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.
My impression is that many who read this site are ambitious hard working people who have simple grown tired of jobs, you know, the places where you spend 9-5 doing work that could have been done in half the time if it wasn’t for meetings, time-wasting procedures, and projects that are going nowhere. Forsooth, there’s nothing like spending two weeks on some dumb project that some stake-less manager thought would be a great line on his resume. Or spending the next 30–40 years confined to working on the things one was interested in at age 17. Anyway …
If you have too much intensity for a regular job but have grown out of “your one man operation”, I wanted to highlight a thread in the forum. Basically, we have several people who are interested in starting “the next big things”. If you have ideas, post and solicit in the ERE forum thread.
