As time went on, I continued working odd jobs to make a little extra spending money. Unfortunately, at that time in my life I was spending money rather than saving up for school which would have saved me a ton of money on student loans. Today almost all of my extra income goes directly towards trying to fund my retirement accounts. I believe that everybody should have a side hustle regardless of whether they want a little more spending money or saving money for 10 reasons.

1. Make More Money

The most basic and intuitive reason to have a side hustle, is simply to make more money. Money certainly is not everything and it is not the only thing. However, all else being equal, would you rather make more money or less? Starting a side hustle is not the only way to make more money, but it can provide a tremendous upside in the long run.

2. Invest More Money

As an extension of number 1, when you make more money, you get the opportunity to invest more money! Whether you invest in stocks, real estate, or reinvest into your businesses, it is important to put as much money towards these endeavors as you can as early as you can. As mentioned in an earlier post, you should start investing today. Every year that goes by is costing your future self a lot of money due to compounding interest. By investing today, you are taking the steps necessary to secure your future rather than working until the “new normal retirement age“. I certainly don’t want to be forced to work until I’m 67. I would much rather continue working on something I love and because I want to. The difference is choice.

3. Multiple Income Streams

One of the most important reasons to start your own side hustle is to create multiple income streams. The main reason is for diversification. Diversification simply means spreading out the risk of failure to get rid of the noise. Another way to think of this is a type of insurance. You are insuring yourself that if a single business venture fails, that you are invested in others that are unrelated so won’t be failing (at least hopefully not at the same time).

How does this come into play for jobs and side hustles? It protects you if you lose your main job. Let’s pretend that you are a Telemarketer, did you know that NPR rated telemarketers to have a 99% of becoming automated? That is great news for the business owners of companies engaging in telemarketing, but bad news for people who are in that profession.

Maybe you are in a different field, but your company goes under due to a corporate scandal, or a fire puts out a small business, or one of a million different reasons. Who is going to fare better? The person who had no backup plan, or the person who was side-hustling and has a steady income on the side? Insure yourself by setting up another source of income. In the event that you suffer from a job loss, even a small amount of income on the side can make a big difference at least until you find another gig.

4. Capitalize On Grassroots Marketing

The third unavoidable expense for startups according to smallbiztrends is Marketing. Advertising and marketing can take a huge chunk out of your budget. It can even make jobs cost prohibitive for you to get started. This is why I am a huge fan of growing your business through a grassroots style. Grassroots marketing is the idea of marketing to a small group of people and letting them go out and promote your product for you, rather than marketing to a large group of people upfront.

The one downside to grassroots movements, is that they can take some time to catch on. However, if you do not need your business to take off immediately so that you can make your next rent payment, then you are able to take advantage of going for a grassroots marketing plan. This will both save you a ton of money, and bring you in much more loyal followers because you can spend your time and efforts on solving their problems rather than spending all your time and money on customer acquisition.

5. Go Full-Time

Maybe you are one of the 13% of people who are somewhat or completely dissatisfied with their job. Or maybe you are content in your current job, but you really just want to do more. Either way, if you start a side hustle, you have the chance to fully replace your current position if you want to. By working on your free time, you may just build up enough income that you can quit your current job and devote all your energies to this new hustle.

6. Improve Your Skills

When you are working on creating a business, you typically have to wear a lot of hats at first. You will not start the next Google overnight, which means you are going to have to do every job from the data entry person all the way up to the CEO. What this will do for you, is it will teach you a million things that you may not have learned in your current position. Whether you are learning the ins and outs of a related industry, or a completely new one, you are making yourself more valuable all around by learning new skills.

No matter what you do in life, make sure you take the time to continue to learn. Learning will make you more valuable to customers. Learning will make you more valuable to employers. Learning will make you more indispensable and less at risk of being automated away.

7. Spice Up Your Life

It is said that “variety is the spice of life.” I tend to believe that. Never was I more bored than in one of my high school summer jobs. My responsibility was to relabel machinery remotes and test to make sure that the buttons all worked. It was tedious and extremely boring. Thankfully I worked my butt off and they started giving me other things to do, but boy was I bored. I honestly think that I would fall into a deep depression if I were to have no variety in my life. Everything I do is in an attempt to try new things.

Have you ever felt like your life is on autopilot? You wake up, you go to work, you come home, you go to sleep, then you repeat until you die. Just by starting a side hustle, you can throw some variety in there to keep yourself more sane. You may just find that you start to enjoy your current position more simply by being involved in something else. Never take the option to do something new for granted.

8. Do Something Meaningful

Not only can you do something new, but you can do something meaningful to you. If your expenses are all covered by your main job, then you can do things that are important to you regardless of whether they will be profitable right away. Maybe you truly want to work on something that helps inner-city children stay in school, or a farming technique that can be used in arid climates, or maybe you don’t know yet by you just want to change the world. You can fuel your soul by starting a side hustle if it is something that you truly believe in and when money doesn’t need to be the primary motive.

9. Increase Your Connections

Building your own business on the side gives you the opportunity to build a ton of connections. Not only will this help reinforce some of the other areas such as teaching you new things, but it will benefit your business and career as well. It is said that connections are the currency of entrepreneurs. By building genuine connections in new areas, you will gain new friends, hear new stories, and improve your business. Do not take meeting somebody new for granted. Everybody is a potential friend, a potential customer, a potential co-worker, and a potential boss. Continue to help these people, and it will come back to you in return. Maybe I do believe in Karma to a point.

10. Gain Financial Freedom

I have said it multiple times on this blog, but it really is not about the money. It is about the Freedom. By building a side hustle, you are putting yourself in a position to escape the rat race. You put yourself in a situation where you can break free from the shackles of a desk and live your life on your own terms.

Double tap if your agree! Tag somebody! #freedom #money #inspiration #motivation #mountains #financialfreedom

A photo posted by Larry Green (@gettingrichyoung) on Mar 23, 2016 at 4:45am PDT

What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? What kind of person do you want other people to see? Gain financial freedom with the help of some side hustles, and you can focus more on building relationships and living life in the way that you see fit. A side hustle is just the first step towards financial independence by building up the passive income streams to help get you there.

Start A Side Hustle Today

There you have it. 10 reasons to start a side hustle. Go start right now. Start brainstorming businesses that you can start on the side and begin your journey right this second.

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What Are Stocks?

Before we can talk about what dividends are, first we need to make sure that you know what a stock is. Stocks are a type of financial security which signify company ownership. In other words, the stock holders of a company are the collective owners of the company.

For example, let’s assume that Getting Rich Young Industries has 100 units of stock outstanding. These 100 units are called shares. If I own all 100 shares of Getting Rich Young Industries, then I own 100% of the company and all of its assets. Now let’s pretend that I sell 30 shares of Getting Rich Young Industries to Brittney and 20 shares of Getting Rich Young Industries to Michael. I now own 50% of the company, Brittney owns 30%, and Michael owns 20%. There is a lot more to learn about stocks, but these are the very basics.

What Is A Dividend?

Let’s now assume that Getting Rich Young Industries makes $100 every year from selling financial software (This is just for example. We do not sell financial software at this point in time, and these earnings are totally made up for the purposes of this exercise). The $100 that the company makes each year is owned by the shareholders. In this case, I would have a claim on $50, Brittney would have claim on $30, and Michael would have claim on the remaining $20.

So where do dividends come into the equation. Getting Rich Young Industries is a growing company. We, the owners, will probably not want to take that $100 out of the company. Instead we are likely going to reinvest most of it. Let’s assume that we are going to reinvest $90 in the company to try and grow more next year, but the owners would like to take out the other $10 for personal use. The $10 that is distributed to the owners/shareholders, is called a dividend.

Passive Income With Dividends

In our example earlier, the three owners would likely have a lot to do with the day-to-day workings of the business. Large shareholders tend to be actively involved for quite a few reasons. In the real world there are typically much larger numbers of shares for public companies. For example, Apple has about 5.54 Billion shares outstanding as of the time of this writing. Due to these large number of shares, it is unlikely that you will ever become a large enough shareholder to be actively involved in the company management. Thankfully for us, there are large investors that should be keeping on eye on how things are working for us. This is the thought behind the passive investor.

