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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

Negotiating Your Salary One of the most pleasant surprises from our run of 500+ ChooseFI podcast episodes is how many people have listened to Episode 147 with Tori Dunlap and Episode 211 with Financial Mechanic and taken action to negotiate their salaries to great success. I try to include as many of these as I can in the weekly ‘taking action’ section below because they are inspiring to me personally since this was always something I didn’t have the guts to do in my corporate career. I simply accepted the pitiful 3% raises I received, and it led to a lot of

Markets Dropping As I’m writing this newsletter Monday morning, the S&P 500 is down 2.3% from the prior close, which brings the year to date drop to over 12% in just a few short weeks. It’s remarkably easy to get caught up in the doom and gloom of seeing 10%+ of your net worth evaporate (on paper at least) in one month. It obviously never feels good, but we know from listening to JL Collins, that stock market corrections (10% drops from recent peaks), bear markets and even crashes are perfectly normal and expected over an investing lifetime.It is a

Doing the Right Thing “Doing the right thing is ultimately more likely to ensure you the greatness or the success that you’re after than doing the expedient, sort of self-preserving thing.”      — Ryan Holiday, author of Lives of the Stoics, on Episode 128 of The Knowledge Project This quote resonates deeply with me, because I truly think over the long-term that being a good person and doing the right thing for the right reasons is the best possible “strategy” for a successful life.  Sure, we see many examples of people in positions of power with insider information enriching themselves to

Four Day Work Week I was fascinated by this Twitter thread from Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow announcing that: “Bolt is now the first tech unicorn to permanently switch to a 4 day work week Our 3 month experiment proved every core thesis: Heightened 1/ Productivity2/ Engagement3/ Wellness” Breslow’s thread is worth a 3-minute read, as I strongly suspect more companies will move this way in the future, and I know we have a lot of business owners in the community who likely should be contemplating this change. I never understood the concept of being stuck at an office for a certain prescribed length