 5-star Experience The ‘My First Million’ podcast episode entitled “How to Turn Any Bad Experience into a Good One” is only 7 minutes long, but it is absolutely loaded with mindset-altering gold, and presents one of the most important concepts of all: Your state of mind and how you frame an experience is a huge component of your outcome (or perceived outcome). The question they posed, was “How do you turn everything into a 5-star experience?” The person in question was dreading going to the

New Adventures One of the things I’m personally working on as part of the mastermind group I’m in with Dominick Quartuccio is being open to new adventures in life. Too often I don’t seek out new experiences or doing something I’m either scared of, or could fail at. It’s nice to have routines, but routines become boring when you don’t mix it up at all. Exactly one year ago in this newsletter I mentioned Ben Aldridge’s book, “How to Be Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable: 43 Weird & Wonderful Ways to Build a Strong, Resilient Mindset” and I coincidentally just picked it back up again this week as part of my “Adventures in Life” project. I’m now on the lookout for adventures of all types, no matter how small. My definition of adventure is loose, basically just going outside of my comfort zone and trying something my brain would normally steer me clear of. Adventure #1 last week: I saw a friend at the pool who had the telltale signs of the “cupping therapy” on her back (famously Michael Phelps showed up at the Olympics with these marks all over his back). Within 24 hours I had my first session plus a massage

One Year of the FI Weekly Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the FI Weekly Newsletter! I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed writing this and reading your replies full of wins, questions, actions taken, etc. fills me with more joy than you can imagine. I’m hopelessly behind on responding to all your emails, but please know that I do read each and every one of them! A trip down memory lane from newsletter #1: Book: The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. Even for long-term FI thinkers this book is a game changer. I now think in terms an ‘infinite’ (200+ year) timeline. Simply put, a must-read. Life Hack: Camel Camel Camel is the horribly named site that’s an invaluable tool for any Amazon.com shopper. Prices fluctuate up to 50% on every item (seriously), so set a price alert and get an email when it drops below your purchase threshold. Investing Philosophy When I polled the community on your Favorite Books of 2020, the most frequently mentioned was The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and the recent episode of ‘We Study Billionaires’ with Morgan (Episode TIP351) was one of the best I’ve ever heard.

A Full Review of Your Finances Cody Garrett, one of the most helpful and active members of our community and a CFP, recently posted the following in our FB group: “When is the last time you completed a FULL review of your finances? If you don’t know where to start, here’s a data gathering checklist that includes the most common documents to review.” ​Click here to see the entire list and be sure to bookmark this for an annual review. The Simple StartUp Summer Challenge Registration is closing on June 7th for this Summer’s The Simple StartUp’s group course and I wanted to pass along the info: The Simple StartUp is hosting a 6-week Summer Challenge group to help aspiring 10-18 year old entrepreneurs figure out a business idea, and then turn it into a profitable venture. Rob Phelan is the host and he will guide your child through all the steps to getting started through video lessons, live webinars twice a week, and a thriving exclusive online community of current and past Simple StartUp participants (if you want to hear success stories, check out Episodes 271 and 308 of ChooseFI). The time commitment each week is flexible and all the

Negotiate Your Salary I got an amazing email from Tim that I needed to share: “I just wanted to drop a note and say THANKS for episode 147 with Tori Dunlap about negotiating your salary. I followed her simple gratitude sandwich and it worked!!! I got a $12,000 bump in salary just by using this method. I’m using the bump to fund my kids’ 529 plans so this is awesome. THANKS!” If you’re like me, negotiating your salary has never crossed your mind. That is a HUGE missed opportunity, so take some time and go back and listen to these 3 episodes and take some action: My Favorite Shirts I’ve had at least 20 people email me after we mentioned on Episode 317 that I get quality t-shirts for just a few dollars each, and they are basically my entire wardrobe. But…I didn’t give you any details on where to find them! Let’s fix that: ​Next Level shirts from ClothingShopOnline.com are my favorites, especially the 6210 and 6200. I’m also going to check out the 6010 ‘triblend’ shirt. FI Weekly Reader on the Podcast I hope you all realize how much I love reading the responses I get each week