Even though you are not working on the day-to-day of the business, you still own a piece of the company. Therefore, you are still entitled to a share of the earnings (even if it is less than a billionth of the company). The great part about this, is that even if you don’t do any work, you still make money from your stocks as long as they continue to earn money! Apple currently pays about $2.08 per share in dividends.

Dividend Growth

You may be thinking $2.08 per share, when AAPL is selling for over $100 currently doesn’t sound like very much. I would probably agree with you, although this is fairly close to the S&P 500 average dividend rate currently of about 2.13%. Where dividends get really exciting though, is when we talk about dividend growth. Without having to buy any additional shares, or do anything special, the dividends tend to grow over time for each share with the growth of the stock price. Let’s go into a mutual fund example below.

Vanguard Dividend Growth

Mutual fund companies work in the same way. A mutual fund is just a collection of stocks. By owning a share of a mutual fund, you quickly and easily become a part owner of many different companies. Let’s use the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX) as an example.

If you bought a single share of VTSAX on January 2, 2001 for $30.39, you would have received your first dividend of $0.073 on March 16, 2001. Over the next twelve months, you would have received a total of about $0.309 in dividends. If you would have held your one share of VTSAX until today, even if you never bought another share, that single share would have gotten you about $1.005 in dividends in 2015. That’s a growth rate of 8.18% for the dividends alone! Not to mention that your single share would have grown in value to $50.01 by January 4, 2016.

What Dividends Are Not

Dividends are a fantastic passive source of income. However, before we go further, I want to warn you a few things about dividends.

1. Dividends are not the only important thing about stocks. Remember, every dollar that gets paid out in dividends is a dollar that the company is not reinvesting in the company. Companies with a lot of growth potential still, may be better of reinvesting all of the earnings rather than paying out dividends. Many people look at high dividend rates as a sign of a company on the decline. This is not always true, but it is something to be aware of. There may be a good reason that a company has a very high dividend rate. Additionally, dividends may be taxed at a higher rate than long term capital gains. So if you are in a taxable account, it may make sense to shift your high dividend payers into a non-taxable account and your growers into the taxable.
2. Dividends are not guaranteed. At any time the company could stop a dividend, fail to increase the dividend, or even give out a much larger dividend. Dividends tend to be stable over time because the owners are supposed to keep stockholders’ best interests in mind. However, you should be aware of the risks involved.
3. Dividend payments will cause the stock price to fall in the short-term. When a company pays the dividend, the stock price immediately drops by the amount of the dividend. This makes sense because if a company is worth $100, but then pays out $2 in dividends today, it should now only be worth $98 because it has $2 less in cash on hand. Another thing that you should be aware of so that you don’t panic if you see the price suddenly drop on dividend day.

Why I Love Dividends

1. Dividends are passive. Dividends are one of the truest forms of passive income if you are a minority shareholder. Somebody else does the work of running the day-to-day and you collect a check. There is only minor work that you have to do. Once a year, you should review your portfolio in case you need to make changes.
2. Dividends grow over time. The fact that dividends grow over time is one of my favorite things about dividends. Knowing that I am not only buying a passive income stream, but I’m buying a passive income stream that will grow over time without me having to do anything? That’s such an awesome feeling to know that your income will actually be growing over time.
3. Mutual Fund Dividends are relatively stable. Although no companies are required to pay dividends, when you average across a large number of businesses, you get a relatively stable dividend rate. This is how I maintain confidence that I will receive another dividend check and over time it will likely be larger than the last one I received. Especially when you use a company like Vanguard, where the shareholders of the funds also own the company.
4. Dividends can be automatically reinvested. One really cool feature about dividends, is that with most brokerages have an option to automatically reinvest your dividends back into the fund. That means that every time they pay you, you can automatically buy more little passive income streams. This all adds up over time, so make sure to take advantage of this feature!

How Do I Start Getting Dividends?

All you have to do to get started, is to open up an investment account. If you’re not sure what type of account to look at, check out our article on How To Start Investing or The Beginner’s Guide to 401Ks.

You should know by now that I am a big fan of Vanguard for your mutual fund investments. They have the lowest fees in the industry. This is an important feature because high fees can literally mean thousands less in your account down the road. Vanguard and Fidelity are where my retirement investments currently are

However, if you are hard set on buying individual stocks make sure you don’t put all your money into only a handful of stocks! You have to diversify to reduce your risk! For a small investor, this is difficult to accomplish without spending a lot of money on transaction costs. So do yourself a favor, and go with a mutual fund if you’re a small investor and ESPECIALLY if you are new to investing.

If I still haven’t convinced you to go the mutual fund route, at least save yourself some money by using some of the discount brokers out there. The two that I recommend most are Scottrade and TradeKing (Note: These are affiliate links and I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you decide to open an account. This had no impact on my decision to promote these products. Both are listed in StockBrokers.com’s list of best online discount brokers as of 2/15/2016).

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“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” -Benjamin Franklin

In May of 2012, I was $70,000 in debt because of my astronomical spending in college. I had just finished up school in the spring with a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance, and was working at a financial services company in the technology department thanks to my two years of studying Aerospace Engineering before finance. Frankly, I was miserable in my job. I was making $14/hr as a help desk support person. It felt as though I went to school for nothing. I will never forget my very first day on the job when one of my new co-workers said to me, “The most difficult part about this job, is not dying of boredom.” I thought he was joking, but I quickly found out that he was correct.

At first it wasn’t so bad. The job wasn’t difficult. Just help people with basic issues on a website, and if there was a real problem with the site then let the development team know. Needless to say, there was a lot of down time. So what? That sounds fantastic right? Wrong. Honestly, there is only so much surfing the internet that I can do without getting extremely bored. It only took a few weeks before I couldn’t take it anymore and had to start learning something again, and doing something that made me feel productive. The thought of doing that job for the next 40+ years of my life caused me a ton of stress and depression. It was completely baffling to me that some of my co-workers could stand doing so much unproductive crap.

I decided that I wasn’t going to be bored anymore and started working like a madman to up my technology skills whenever there was down time. I made friends with our database administrator and got my own database to play around in. After I felt comfortable with my database skills, I went online to Codecademy and went through every programming path that they had at the time. From there I started using those skills to build tools that I would like using from the financial education that I had. It was also at this time that I found Mr. Money Mustache. August of 2012 was when I learned that early retirement was a real possibility for normal people. I am so thankful that I found this site while my income was still so low.

Early Retirement Is Possible

I learned the true value of my money and that I owed it to myself to keep as much of it as I possibly could. Quickly, I became obsessed with this idea of retiring while I was still young enough to enjoy it. I read every Mr. Money Mustache post in a week. One of my all time favorites is The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement. The main takeway is that your savings rate, regardless of your income, is what determines how long until you can retire. Make sure you read over this post. It may just change your life as well.

Over the next few months, my thought process started changing. I started to enjoy becoming more frugal. What I didn’t expect was that my work life would also start to change. A byproduct of the frugality was that more of my free time was also spent doing things to enhance my skills. I started studying for a professional exam, building websites and systems in my free time, and I even started exercising again. All of these factors together gave me the confidence and energy to start branching out at work as well, where I started taking on more projects. This is what led to my first pay raise that year where I jumped up to $48,000/yr.

