![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/meditation-2214532_1280-1024x576.jpg\")
Because I'm such a nice guy, I'm going to give it all away right here on this strange little blog. No book or pamphlet to download. No email address to fork over. No newsletter to read.
Nope, you get the straight skinny right here, right now. On Sunday.
The one thing to start doing now to get rich in a week is: Stop being an idiot and believing that people get rich in a week.
\"But people say it's true, Steve!\"
True, they do. But, are they also trying to sell you that secret? Are they grabbing at your money while promising a stupidly easy way to, in the words of George Costanza in Seinfeld, \"fall ass-backwards in the money\"?
Consider this: If riches were THAT easy to come by, wouldn't everybody be rich?
Okay, maybe some people just don't know about the secret to quick and dirty riches. Maybe they haven't been privy to the \"Only book you'll ever need to get rich quick\". Alright, I got ya. Maybe that's true. They just don't yet know about this insanely easy secret to wealth. Poor saps.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/kermet-nope.jpg\")
Now, also consider this: If there truly was a secret to getting rich, why would anyone be stupid enough to sell it for $14.99 a book?
Why wouldn't that fortunate person keep that secret to themselves, acquire untold millions and retire to a tropical island that basks in the gentle sunlight in the Pacific?
Perhaps in the Galapagos Island, where you can dive with the sea turtles.
Why would they write a lousy book and sell their soul in search of their next buyer with such a powerful, wealth-building secret?
It's because they aren't selling you a secret. They are selling a product.
The truth is people who sell their secret for $14.99 a pop don't have a secret. They have a business plan disguised as something meaningful, tugging at the heartstrings of so many people who would rather reap incredible rewards with almost no effort. Something for nothing.
They want to win a marathon without the hours of training. They want the promotion without putting in the extra time in the office. They want to lose 30 pounds without changing up their eating habits.
The world doesn't work like that, and rightfully so. If it did, we'd all be filthy rich, skinny, perfect specimens worthy of attracting the prince or princess at the ball. And, we'd have absolutely nothing to work - or live - for.
I could sit here and tell you that riches come to those who are truly motivated. Those who work smart and make wise decisions. Those who live sensible lifestyles and resist the temptation to ignore what truly makes them happy. Yada yada.
If you're reading this blog, you probably already know that. If you're new, start here. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Okay, I can't really promise that. Who knows what makes you disappointed. Here: I hope you won't be disappointed. There. :)
I promise this article wasn't a bait-and-switch. I told you that you need to do one thing to get rich in a week, and you know what? I'm going to tell you. Yup, there is an answer. There is a way, and it's actually one of the hardest to achieve, yet simplest things to do that exists in our world.
It is so simple that anyone can do it. In fact, people have done it. Many of them. It's just sitting there ripe for the taking.
How do you get rich in a week? Win the lottery.
","tags":[{"name":"rich","slug":"rich"},{"name":"Change Your Life","slug":"change-your-life"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"love-work-not-job","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/coffee-2714970_1920.jpg","title":"It's okay to love your work, but here's the problem with loving your job","published_at":"2018-11-30T15:51:51.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"Jobs are like your three-year-old child - some days your job is literally the best thing in the world, and the very next day it seriously tests your patience. WTF, you were doing so well!
Jobs are fragile things. They come and go. Sometimes they are the best things ever, and other times they suck so hard it's tough to get out of bed in the morning. It's all you can do to drag your ass out of your warm and comfy house and plop down in the seat of your car and make the drive, yet again, into the office.
Or, take the bus.
I'm a huge fan of loving what you do. I mean, seriously - it's great to love your work. To love the innate passion that you have for something.
It's a wonderful thing. But, when that passion turns into a job, you're setting yourself up for a potential disaster, and here is why.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/giphy-downsized-1-1.gif\")
Here's the deal. There's nothing wrong with loving what you do for a living. In fact, a genuine love for your work makes your career that much more enjoyable. It's awesome doing a job that you love each and every day.
\n
Your job is a means to an end.
\n
But, here's the reality: For most of us, your job is nothing more than a means to an end. Your job enables your work. It puts into action the thing that you love doing. The conduit, if you will. It's the path you take to earn a living. Okay, I think you get the point.
But, jobs come and go. They also suck sometimes.
Right now, you might love your job. You have a kick-ass manager who genuinely cares about you as a person. He or she gives you the autonomy to do your job in the best way that you know how. They don't care about status reports or performance reviews. They fight for you during raise time.
Everything's awesome. You love it.
But, what happens if your company gets bought out by another much larger entity and strips out that layer of wickedly-cool management and replaces it with a collection of mindless automatons whose sole focus is the bottom line? Suddenly, weekly status reports are the norm. You're having 1-on-1 meetings every week with your boss instead of doing the things you enjoy.
