You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

You've probably heard that saying before. It's from motivational speaker Jim Rohn. He used it as a way to encourage people to learn and grow from others' experiences, habits, attitudes, and so forth. He wanted folks to seek out and spend time with people of high quality.

Unfortunately for most people, this advice can be difficult (if not impossible) to implement.

Like J.D., I'm a recent convert to coffee. For most of my life, I preferred to consume my caffeine cold in the form of Diet Coke. And then...fate intervened.

Four years ago, when my family moved to Oklahoma, my sister-in-law gave us our first Keurig coffee maker. I thought, "That's an interesting gift for a family that doesn't drink coffee."

But a set of sample k-cups came with the machine, so we started trying them.

You've heard it a million times before: To build wealth, you have to spend less than you earn. It's a great piece of advice -- one of my favorites, actually. Too often, however, people take this to mean simply "control your spending".

While your spending is certainly part of the equation, there's an equally-important component: your earning.

Here's what I think a lot of people miss: It's easier to spend less than you earn when you earn more. It's also easier to reach your financial goals. From my experience, the best way for most people to earn more is to grow their careers. Today I want to show you five ways to grow your career so that you make more money and enjoy greater job satisfaction.

For most people, their career is their most valuable financial asset. Nothing else they own is likely worth as much (several million dollars over a lifetime). And even if they do have something more valuable (like an investment portfolio), it was probably earned as a result of their career.

As with anything valuable, you need to take steps to protect your career. That's why financial websites recommend life, health, and disability insurance — to protect/replace the value of your career in case you die, get sick, or are physically unable to work. Having some of these insurances is wise for almost every worker. But there's another form of insurance that's equally essential.

This insurance is free — but it takes some work and planning. Its benefits go far beyond the time it takes to implement the steps involved. And in addition to increased income, this insurance may even give you more job satisfaction, less stress, and a longer life. Interested?

Historically, "making six figures" has been to income earners what "becoming a millionaire" has been for those tracking their net worths — a lofty goal achieved by only a select few. And while neither a six-figure earner nor a millionaire can bask in the luxury they could a couple decades ago, there's no doubt that earning over $100,000 a year still puts you in a select group.

In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau says that only 5.63% of individual income earners and only 17.8% of households had incomes of $100,000 or more in 2006. So despite the drop in purchasing power from the days of old, if you earn $100k or more each year, you're still in an elite group.

How can you get into the six-figure club? There are many roads to this golden path (lottery, inheritance, take over a family business, etc.), but many, if not all, of these are out of your control. As such, I'm going to focus on what I consider to be the method that will give the most people the greatest chance of earning $100k or more — by developing a career and growing it over time. Specifically, I'm going to tell you how I got to six figures in seven years and how you can use these principles to do the same.

A few weeks ago, J.D. and I were chatting when he asked me what it felt like to be debt-free. He'd read on my blog that I had no debt and was curious if I'd write about it for Get Rich Slowly. In particular, he asked me to communicate both how I managed to pay off my mortgage (the biggest debt most people have) as well as how it felt when we did so. I was happy to accept his offer.

Just to note, the purpose of this post isn't to debate whether or not paying off all debt is a good idea (versus only making mortgage payments and investing the rest, for example), so I've purposely left it out. My goal is simply to tell you our story — what happened and how we did it. From there, you can decide whether or not this path is for you. Since my wife and I are debt-haters, this option simply seemed natural to us. In addition, I can also tell you that living ten years without any debt has been a great feeling.

In the mid-90's, we moved to the southern part of the U.S. Here's how we paid off our mortgage in 1997 and haven't had one since: Continue reading...