Telling Family and Friends

After my big pay raise, I started to become even more of a believer in this whole minimalist/early retirement/financial freedom stuff that I had been reading from the anti-consumerism portion of the personal finance community. Just ask my wife, I wouldn’t shut up about Mr. Money Mustache while we were dating. In retrospect, I’m lucky that I found somebody as amazing as her that she understood it considering we had only been dating a few months at the time. What I found was that a lot of people just did not understand or think that it was possible

Whenever I told people that I was going to retire in my 30’s, I get one of three reactions:

1. Concern (70%) – About 70% of people that I told were legitimately concerned for me. The instantly had visions of me living in a van down by the river. Although I’m not the type to take such drastic measures, sometimes living in a van temporarily could be a great financial investment. I politely explained to them the numbers behind things and reiterated that I want to spend more time experience life rather than paying for stuff. The responses were a combination of disbelief and understanding, but still concern for me.
2. Laughter (20%) – About 20% of people literally laughed because they either thought it was a joke, thought I was crazy, or thought I had won the lottery.
3. Applause (10%) – Surprisingly about 10% of people not only understood it, but thought it was an awesome idea. Some people had already started down such roads, but others wanted to jump on board. I made sure to point these people towards my favorite blogs.

What Is Early Retirement?

After finding out that the majority of people who I told about this new phenomenon just didn’t understand, I started to rethink it myself. Was it really possible? I looked over the numbers and yes it was! Did I really want to deprive myself of the material things in life? Well not necessarily, but if it was a decision between that and working decades longer than planned, then my decision was easy. The one question that I really got stuck with though was, “What will you do?” This was the question which I just was not ready for.

It took some time, but I figured out what I really wanted out of retirement. I also discovered, that what I wanted wasn’t really retirement at all. What I wanted was financial freedom or financial independence. I wanted time to spend with the people I love doing the things that I love. If I had to say what this new chapter of life were to look like, it would involve these things.

1. Letting the sun be my alarm clock every day
2. Visit with my family more, especially those out of state
3. Volunteer more in my local community
4. Build things with my hands (especially an Aquaponics garden)
5. Stay home full-time with my kids if we decide to have them
6. Hike every national park in the United States
7. Travel to every continent at least once
8. Reduce my carbon footprint
9. Inspire people
10. Make real connections with interesting people

I Will Never Retire

Not a single item on my list, except the first one maybe, involves doing nothing. Actually, every single one of these items will take up a significant amount of time and effort. That is exactly the point though. Without financial independence, I do not know if I will have the time to accomplish all of these things. So my new goal, was never to retire, but to become financially free. I want to be free to pursue the things that I find worthwhile in life, rather than spend all of my time doing the things that are allowing my boss to do these things.

“I wanted time to spend with the people I love doing the things that I love.”

I encourage you to now do the same thing. Start to think about not what you will do in retirement, but what you will do in your financially independent future. Ask yourself not how you will escape from work, but how you will escape to work that is meaningful to you. When you wake up in 30 years, do you want to say that you sat at a desk for your life? Do you want to say that you sat on your butt for your life? Or do you want to be able to say that you did something meaningful with your life? I know that for me, I do not want to be a desk slave forever, but I also do not want to be a useless log forever either. Getting Rich Young is an example of one thing that I want to continue working on regardless of the money because it is one way that I can start working on #9 and #10 above.

Make A Commitment

Share this post with a friend and make a commitment to yourself today to achieve financial freedom. Start living a life of meaningful work. Spend your time in a way that you will be proud of. This is your story after all.

Day 1 – Create Your Personal Income Statement

Grab a piece of paper and a pencil. Draw a horizontal line across the center of the page to divide it in two parts. On the top section, write the word “Income” at the top. In this section, begin to write down all of your sources of income and how much they bring in every single month. If your income varies, just put down a conservative estimate of your monthly income from that source.

In the lower half of the page, write the word “Expenses” on the top of this section. Similar to the top, write down all your sources of expenses over an entire month. Be sure to include a portion of your expenses that you may see only once or twice per year. For example, if you pay insurance on your car every 6 months, then divide this number by 6 and include in your Expenses section.

Finally, write the words “Surplus/Deficit”  on the bottom line. Now add up all of your Income items, and subtract out your Expense items. Over the next 30 days, you want to make sure that if you are negative, then you are getting into the positive territory. If you are already positive, then continue trying to increase that number over the next month.

Day 2 – Collect Your Account Information

Collect all of your account information for your financial accounts. Include login url’s, usernames, passwords, and account numbers. Make sure you include any old retirement accounts, checking accounts, savings accounts, or any other type of account that may hold money of yours, or you may owe money on. Save this information for later.

Day 3 – Start Tracking Your Spending

Open up a Mint.com, YNAB, or Personal Capital account. Start adding in all of your accounts that you rounded up yesterday. For an excellent comparison of the three websites, check out this review.

Day 4 – Start Building Your Emergency Fund

We’ve already talked about the importance of having an emergency fund, but today you need to start a plan to fund it! Take your monthly expenses found on Day 1 and multiply the total by 6. That is your target number. Figure out your timeline. If you can fund that amount today, then do it! If you need a year, then divide your target number by 12. However, try to get this funded ASAP.

Day 5 – Ask Your Employer About Retirement Benefits

Today email your Human Resources department and find out about your Retirement Benefits offered. Make sure to find out what the employer match is. Also, be sure to get a list of the different funds that you can contribute to.

Day 6 – Sign Up For Your Employer Retirement Accounts

Open an account following the information from your HR department yesterday. Look for a low-cost index fund or target date fund to put your money in for now. Set your contribution percentage as high as you are comfortable, but AT LEAST the company match. If there is no company match, put at least 5% to get started. Here is a beginner’s guide to 401K’s to help you get started.

Day 7 – Create Your Personal Balance Sheet

A balance sheet shows how much you have in assets, how much you owe, and the difference at a point in time. You can get started by adding up all of your assets including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, cash, property, etc. Next subtract out all of your loans and other liabilities. The difference is your Net Worth. Here is an excel template from the Tennessee Department of Treasury in order to help you get started.

Day 8 – Start Your Debt Avalanche

Earlier we discussed 5 debt repayment strategies, and today you’re going to start on the best. In a Debt Avalanche (also known as Debt Stacking), you pay off your loans from highest interest rate to lowest interest rate. Today you’re going to make an additional payment to your highest interest loan that you have.

Day 9 – Open An HSA (If Applicable)

Health Savings Accounts are available for people with High Deductible Health Insurance. If you fall into this boat, then open up an HSA today! According to The Mad Fientist, HSA’s may be the ultimate retirement account.

Day 10 – Keep Motivated

Congratulations! You are already one third of the way through the 30 Day Financial Jumpstart. It is important not to get burnt out, so start following me on Instagram @gettingrichyoung for some daily motivation.

Here are a few of the most liked pictures so far!

Day 11 – Open An IRA

An Individual Retirement Account is an important step to boost your investments that are in tax-advantaged accounts. Vanguard is my personal favorite mutual fund company. JLC has an excellent write-up on what makes Vanguard so special,

Day 12 – Sell Your Possessions You No Longer Need

Today it’s time to go through your closets and attics. Find all that stuff that you haven’t used or looked at in more than 6 months, then get rid of it. First sell it. If you can’t sell it, then donate it. Take any money you make from the sales and immediately throw it into your Debt Avalanche. Paring down on your stuff may also save you money according to The Three Thrifty Guys.

Day 13 – Examine Your Costs

Sign onto your account from Day 3 and see where your money has been going so far. You want to start reviewing your spending on a frequent basis to truly understand where your money is going. You can’t plug the holes of your sinking ship if you don’t know where they are!

Day 14 – Start Reducing Your Costs

Now that you have a better idea of where your money is going, start identifying ways that you can cut your costs. Try to strike the right balance of cutting costs to speed up your path to financial freedom, but not cutting joy out of your life. You will need to enjoy yourself on this journey, or you will burn out and fall right back into the pit you were in before. All of your new savings should be put towards paying off your debts, funding your emergency fund, and investing.

Day 15 – Calculate Your Years Until Freedom

Today it is time to figure out how long until you are free. Try using this Networthify early retirement calculator in order to figure out how long before you can retire. Play around with the numbers and understand that your savings rate is the primary factor in determining how long you are chained to your desk.