The Power of FI Cam wrote in with a powerful message I wanted to pass along: “The most recent episode (320) regarding stress at work made me reflect a little bit on the power of FU money and my own recent win. I’m not FI, but I’m about halfway there (though with compounding interest, probably *a lot* closer :)) I was moved to a new team this time last year, and my skillset and preferred work was not being prioritized, in an attempt to try and inject life into this other team. I was stuck doing work that I was okay at and hated, instead of the work that I was passionate about and that truly lit me up. In January, I decided I had enough, and figured if I couldn’t find a new job in the next few months, I’d still be able to live off my savings for 20+ years anyway, so explained my situation, and said if I couldn’t move into a more favorable position, I would have to leave and pursue something else. I ended up being moved to the team I wanted and have a much better work life now, all because I realized I

1% Better: Stop Junk Mail ChooseFI is a crowdsourced community and I love getting contributions that are so good I can just cut and paste. Courtesy of Debra: “In the podcast episode 100 ways to get 1% better, stopping junk mail was mentioned. This is the bane of my existence. I live in Tennessee and this is how I was able to stop all junk mail: ​Credit offers and insurance ​Junk mail: Data and Marketing Association ​Blue envelopes of coupons (Valpak) ​Catalogs and opt out by company​ ​Weekly coupon mailer​ ​Phone Book ​Clipper or Market magazine You can sign up for Informed Delivery with the USPS and they will send you an email with what mail you are getting that day. No email equals no mail (equals winning). Once I got all my eligible bills set to paperless, I barely get any mail. The longest I can remember was at least 2 weeks. Hope that helps!” Book Announcement I’m incredibly excited to announce that Brian Feroldi, one of our absolute favorite podcast guests (Episodes 72, 200, 293 and 314), is writing a book with ChooseFI Publishing called “Why Does the Stock Market Go Up?” The premise is really cool: Brian is fielding

On Decision-Making Decisions are made with imperfect information and by definition are made without the benefit of hindsight. You know what you know at the time, and you try to make the best decision possible. But you can’t know everything, and your worldview is constantly being updated when you learn new things! Annie Duke’s concept of “resulting” is the best way to look at this: It’s so easy to look at the result, after the fact, and try to determine if it was a good or bad decision merely from the nature of the outcome. That is a fundamentally incorrect way of approaching life. You need to look at the quality of your decision and seek out sources of information that will help with that process for all future decisions. Poker is a great illustration of this: You can have the best hand, play it perfectly and still lose. Does that mean you made a bad decision(s)? Or was it just a bad outcome due to chance, but the decision-making process was one you’d repeat? The worst-case scenario of all is making up your mind and refusing to change regardless of what new information comes in. “Flip flopper” is one of those

A Deep Dive Into a New World I always try to be intellectually open and honest, plus let you know when I’m experimenting with new things, so here’s an update: I recently jumped into the world of blockchain technology, DeFI (decentralized finance), smart contracts, NFTs and even a bit of cryptocurrencies to a degree that surprises even me. Simply put, I am 100% certain this technology is going to change the world in a manner similar to how the internet changed everything. So, I’m just trying to learn, learn, learn at this point. If you aren’t paying attention to this space, you need to start at least becoming aware of it. I’m still unclear how cryptocurrencies are invented out of thin air, most do nothing productive and just seem to be speculative. That will never add up and I suspect most will vanish. And I could spout Warren Buffett quotes at you like, Bitcoin is “probably rat poison squared.” But then I listened to smart people I respect like Mark Cuban and the potential of the underlying technology became clear. This CNBC article on Cuban said, “If Cuban were to start a company today, he would also utilize new technology —