If you're new here, this blog will give you the tools to become financially independent in 5 years on a median salary. The wiki page gives a good summary of the principles of the strategy. The key to success is to run your personal finances much like a business, thinking about assets and inventory and focusing on efficiency and value for money. Not just any business but a business that's flexible, agile, and adaptable. Conversely most consumers run their personal finances like an inflexible money-losing anti-business always in danger of losing their jobs.
Here's almost a thousand online journals from people, who are following the ERE strategy tailored to their particular situation (age, children, location, education, goals, ...). Increasing their savings from the usual 5-15% of their income to tens of thousands of dollars each year or typically 40-80% of their income, many accumulate six-figure net-worths within a few years.
Since everybody's situation is different (age, education, location, children, goals, ...) I suggest only spending a brief moment on this blog, which can be thought of as my personal journal, before looking for the crowd's wisdom for your particular situation in the forum journals.
If you enjoy the blog, also consider the book which is much better organized and more complete. You can read the first chapter for free, listen to the preamble, or see the reviews (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,Z). Subscribe to the blog via email or RSS. Get updates on the facebook page, join the forums, and look for tactics on the ERE wiki. Here's a list of all the ERE blog posts.
According to feedburner, there are now more than 500 people who regularly read my staggering thoughts of genius what I write. I don’t know exactly how feedburner counts, but in the past few days the subscriber number has really taken off adding over 100 new subscribers in a week. I don’t know why, because I’m not monitoring of google stats and sitemeter anymore. Did I get stumbled or featured somewhere?
While not quite akin to the population of a midsize city like some of the most popular pf blogs, 500 is still a huge number to me. To put it in perspective, the largest amount of people I have ever given a presentation to is about 300. That’s a huge room full of tables, chairs, and people, where the back row is so far away that I can not recognize people’s faces. A 101 lecture at a large university [in my field] is about 200 people. A decent talk attracts about 60 people. Incidentally, 500 is also the sociologically established limit for how many people an individual can know, so sorry if I don’t recognize some of you guys anymore 😉
This week I tried predicting the future. Anyone want to predict my future? I’ve had some new ideas this week and I might post some hints next week. I also discussed how to be “original”. I used this method to come up with some approaches to minimalism.
This week’s carnivals