Day 16 -Start Learning Daily

Start reading blogs and listening to podcasts on the subjects of personal finance and entrepreneurship. By absorbing some new knowledge daily, you will drastically improve your financial intelligence. Today, try reading my post about five unique tips for financial freedom.

Here are some of my favorite blogs and podcasts that I follow.

Mr. Money Mustache | Smart Passive Income | The Mad Fientist | Millenial Moola | Money Manifesto | Stacking Benjamins

Day 17 – Increase Your Current Income

Focus on increasing your current income. Bust your butt at your day job and make sure people notice that you are providing a lot of value. Ask for a raise or promotion if you truly deserve it. If you find a way to improve your value to the company, pay raises should follow either directly or indirectly through new opportunities later.

Day 18 – Consider Switching Jobs or Careers

If your career is at a dead end, or if your job simply doesn’t provide enough for you to meet your retirement goals, then make a change. In fact, take a look at changing jobs even if you are content with how much you are making currently. According to Forbes, employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less!

Day 19 – Bolster Your Support Network

Make sure that you have the support of somebody to help you get through the rough times. Let your spouse or family member know that this is where you currently are, and this is where you want to go financially. It will both keep you accountable and they will be willing to take you more seriously if you ever truly need help. They will also be more understanding if you ever start talking about your new minimalist lifestyle trends.

Day 20 – Find Your Why

It is important to find your underlying reasons for wanting financial independence and early retirement. Without something driving you and pushing you forward, you may never make it. Worse, you may make it to financial freedom, but have forgotten why you wanted to get there.

Here are a few of my personal reasons for pursuing the dream:

1. Never having to wake up to an alarm clock again
2. Having the time to travel, backpack, and hike as much as I want
3. Being able to spend more time with family and friends
4. Not having to worry about making ends meet
5. Having time to volunteer more in the local community

Day 21 – Learn About Stoicism

Stoicism is essentially a philosophy which was popular in Ancient Rome. It emphasizes logic and the practice of eliminating our need for more. Mr Money Mustache has an excellent post on why Stoicism rocks and how it can change your life for the better.

Day 22 – Consider Downsizing

After 3 weeks of lowering your expenses and boosting your savings. It’s time to look into whether you need as much space anymore, or need such an expensive car anymore. You can probably save a ton of money by moving to a smaller house or getting a used car instead of a new one.

Day 23 – Figure Out Your Real Hourly Wage

Your real hourly wage is calculated by taking your income, subtracting all work related expenses, then dividing by the total number of hours you spend on work related activities. For example. If you make $30,000 per year, spend $5,000 per year on work related expenses (gas, maintenance, lunches that you have to eat out, taxis to get to meetings, work clothes, work vehicles, etc.), and work a total of 10 hours per day (8 hours at the office, 1 hour lunch, 30 minute drive each way). Then you are really making $25,000/yr  /  (10 hours/day x 250 days/year) = $10 per hour. Here is a WikiHow article to help get you on the right track with this exercise.

Day 24 – Further Reduce Your Costs

Yesterday you learned how much you are making in real dollars per hour. Look at your expenses sheet again and divide every expense by your real hourly wage. Now look over how much everything is costing you in hours. How does that make you feel? How can you reduce your work related expenses even further to boost your real hourly wage?

Day 25 – Start Making Healthier Decisions

If you are not exercising regularly, smoking, drinking excessively, and/or not eating a balanced diet, then you are costing yourself a bunch of money down the road. According to this Harvard Business Review article, Johnson and Johnson calculated that wellness programs returned $2.71 for every dollar spent. Start taking your health into your personal finance equation today. Quit an unhealthy habit and start an exercise plan.

Day 26 – Eliminate The Remaining Time Wasters

How much time are you spending doing unproductive things like watching television? Don’t get me wrong, I still watch TV from time to time, but nowhere close to the average 2.8 hours per day according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics. Try switching some of your time you spend doing things that aren’t helping you get ahead for some activities that improve your skills. As Zig Ziglar once said, “Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.”

Day 27 – Add To Your Financial Toolbelt

If you haven’t already, bookmark these free tools to help you along your journey

Mad Fientist’s FI Laboratory

Networthify’s Early Retirement Calculator

NY Time’s Rent vs Buy Calculator

FireCalc’s Financial Independence Early Retirement Calculator

Day 28 – Examine New Income Streams

After spending the last few weeks working on boosting your current income stream, and looking at a more profitable one, now it is time to examine new streams. Diversifying your income streams is important because it helps you better cope with job loss, recessions, etc. To get started on ideas check out this list of 95 Side Hustle businesses from Side Hustle Nation.

Day 29 – Start A New Source Of Income

Become an Entrepreneur instead of a Wantrepreneur. Today is your day to start taking action on your brainstorming session from yesterday. Take the first steps towards starting your new side hustle. Every penny you earn is a small step closer towards financial independence.

Day 30 – Review Your Progress

Congratulations! You have come a long way in the last 30 days and should be proud! Compare your status and plan today with where you were on Day 1. Your expenses should be lower, your investment balances should be higher, you should be creating new streams of income, and you should have a clear plan to financial freedom!

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When I first came to the realization of some of these financial mistakes, I did not truly want to believe them to be an issue. I told myself that everyone does these things, so they couldn’t really be that bad. Little did I know at the time, that these “norms” are extremely detrimental to your financial independence and early retirement. If you want to know how to get rich young, then a great first step is to learn about the mistakes below and avoid making them. However, if you have already made any or all of these mistakes, then fear not, you can still learn from them!

1. Buying A New Car

According to this U.S. News Article, the average price of a new car in the United States was about $31,252 in 2014. In the same year, the average net worth in the United States was about $301,000 according to this Financial Samurai article (Note that the median was only about $45,000). Even if we use the averages, that means that the average person in the United States would spend about 10% of their entire net worth on a car, that loses value every single day. Not only is the car depreciating over time, but it costs money to maintain, to gas, and to finance!

Let’s assume that you do actually need a car because you live somewhere well removed, and we will only look at the depreciation and the financing aspect. Assuming you paid 20% or $6,250.40 on your $31,252.00 car and took out a 5 year 5% auto loan on the remaining balance, you will pay $472.81 per month for your car payment. Added up over 5 years, this comes out to $28,308.67 plus the original $6,250.40. That puts you at a financing total of $34,559.06. Congratulations, you just paid an extra $3,307.06 for buying a new car on credit.

Now let’s take a look at the depreciation aspect. According to Edmunds.com, new cars are worth 37% of what you paid for it at the dealership after 5 years on average. That means that your $31,252.00 car is only worth $11,563.24 by the time you paid off your loans. So to sum it all up, you would have finished paying $34,559.06 for your car that is now worth $11,563.24. That is a loss of $22,995.82 in 5 years! What is worse, is that people do this over and over again. How would you feel if a

The Solution

If you are going to buy a car, do yourself a favor and look into flipping this scenario around. Buy a car that is 5 years old to avoid the huge initial loss in value and buy it in cash. You could be saving yourself thousands of dollars. Also consider going down to one car or no cars if you are currently a multi-car household.

2. Financing Too Much House

Along the same lines of the new car, many people find themselves buying more house than they need or can afford. According to Zillow.com, the median home value in the United States is about $184,000 as of this writing. In today’s ultra-low interest, the average 30 year mortgage rate is about 3.68% according to Freddie Mac’s survey. With a 20% down-payment ($36,800) and 3.5% ($6,440) in closing fees, this leaves a mortgage of about $153,640. This comes out to an interest and principal payment of about $705.44 per month. Assuming you stay in the house for the full 30 years to pay off the mortgage, you will have paid a total of $290,759.09 including your initial down-payment! That is $106,759.09 over the original purchase price!

To make the story worse, most people do not ever end up owning their homes. The average owner of a single-family home moves after about 13 years before moving again according to this Eye On Housing Article. Unfortunately, people then tend to upgrade and end up continuing and magnifying the cycle. If housing prices do continue to rise, these people may end up having a nice net worth on paper one day. However, they will never realize these gains unless they are willing to downsize at some point.

