In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals.
If you've read money blogs over the past five years, you've heard about Personal Capital. Personal Capital is a free money-tracking tool with a beautiful interface and -- gasp -- no advertising. (One of my big complains about Mint is that it shoves ads in your face.)
Many of my friends and colleagues promote the hell out of Personal Capital because the company pays good money when people sign up. (And yes, links to Personal Capital in this review absolutely put money in my pocket. But any Personal Capital link you see anywhere on the web puts money in somebody's pocket.)
I sometimes wonder, though, if any of my pals actually uses Personal Capital, you know? All of their reviews are glowing. While I like Personal Capital, I've been frustrated by the app in the past. Even today, I find that it's not as useful as I'd like.
It's been two years since I last looked at my overall financial situation to determine whether I have the resources to meet my goals. In those two years, much has changed.
I sold my condo and bought a home in the country. I repurchased Get Rich Slowly. I invested in not one but three other businesses. The stock market has bounced around, I've begun part-time work at the family business, and I've made many other minor adjustments to my daily life.
With all of these fluctuations, I'm naturally left to wonder: Am I still financially independent?
This year, I intend to do most of my Christmas shopping during a three-week tour of Europe with my cousins. We're deliberately visiting as many Christmas markets as possible, so I hope to find a variety of interesting and unusual gifts for my family and friends. (They need to be small, though. I don't have much space to carry things home.)
Our group also spent an entire afternoon at the Mormon Family History Library, where we explored our genealogy. Not everyone was enthused about researching their family tree at first, but eventually even those who thought the exercise would be lame found themselves wrapped in it. It's fun -- and enlightening -- to unravel the threads of time and discover who your ancestors were and where they came from.
More and more, I'm meeting people who want to know how to retire early. There's been a lot of buzz in the media lately about early retirement, and that's led folks to wonder how much money they would need to quit their jobs -- or if early retirement is even something they should consider.
Why retire early? Well, for most people a job is a necessary evil. We work because we have to. Early retirement gives us the flexibility to choose how we spend our time, whether that entails sitting on the beach drinking margaritas or it leads to new work that provides meaning and fulfillment.
Lots of us dream of leaving the workplace in our forties or fifties instead of sticking it out until age 65 -- but we keep working to support the lifestyles to which we've become accustomed. We like our iPhones and Playstations and Priuses, so we surrender to the idea that we'll have fifty-year careers.
A new report from the Center for Financial Services Innovation says that only 28% of Americans are financially healthy. And it reinforces something we already knew: The U.S. saving rate sucks. Americans don't save.
Financially healthy people (28% of the U.S., 70 million people) are "spending saving, borrowing, and planning in a way that will allow them to be resilient and pursue opportunities over time."
Financially coping people (55%, 138 million) are "struggling with some, but not necessarily all, aspects of their financial lives."
Financially vulnerable people (17%, 42 million) are "struggling with all, or nearly all, aspects of their financial lives."
Last week, I found myself revisiting the fantastic Inside Jobs project from The Atlantic. Atlantic staffers interviewed 103 American workers from all walks of life. The magazine then collected those interviews into a single, unified website.
So much of my aspiration for this project was to hear from people affected by the realities that business writers so often cover: what it's like to be a minority in a workplace, or the challenges of working parenthood, or the struggle to remain relevant as an industry changes. And we succeeded in finding those types of stories — for example, the three female lawyers who started their own firm, or the coal miner who is adapting to the focus on clean energy.
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It's a GRS tradition! Each year on Halloween, I publish a story about planning for death. Usually these are general articles about estate planning. This year's story is personal.
Sparky had previously asked me to join him on trips to Burning Man (in 1996) and southeast Asia (in 1998) and Mexico (in 2003). I'd declined each invitation, in part because I was deep in debt but also because I thought there'd be plenty of time to do that sort of thing in the future.
My friend Amy recently wrote with an interesting dilemma. "Should I pay off my mortgage early?" she wonders.
Amy has a high-paying job and has managed to save enough that she could be completely debt-free if she wanted to. And she kind of wants to! But is this the best choice? She's aware that this is a nice problem to have — but it's still a bit of a muddle. She'd like some guidance.
Our recent three-part discussion on choosing quality over price has been interesting. (If you missed it, here's part one, part two, and part three.)
It's clear that most of you money bosses value quality, but not all of you are willing to pay a premium to obtain it. And some GRS readers don't think it's ever worth paying more to buy the best. (In fact, some folks think this philosophy is foolish.)
One thing we all seem to agree on: It's always best to pay less.
