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.
Yesterday I finally finished the section on lifestyle inflation and consequently I have not been able to write much of anything today (never mind that you’re currently reading evidence to the contrary). I have often experienced this phenomena of being unable to produce anything after a spurt of productivity. It seems that productivity must always be averaged out over time.
I have not found a way to beat this phenomena so I can only assume that I have some individual rate of productivity(*). Given that I have a finite life span, it also means that I have a finite productivity ceiling much in the same way that the total number of heart beats of a mammal is fixed around the order of one billion (humans live twice as long as wild animals according that that law).
(*) This is probably mentally fixed. As far as I understand, it has been shown that new information can not be created without a source of randomness. The amplitude of this randomness along with its latency in the brain potentials are probably highly correlated with creativity, but really … I don’t know about this.
This means that my human life time corresponds to a fixed amount of production. The only question is whether I want to have a say in what this production should comprise.