The Solution

Buy only as much house as you can afford. Bigger houses come not only with bigger mortgages, but bigger maintenance bills, and bigger costs of furnishing. If you are planning on buying a house, make sure that you are actually going to be in the area for quite some time. Buying a house this year, then moving next year is extremely risky and expensive. Finally, make sure you have a down payment of at least 20%. If you put down any less than this, you have to pay PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) which is the equivalent of taking your money and lighting it on fire.

Also, check out this free calculator from the New York Times to see if you are better off renting for now!

3. Purchasing On Credit

According to TransUnion, the average credit card debt per borrower is about $5,337. The average rate on a credit card is about 15.07% per CreditCards.com. If you have a minimum payment of 4% of the balance and continue to pay only the minimum, it will take you about 10 years and 5 months to pay off the credit card and you will pay approximately $7,686 to do it! To make matters worse, this is only how much somebody who pays off their credit card with the minimum would eventually spend. Imagine how much interest you are paying if you continually carry a balance at this level!

The Solution

Avoid credit card debt as much as possible. Credit cards are a great tool to use, however, you must be vigilant. Pay off your balance every single month to avoid those dreaded interest payments. As Will Smith famously put it, “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” Are you starting to notice a theme here? Credit and loans are extremely dangerous to your financial future! If you do currently have a large amount of loans, learn to get out of debt today!

4. Indulging On Too Much Entertainment

Frankly most people simple spend too much on entertainment. The excuses are usually along the lines of “I need some time to decompress”, “I need some me time”, “After a long week, all I want is to relax”. All of these are seemingly logical. After all, your mental health is extremely important. However, would you rather spend your money on decompressing from work and then not having enough in savings that you are forced to stay at that job for years longer, or would you rather spend your money on funding your exit from the rat race.

One of my friends, Lily, is an excellent example of this. Lily was spending about $50 at the bars every weekend to unwind after a long week. If Lily would have continued down this road, it would have cost her about $60,998.55 over the next 30 years with 7% compounding because she could have been investing the money instead. Another friend of mine, Joe, was spending about $100 on golf each weekend. Over 30 years this would have come out to $121, 997.10 at the same 7% rate. Those are some huge chunks out of your future nest egg!

Those continuing costs on entertainment are a huge danger to your financial freedom, and need to be held to a higher scrutiny. Remember, a single daily cup of coffee could be costing you 194 days every 10 years! Now add up all of your other recurring expenses and imagine how high those numbers truly are.

The Solution

A first step to start taking is simply start exchanging high cost entertainment for low cost entertainment. You can cut costs while still having a good time. Even better, start using your free time to learn something new. Start creating value for people on your free time in a way that you enjoy and you can potentially start a whole new career that is more meaningful to you.

5. Not Saving Or Investing Enough

It is commonly quoted in the media lately that we have a retirement crisis in the United States. Blame is commonly thrown around and fingers are pointed, but there is a common theme if you actually talk to people in the wiser generations. That common thread is that many people simply did not start investing early enough and they underestimated expenses. Retirement often can feel like it is so far in the future, that we don’t need to start thinking about it until we are getting closer. The sad truth is that people simply have no idea how much money they are going to need, then start saving after their prime earning years are already over. Unfortunately, you may lose your job at one point or another, you may need to take a pay cut, or you may have a health or family issue that forces you to take time off. These are all real possibilities that you need to start saving for, and why simply saving 10% of your income just doesn’t work.

The other issue is that people are notoriously bad about saving up for “unexpected” costs. When talking to friends about how much driving costs them, they frequently only count the cost of gas. They forget about insurance and they forget about depreciation. The fact is, your car is going to need repairs, and it is going to need to be replaced. Instead of worrying about a large expense when it happens, start saving for it now. The IRS allows business owners to deduct 57.5 cents per mile for the cost of operating a vehicle. You should be doing something similar. In our own house, we use this IRS rate to guide our saving for vehicles. We went down to one vehicle, but my wife currently drives about 600 miles per month. This comes out to $345. She spends about $34.29 in gas at today’s rates of around $2/gallon. We subtract that from the $345 to get $310.71 that we put into our emergency fund just for vehicle related expenses every month. Make sure that you are not missing those “hidden” expenses that suddenly pop up in a few years in large numbers.

The Solution

As we have discussed before, compounding interest is an awesome tool, but you must start investing young in order to take advantage of it. If you haven’t already, open a retirement account and start investing! Make sure that you have an emergency fund or are building one up now. Things like car troubles and medical accidents are likely to happen from time to time, and it is important to be prepared.

Conclusion

1. Buy a 5 year used car with cash to avoid the large portion of depreciation and financing costs
2. Run the numbers before buying a house and plan on staying in the area for a while before moving
3. Pay off your balance on your credit card every month to avoid interest
4. Trade your high cost entertainment for low cost, no cost, or even options that will pay you
5. Fund your emergency savings and increase your retirement contributions

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“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” -Benjamin Franklin

My Favorite Book On Getting Rich to Date

If there was one book that I wish I would have read straight out of high school, it would have been The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime.
by MJ DeMarco. Before you groan at the title thinking that it is just another scammy get rich quick book, listen to this. This book has a rating of 4.7 stars out of 985 reviews on Amazon at the time of this writing. That is with 843 five star reviews! If you don’t take my word for it, take the word of the hundreds of other people who love this book.

The Author Walks the Walk

There is a certain authenticity behind this book that you do not readily found in the “Personal Finance” space. It is especially difficult to find people selling material on “Getting Rich” who actually have gotten rich in the way they are teaching. MJ DeMarco is a millionaire, and he actually made his millions in the ways that he reveals in his book. He even fires shots at the other people in the industry for not practicing what they preach. So many financial gurus tell you to save up 10% of your income and wake up rich in the end, but they actually make their millions off of book sales. Similarly, if you’ve ever fallen victim of a MLM (Multi Level Marketing) Scheme, don’t worry, MJ DeMarco despises them. Even if this book does nothing but stop you from joining an MLM or following some other shady advice found elsewhere in the industry, it will have likely saved you hundreds of dollars.

Not a “Get Rich Quick” Book

A disclaimer that he gives right up front is that this is not a “Get Rich Quick” book. This is a “Get Rich in 5 to 10 years” book. 5 to 10 years may seem like a long time, but ask yourself this. Would you rather get rich by age 65 or age 40, 35, or even 30? That 30 number sounds pretty perfect to me. Imagine being able to have enough wealth to live the life that you want while you are still young enough to enjoy it. That is what this blog is all about, and that is exactly the roadmap that this book will give you.

Not a “Get Rich Easy” Book

A second disclaimer on this book is that it is not a “Get Rich Easy” book. Getting into the fastlane is going to take a lot of hard work, so better turn back now if you’re not up for it. Again, would you rather work hard for the next 40 years or the next 5 to 10? At Getting Rich Young, we love putting in hard work now in order to benefit from it repeatedly in the future. The Millionaire Fastlane is an excellent tool to help guide your thinking in this aspect as well.

Start By Finding Your Why

This book was the first book that I found that really made me find my “why”. If you ask most people if they want to be a millionaire, most people would say “Duh”. However, if you ask somebody why, it may take them a little bit of time to come to a real answer. Why do you want to be rich? My guess is that it’s not that you just want a ton of money in a vault to go swimming in. My guess is that it’s not so that you can count your coins over and over again. My guess is that it doesn’t have to do with the money at all.

If you are like me, then you probably want the money to live some dreams. My “why” is filled with experiences that I want to live, people I want to spend time with, and a few toys that I would like to have. None of these really have to do with the money. Once I found my “why,” MJ then had me go through the exercise of finding out how much that lifestyle is going to cost me. It was so simple that I seriously slammed my head on the couch. For the first time, I had a tangible goal in wealth. Once I hit that goal, I no longer need to bust my butt and I can retire in my dream lifestyle. This was extremely powerful for me, and I hope that it offers as much to you.

