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.
Plonkee presents the carnival of personal finance: photo quiz edition. For me the most useful contribution was A Frugal Person’s Guide to Fair Tax. Fair tax is a 28% consumption or sales tax with credits an deductions being designed to make people that live at the poverty level pay zero taxes. For those of us that know almost everything there is to know about living very well on less than $10k per year, this would be a godsend. However, even if the fair tax doesn’t make it, there is still a strategy that would accomplish the same thing. It’s called, “owning a lot of assets, having capital gains only, and keeping expenses below $15k/year”, sounds familiar? 😉
Frugal For Life presented Festival of Frugality Week 108: Quotable Edition. Living well on the minimum wage is a popular subject around here and it was discussed further by The Great Money Challenge in More on how to how on minimum wage. This topic made it to MSN moneycentral as well.
The Carnival of Everything Finance: # 11 Edition included a post about how to
Make money online with automated Youtube niche video sites. Being an introvert I’m much better in writing than in video, but for those for whom writing is harder, “blogging” by video might be a good alternative. It is always best if you do something that you would or could do even if you weren’t compensated for it and test the waters before you commit. For instance, this is my third attempt at a serious blog. The first two failed because I simply did not have enough material to put forth a serious effort. Therefore I always recommend moving into new “positions” slowly.
