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.
Service is promoted as a virtue by those who are being serviced and those who serve. Look around, and you will see that the service sector is thoroughly dominating. This is a sign that people are so rich that they have nothing better to do than to go around and do things for each other and get paid to do so. To put it more bluntly, convincing someone that they need you or your services is pretty much the only way to make money these days.
This can be done either directly by promoting specialization and professionalism which is a simultaneous promotion of general incompetence either for lack of skill or for lack of time of all other areas, which thus is a brilliantly sneaky way of keeping the middle class consumer on the hook; or it can be done through shoddy products that break in rapid order and need to be replaced—high depreciation costs are essentially a form of service cost as it is a current liability; or it can be done through a combination buy-in by selling cheap assets but tying them to a service plan like the people who are bonded to their phone and cable services.
Yes, with your college education, your career, your 9-5 job, and you various plans and poorly built environment, you, my friend, are caught!
Originally posted 2009-06-22 02:25:37.