3 Different Paths

MJ DeMarco starts his book out by describing the 3 different paths that people are on. There is the Sidewalk, which is where people live paycheck to paycheck. There is the Slow Lane, which is where you save a small percentage of your paycheck for the next 40-50 years and hope the markets continue as they have historically. Finally, there is the Fast Lane. In the Fast Lane, you work your butt off for the next 5 to 10 years building a business, then you sell it once it has been scaled up. Which path are you currently on? Which one do you want to be on?

The Fastlane

After he has convinced you that entrepreneurship is the road of the Fast Lane, he goes further and gives actionable advice on building a business. Unfortunately, most people who start businesses are doomed from the get go. Even worse, many of the “successful” ones are nothing more than a job for the owner that they are chained to. MJ goes into detail about his 5 Fastlane commandments, that if followed, will get you off on the right foot. To give yourself even better odds, he goes into 3 Fastlane Interstates and even provides his top 5 Fastlane Business seedlings. If you are struggling for an idea, or not sure which type of business to start, then this section may just give you the push in the right direction that you needed. MJ DeMarco offers some excellent explanation surrounding why he has chosen each type of businesses to include.

Business Advice

After you have gone through the process of choosing your own personal fastlane, the advice continues to pour in. DeMarco goes into detail about how to make informed strategic decisions, how to find your unique selling proposition, and how to rise above the noise. The Millionaire Fastlane
truly takes you from Zero to Hero, which is unlike just about any other book on the topic that I have found to date.

Not A Step-By-Step How To Guide

One word of caution is that this book is not a literal “How To” guide. MJ DeMarco does not tell you step by step exactly what you should do. He does not tell you to buy real estate and how to do it. He does not tell you to start a software company and how to do it. He does not tell you to invest in the next Google and how to find it. However, he lays out lots of options and clearly explains his reasoning behind the directions. I like to think of this book as the classic saying, “I can only show you the door. You are the one who has to walk through it.” MJ DeMarco does exactly that. He shows you the Fastlane, but you have to find your on-ramp and build it yourself. This book is more about changing your mindset than anything else, with real advice from somebody who has really been there.

Key Takeaways

1. Building a Business is The Millionaire Fastlane

2. You will not get rich overnight

3. This will not be easy

4. You have to solve real problems

5. There has to be a large enough market for your solution

6. Your income needs to become independent of time

Is This Book Right For You?

• Are you tired of just dreaming about Getting Rich Young?

• Are you ready to take action?

• Are you willing to put in a lot of hard work over the next 5 to 10 years to reach your dreams?

• Are you able to listen to advice that may not align with your long held beliefs?

Start Reading Today

If you answered “YES” to all of these questions, then go borrow, rent, or buy this book today! If you didn’t, then this may not be the book for you. There are plenty of other books out there that will offer you all the fluff that you are looking for to keep dreaming instead of doing.

“An Investment in Knowledge Pays the Best Interest.” -Benjamin Franklin

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Maybe you’re just entering the workforce or maybe you have been there for a while, but you’ve been reading and decided you need to get your retirement plan together. Either way, the 401K will probably be the starting point for many investors. For some people, a 401K is all that they will ever need!

The truth is that getting started can often be scary. The absolute best thing that you can do for yourself to get over this fear is to just start! Don’t be so afraid of getting off on the wrong foot that you don’t ever  start. Putting something away in the wrong place is almost always better than not putting anything away. The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be! In order to boost your confidence and help you overcome your fears, we’ll give you the basics on what will likely be your first steps towards retirement.

What is a 401K?

A 401K is a type of retirement account that you may have access to through your employer. When you contribute to a 401K, your employer takes your contribution out of your paycheck before you pay taxes and then invests it through a plan provider. Once your money is with the provider, you usually have different mutual fund options to invest your money in. In a 401K your money will grow tax free until you hit retirement age. At that point in time, you will start withdrawing your money and will then pay taxes at that time.

Some 401K plans allow you to pick and choose individual stocks, but for most beginner’s you shouldn’t be picking individual stocks just yet. You have to learn to crawl first after all. There is also a lot of evidence that shows that most people just suck at picking stocks, so invest in a mutual fund and leave it to the pros or an index formula.

How Does A 401K Benefit You?

There are two major benefits of using a 401K.

1. You are lowering your tax bill today by contributing to a 401K. This works because the money is taken out of your paycheck BEFORE you pay taxes. To the tax man, it looks like you are actually making less money, so he takes less from you today
2. Your investments get to grow tax free! Many mutual funds and stocks give out money to shareholders periodically (this is called a dividend), or if you own bonds they are called interest payments. In a regular taxable account, you will be taxed on this income as you earn it. It may not seem like much, but getting these dividends/interest payments tax free and reinvesting them has dramatic effects on your balance over time

401K vs Taxable Account Over Time

For this comparison, we will make a few assumptions.

1. You have no assets on your 30th Birthday
2. You start investing when you turn 30
3. You are in the 15% tax bracket
4. You contribute $1,500 each month pre-tax or you contribute $1,500 – 15% for taxes = $1,275 each month in a taxable account
5. Your annual return is 7% (5% capital gains and 2% in dividends) with monthly compounding

Based on the assumptions above, by the time you hit your 65th birthday we will see some dramatic differences. The taxable account will have $2,138,676.55, but the 401K account will have $2,701,581.90. That’s a difference of $562,905.35 for simply choosing a different account to put your money in! Make sure you start taking advantage of these accounts today!

Don’t forget, this completely ignores any matching benefits that you may get from your employer for using a 401K. Let’s assume you make $60,000 and your employer will match up to 3% of your contributions. This is an additional $150 added to your 401K each month by your employer. Let’s see how this adds up.

That additional $150 each month from your employer adds $270,158.19 to your 401K account by the end for a grand total of $2,971,740.09.That’s also $833,063.54 more than the standard taxable account. Not a bad nest egg, and let’s face it, you can probably retire years earlier than age 65 at this rate!

401K Rules

This awesome retirement vehicle does come with a few rules. As long as you play by the rules, then the 401K is an excellent way for you to increase your retirement savings without doing anything special.

1. At the time of this writing, you can only contribute up to $18,000 per year if you are under the age of 50. If you are 50 or wiser, then you can contribute an additional $6,000 per year in catch-up contributions for a total of $24,000 per year.
2. Your employer can contribute to your 401K is entirely up to them, but they can contribute up to a combined $53,000 with your contributions. That means if you contribute the maximum of $18,000, then your employer could technically contribute up to $35,000 to your 401K.
3. You can’t pull money out of your 401K until you reach an age of 59 1/2. If you do, you will both have to pay taxes at that time and you will be hit with a penalty for withdrawing early. However, there are advanced strategies out there for withdrawing sooner without penalty for early retirees. The Mad Fientist has some great articles with numbers behind these strategies.

Keep in mind that although there are limits on how much you can contribute, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t contribute more if you can! The more you put away today, the sooner you can retire! Just make sure to max out that 401K first if you can!

How Much Does It Cost?

Like everything else, there is a small cost associated with owning investments. These are called fees and pay the people who administer the fund and deal with all the legal stuff. They have to keep the lights on too after all. That being said, it is in your best interest to select a fund with extremely low fees because you are sharing that expense with millions of other people so it shouldn’t cost you very much.

When choosing your fund, be sure to take a look at what the fees are. If you’re paying over 1% in fees, then choose a new fund. For example, one of my favorites, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares has an expense ratio of just 0.05% (I do not earn a penny for suggesting Vanguard. I am just a big fan)! John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, consistently warns about how high fees in mutual funds can really screw you over. Here is a great article about how fees easily wipe out more than 63% for your money.

