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.
The following was a consequence not so much of a brilliant insight but more of external circumstances. When we moved into the RV, we obviously didn’t have a lot of space(*), so many things were packed into moving boxes and stored outside in the garden shed.
(*) Although I think if we put everything in the RV in boxes, we’d still end up with quite a few.
We figured, it would be easy to go out and get something in case we needed it.
Surprise, surprise, this rarely happens, because it’s simply too much of a hassle to go dig up that esoteric/useless gadget when other solutions can easily be improvised—fortunately the “I will just drive down to Walmart and buy a new one”-monster is long gone; otherwise this approach obviously wouldn’t work.
This also means that there really is no excuse even for the most ardent “I might need it someday” hoarder and all other things being equal, I think this has made it a lot easier to get rid of stuff.
My suggestion in terms of getting rid of stuff then is simply to put your least used “I might need it someday” in boxes and store them somewhere. Maybe you can do an exchange with someone. You store 5 of their boxes and they’ll store 5 of yours. Then after a year, you can decide whether you still want to keep them around, just in case you might need them some day—or decade.
Originally posted 2009-05-25 04:05:54.
