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.
I just went through my RSS reader which I admit that I rarely use and noticed that many good blogs which I used to read are now defunct. Through my tenure as a blogger, I have also noticed that readers have come and gone. Perhaps the blogosphere is indeed like an eco-system where blogs live and die as bloggers run out of things to say and blog readers enter and feed of the blogs until they have learned all they can and leave again.
This leaves long time bloggers, who resort to repeating themselves. I used to think that that was a bad thing, but perhaps it is justified due to the systemic problem that new readers are reluctant to go back and read old posts. This is a presumption – in fact I get quite a few mails from people that say they just discovered Early Retirement Extreme and that they are now going through the archives from day 1.
If, however, this presumption is true it may make sense to start retelling old stories in new ways. After all, the blog would then fulfill a kind of service as a cultural carrier rather than a library similar to how bridal magazines are published semiannually for new brides to be despite there not being anything in those magazines that aren’t found in books or older magazines. The main difference is only that they are readily available, like blogs.
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Originally posted 2008-07-09 06:53:12.