Warnings

1. Do NOT withdraw early and get hit with penalties. This is a terrible financial mistake. You might as well light your cash on fire in your back yard. Just DON’T DO IT
2. Do NOT take out a loan against your 401K. Yes, you can technically do this, but DON’T do it! No matter what some real estate agent tells you, don’t do it. One of the benefits is the tax free growth, but if you pull your money out, then it’s not invested and growing! Yes, you are paying the loan back to yourself instead of a bank, but DON’T do it! Even if you are still tempted, be warned that if you leave your job before you paid the loan back, then you will get hit with penalties.

What If You Don’t Have Access to a 401K?

Some people don’t have access to a 401K. In the non-profit sector, a similar account is the 403B. If you do not have access to either one, then look into a Traditional IRA. These accounts have similar features and provide you with the same pre-tax and tax-free growth benefits of the 401K, but may have different contribution limits and particular rules. For example, the Traditional IRA has a contribution limit of $5,500 per year at this point in time. The important part as we learned earlier, is that you are getting the tax free growth and the tax benefit today of lowering your earned income.

Important Note: You can contribute to both a 401K/403B and an IRA. If you have the funds to do so, you can and should max out both your 401K/403B and your IRA!

Start Using A 401K Today!

The 401K is an incredible tool that you can use to boost your retirement savings throughout your life. Find out from your employer today if they have a plan and if they have a contribution match. There is no time to lose, and your future self will thank you.

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So here they are, our top five picks for unconventional tips for attaining financial freedom at a young age and retiring early.

Money Manifesto

“If you want to live an unconventional life and retire early you should be saving or investing more than half of your income. This requires you to earn as much as possible and spend consciously only on what truly matters to you.”

Money Manifesto blogger Lance used to work for a Fortune 500 Company as a licensed CPA before becoming self employed. He is one of the most genuine bloggers that I have had the pleasure of reading, and he puts his personality into every section of his blog. He even includes a post in his blog the day that he struck out on his own! One of my favorite categories that he writes is called “What Would you Do” where he goes over how he thinks about various financial situations.

Looking forward to the next installment Lance!

Millenial Moola

“Make sure you max out your traditional 401k. The reason is most people working in a corporate job will be in the 25% marginal tax bracket or more. When you take $18,000 off your taxable income , you might completely fall out of this 25% bracket. With the rest of your savings , fill up a Roth IRA then open a taxable brokerage account. When you early retire you should have something between $50 to $150k in your 401k. Now , you roll over this 401k to an IRA, then convert it gradually to a Roth , filling your 15% tax bracket every year. Also, you’re dividend and capital gains tax rate should be 0% during this time. If you need money , you can withdraw from your new Roth IRA mostly penalty free

The key is to take advantage of all the tax deferred retirement vehicles at your disposal. Just because they are meant for traditional retirees doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of the tax loopholes and use them for your benefit as a radical early retiree.”

Millenial Moola blogger Travis aka “TMONEY” has been retired since the age of 25 after leaving his job as a bond trader for a large investment company. When I first came across TMONEY’s blog I immediately felt a connection with the types of posts he was putting out. Having just turned 26 myself, I felt connected to the millenial focused nature of his posts and appreciated the well researched statistics that were used throughout his articles. Travis is truly committed to this field and lifestyle. In fact, he sent this tip from his mobile phone from down in Nicaragua!

Hoping to go on a hike with you in the future Travis!

The Mad Fientist

“Don’t focus solely on the finish line (i.e. full financial independence) but instead recognize and utilize the power your increasing net worth provides you along the way to make drastic improvements in your life.”

 The Mad Fientist runs one of the most informative blogs and podcasts I have found out there. Appropriately named, The Mad Fientist treats his blog like that of a research scientist. His articles are incredibly detailed and well researched, and he never posts fluff pieces. If you see a new article from his site, you know that you are about to learn something incredible useful to your financial journey. I also highly recommend his free Financial Laboratory! He includes free tools for tracking your net worth and financial calculators which are extremely well done.

Thank you for all of the effort that you go to for your readers Mad Fientist!

Stacking Benjamins

“Early retirement is like a Chicago election in the old days. Back then they said, “Vote early and often.” For you, we’ll tweak it a little and say, “Save early and often.” Compound interest is your friend. I know that sounds boring, but the key is to accumulate money that works for you as soon as possible…so you don’t have to.

That’s the basic advice. Here’s the advanced stuff: you can’t retire early if you don’t take risks. You’ll have to decide how you invest. You’ll need to own only a few things, and then you’ll need to become an expert on those things. Examples? Dave Ramsey learned real estate. T. Boone Pickens learned energy. Chris Sacca learned Silicon Valley venture capital. You can’t diversify. Diversification is for the long game. It spreads your risk and makes it difficult for you to make huge sums of money quickly.

…and that’s the horrible reality of being aggressive. You have to become comfortable with the fact that you might not reach your goal. Until you’re over the fear of dying with nothing, you won’t be able to do something so many people dream about but that so few accomplish…which is to shut off the j.o.b. really, really early.

There’s also the other route, by the way. Sell your stuff and minimize your lifestyle. I’m not in love with that approach, though. You can’t shrink your way to greatness.”

Stacking Benjamins is a fantastic Award Winning podcast in the Personal Finance space. Featured in places like U.S. News and World Report and Inc. Magazine, the Stacking Benjamins team is a definite add to your listening schedule. The host, Joe Saul-Sehy, was a financial adviser for 16 years, represented a Fortune 500 company in the media, and has been popping up all over in the financial space. Along with his co-hosts, they release new episodes multiple times a week in a fun and engaging format.

Can’t wait for tomorrow’s Short Stack episode!

Getting Rich Young

“Utilize your advantage of being young to retire early. In order to attain financial freedom you will need to build up your passive income quickly. The two ways of building passive income are by using money and time. Being young, you may not already have the money to buy existing sources of income, but you can use your time to build up brand new sources. Don’t squander the awesome advantage of time that you have. Let it work for you.”

You already know me, Larry Green, here at Getting Rich Young.I heavily debated putting my own tip into this post, but I truly believe in the information that I’m providing so decided to share what I have learned so far. After writing up this post, I realized that I need an About Me page so that you can learn more about me on a personal level other than what I have already disclosed in my earlier posts. Here’s a few more things that you might not know about me. I’m currently on track to retire 20 years earlier than the typical American and I absolutely love to be out in nature. In fact, my wife and I went on a 2 1/2 week backpacking trip through Zion Utah for our honeymoon. It was epic, and I loved not having to answer a phone call for work the entire time.

Invest In Yourself

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“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” -Benjamin Franklin

1. “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” -Henry David Thoreau
2. “No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.” -Plato
3. “A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life.” -Suze Orma
4. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” -Epictetus
5. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” -Warren Buffett
6. “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” -Will Smith
7. “If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.” -John Bogle
8. “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” -Benjamin Franklin
9. “Try to save something while your salary is small; it’s impossible to save after you begin to earn more.” -Jack Benny
10. “Easy payments, easy lease, easy approval. Debt is very easy to get into, but makes it hard to live victoriously.” -Bradeley Vinson
11. “To get rich, you have to be making money while you’re asleep.” -David Bailey
12. “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
13. “Financial fitness is not a pipe dream ore a state of mind. It’s a reality if you are willing to pursue and embrace it.” -Will Robinson
14. “A budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn’t keep us from buying it.” -William Feather
15. “Financial freedom is less about financials and more about freedom.” -Manoj Arora
16. “It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” -Robert Kiyosaki
17. “You are only as rich as your will power.” -Wayne Chirisa
18. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” -Albert Einstein
19. “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” -Colin Powell
20. “Don’t spend your life working for money. Save money and hire it to work for you.” -Dr. John F. Demartini
21. “The habit of saving is itself an education. It fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind.” -T.T. Munger
22. “By definitiion, saving for anything requires us to not get things now, so that we can get bigger ones later.” -Jean Chatzky
23. “Time is currency you can only spend once, so be careful how you spend it.” -Harmon Okinyo
24. “If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know and start charging for it.” -Kim Garst
25. “Never spend your money before you have it.” -Thomas Jefferson
26. “Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue.” -George Bernard
27. “All days are not the same. Save for a rainy day. When you don’t work, savings will work for you.” -M.K. Soni
28. “The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.” -Warren Buffett
29. “I don’t believe in spending money lavishly, now that I’m making money.” -Ansel Elgort
30. “Frugality includes all the other virtues.” -Cicero
31. “I don’t like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves.” -Joe Louis
32. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” -Thomas Edison
33. “Every time you borrow money, you’re robbing your future self.” -Nathan W. Morris
34. “The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.” -Peter Lynch
35. “Financial peace isn’t the acquisition of stuff. It’s learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest.” -Dave Ramsey
36. “Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
37. “If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.” -Edmund Burke
38. “If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.” -Vicki Robin
39. “How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.” -Rober G. Allen
40. “Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs” -Zig Ziglar
41. “The ultimate distance and the real difference between financial acquisition and financial disbursement is financial planning.” -Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
42. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” -Jim Rohn
43. “The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow.” -T. Harv Eker
44. “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” -P.T. Barnum
45. “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” -Ayn Rand
46. “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” -Benjamin Franklin
47. “Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.” -Paul Samuelson
48. “Your economic security does not lie in your job; it lies in your power to produce, to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That’s true financial independence. It’s not having wealth, it’s having the power to produce wealth.” -Stephen R. Covey
49. “Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.” -Charles Caleb Colton
50. “I’ve found that the less stuff I own, the less my stuff owns me.” -Nathan W. Morris

Share These Quotes With A Friend!

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Nearly every guide out there about making more money makes me feel like I’ll come off like a sleazy salesmen if I follow the advice presented, or I’ll have to rip people off in the process. There is a common saying that you shouldn’t care what other people think, but I believe this to be a little too black and white. You shouldn’t care what people think about the material possessions that you own or what you enjoy to do, but it makes sense to care about what people think about your character. If people see you as someone who is dishonest or untrustworthy, then that will directly affect all of your interactions with them. You will be unable to connect on a deeper level because they will never trust you. To extend further, if somebody doesn’t trust you they may also share their distrust with people they know.

The other common issue I’ve found with guides on how to make more money is that they tend to ask you to spend a lot of your hard earned money to learn their secrets. Promises of grandeur and fast riches plague the personal finance industry and it is part of the reason I wanted to start this blog. You can get rich faster than your current plan, and you can get rich faster than what is normal. However, you can NOT plan on getting rich overnight, in a week, or even in a month. Getting Rich Young is about getting rich faster than the typical 9 to 5 until 65 mentality. This path is not a get rich quick or get rich easy guide. It is a get rich with time 10 to 20 to 30 years faster than the conventional path laid out for us.

Make More Money By Creating Value

So, what is the solution then? If everything out there is telling me to sell my soul for a dollar, or that I need to have money to make money, then how is the Getting Rich Young path any different? The answer is, that you make more money in the most pure and honest way by simply creating more value. Making more money should be second to helping people, and giving them what they want.

Students tend to go to school for the things that they want to do. Employees tend to look for jobs in industries doing things they enjoy. Entrepreneurs tend to create products that they want. What is the problem with this model? After all, you may have heard one of these lines from your parents.

“Follow your dreams, the money will come later.”

“You will never work a day in your life if you love what you do.”

“Let your passions guide you.”

These are all very heartfelt and coming from a place of love. However, there are two problems with just following your dreams. First of all, a lot of people have very similar dreams! If everybody in the world chased their dream of becoming a professional athlete, what happens? A very small percentage of people actually do what they love because we only need so many professional athletes, and the rest of the people fight over the less desirable jobs that require similar skillsets. This pushes those wages down in those sectors. Why? Because there is already an abundance of workers in those fields, so by becoming another person in that field isn’t providing as much value to the world as you could somewhere else.

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” -Albert Einstein

The second problem with following these words of advice is that it is extremely selfish. For example, when was the last time you went to a restaurant that was dirty, had a bad reputation, and you were allergic to the food just because the owner had a sign on the door that said, “I want to own a restaurant.” I’m guessing you haven’t because you could care less what the owner wants. You are the customer and you want what you want. That’s the lesson here. Nobody cares what you want. Instead of being selfish, find out what they want and give them that!

You may be thinking, “Great. So this doesn’t cost me anything, but I can’t follow my dreams and there is no actionable advice.” So let’s create some actionable advice for you, and show how you can get both.

The Formula

1. Find The Pain By Caring About People

Instead of caring about what you want, care about finding out what ails one type of person. Reach out to real estate agents, doctors, lawyers, athletes, or any other industry that you are interested in and ask them what their problems are. Truly understand what frustrations they have. Show them that you truly care about them and want to make their lives better.

Pat Flynn, at Smart Passive Income is an excellent example about caring for your customers. He gives away an incredible amount of his informative content for free. If you listen to his podcast (which I highly recommend) you will understand just how much he loves his audience.

2. Create a Plan to Alleviate Their Pain

Once you know what your target customer’s problems are, figure out how to solve those problems! If you followed step 1 completely, then you now have the same problem as the person you are caring for. Luckily you have also spoken with a bunch of other people in the same area, having the same or similar problems. So what have you learned from those people? After all, you are probably the foremost expert on this particular problem now. What do you need to fix your own problem? That is what you sketch out to build!

3. Verify That Your Plan Is What They Want

Before you go and create the solution that you have planned out, make sure that your target customer actually likes your plan. This does two things for you. First, it gets free insight into how you can tweak the product before going through the time and effort of creating it. Second, you are making sure that you have somebody who would be willing to pay for it before making it. There is no worse feeling than building something that you are sure solves a problem, but nobody actually wants it enough to pay for it. Don’t fail your customer by building something they don’t actually want and then trying to tell them why they need it.

4. Give Them What They Want

You cared about your customer enough to find out what problems they are having rather than doing the things that you want. You created a plan to help them and fix their problem without regards to your own selfish agendas. You made it a team effort by confirming that they actually believe that your idea is a good one and gained their trust. Now it is time to build the solution and solve your customer’s problem and give it to them. That’s all that there is to it!

Summary

That’s it. Seriously, it is that simple. No matter what your situation is, you can apply these principals. Let’s now find a way to reword those common sayings from the beginning.

“Fulfill other people’s dreams, the money will come later.”

“You will never work a day in your life if enough other people love what you do.”

“Let finding solutions to other people’s struggles guide you.”

When you focus on other people instead of yourself and focus on progressing through these steps day in and day out, you will see drastic changes in your life. You will have more friends, more self worth for making an actual difference, and as a byproduct you will earn more money. If you make this consistent effort for a full year, and still do not see anything different from today, then email me and I will find a way to refund your time.

Frequent Excuses

“I work a full time job that I enjoy. This won’t work for me. It only applies to people who own or want to own their own business.”

Wrong. Let’s imagine an example of somebody who currently works a 9 to 5 that they actually enjoy going to. Who are the customers of your company? What about your fellow employees? Which departments might be neglected currently? Treat these groups as the people to care about in Step 1. If you make a habit of caring about other people, you will make yourself a key player in your company. This is exactly what I have worked on in my 9 to 5’s. It really works. No excuses.

“I work a full time job that I hate, but I am just too drained when I get home and don’t have the time.”

Wrong. How much time do you spend every night watching television? How much time do you spend on Social Media? How much time do you spend watching those hilariously funny cat videos? How much time do you spend sleeping on the train? There is always more time. The real thing you need to figure out is what your priorities are. Here’s a question for you to really think about. What will be more exhausting and draining; Not decompressing at home after work for the next 5 to 10 years, or having to go to the soul sucking job for the next 30 to 40 years? No excuses.

“I don’t have any good ideas” or “Everything worth inventing has been invented”

Wrong. You will never know until you go out and ask people. Stop thinking that you know everything or don’t know enough. In both of these instances, you will not know until you find somebody to care about. After really digging into what bothers them, you will have your ideas and you will realize that there are still opportunities out there to make a difference. No excuses.

Make A Commitment Today

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