Oh, and those raises that you've enjoyed the past five years? They're gone - or at the very least, reduced. They are tied directly to an arbitrary 1 to 5 number on your yearly performance review that would make the most bureaucratic manager extremely proud. You get what you get. And, you're no longer permitted to leave at 3pm on Friday afternoons, either.
The workday ends at 5.
In other words, jobs change. If you are like most of us, you'll probably move around within your industry, too (in fact, that's how significant pay increases tend to happen!). Jobs come and go.
If you love your JOB, rather than your work, then you might be setting yourself up for quite the roller-coaster of emotions.
While I thoroughly enjoyed my work, I never loved my job. I never let myself love it. I've worked with some incredible companies, and also some not-so-incredible ones. It didn't take long before I began to realize that the place I worked was nothing more than an avenue to the work I enjoyed.
My first job out of college was for a large employee-owned software development company. They earned healthy profits but did not have shareholders to impress. They sponsored company events. Overhead (aka: spending the company's potential profit) wasn't a bit deal so long as it could be reasonably justified. We were paid well. It was a comfortable environment.
Then, the company decided that an IPO was in its future. It wanted to become public. On the market. Profit-focused.
Oh man, did things change - and big time!
Suddenly, company-sponsored events were a thing of the past. Uttering the word \"overhead\" was an obscenity and required an act-of-god to approve. No more snacks in the break room.
We considered ourselves lucky that the office continued to provide us with filtered water through those big blue water dispensaries.
Things changed. The job wasn't nearly as enjoyable. I felt like a number rather than a resource. I filled a billable slot and nothing more. One Friday, I went to work and was called into the boss's office. Apparently, he had done \"everything he possibly could\" to find me work, but no work was available.
He gave me my layoff notice and, after more than five years working for the company, a one-month severance package.
BTW: After leaving my boss's office, I walked down the hall to one of the project managers I had worked for in the past. Within two minutes, he found work for me and my layoff was reversed. Golly gee...
I’m a big believer in a very simple phrase: “Love your work, not your job”. Over the years, experience has relentlessly drilled into me that loving my JOB just isn't worth it. It's misplaced love. To me, it's entirely unsustainable.
Jobs come and go. They change. Management changes. Companies get sold. Markets can destroy entire sectors in the course of just a few days or weeks.
Jobs are way too fragile.
","tags":[{"name":"Corporate America","slug":"corporate-america"},{"name":"Jobs","slug":"jobs"},{"name":"work","slug":"work"},{"name":"Live Differently","slug":"live-differently"},{"name":"Change Your Life","slug":"change-your-life"},{"name":"How Life-Changing Things Happen","slug":"how-life-changing-things-happen"},{"name":"Retire Sooner","slug":"retire-sooner"},{"name":"Retiring Early","slug":"retiring-early"},{"name":"Leave Corporate America","slug":"leave-corporate-america"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"},{"name":"Leaving Corporate America","slug":"leaving-corporate-america"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"dumbest-things-ive-said-about-personal-finance","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ocean-2051760_1920.jpg","title":"Here are the 7 dumbest things I've said about personal finance","published_at":"2018-11-20T15:20:53.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"Dumb things. We all say them from time to time, but I was especially prone to some real stupid stuff before I finally got serious about personal finance. Like, some real doosies. Now is the time to divulge. :)
![\"Pinterest:](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/pinterest-dumbest-things.jpg\")
And by the way, happy Thanksgiving week! I hope that you're spending some time with family this week and away from the office. I can still remember the last Thanksgiving I spent at my in-law's house before calling it quits from full-time work just about a month later.
It was an amazing feeling. But yet, I just couldn't wait to get to that point of my life where I didn't work a full-time job. It couldn't happen soon enough.
I had the opposite problem of Just One More Year syndrome. Instead, I suffered from a sickness called \"Why can't I just quit now?\"
In any event, this just feels like a week for more light-hearted material. No discussion of investments or 401ks today.
Behold, below I reveal the 7 dumbest things I've said about personal finance. Can anyone out there top this dumb stuff?
1. I need to buy a house to build equity
This was entirely stupid because I had no idea what \"building equity\" actually meant - or, frankly, the risks involved in homeownership.
I just knew that equity was good, and homes seem to be associated with that \"good\". I put two and two together and, over the next eight or so years, lost about $100,000 owning my own place.
How's THAT for some equity?
2. I have extra dough in my budget, so let's buy something
In a previous life, I completely sucked at budgeting.
I had a budget, but it wasn't doing me much good because it didn't constrain my spending. In fact, it enabled it. Whenever I began accumulating more money in certain budget categories than I was spending, my solution wasn't to save it. Instead, I spent it, knowing it wouldn't collapse my budget for the following month.
I cheated my budget. I also cheated my future self.
The problem was I didn't pay myself first. I was a slave to that stupid budget and found ways to cheat that sucker every step of the way.
3. New car with a zero interest loan? Sign me up!
In 2010, I did the dumbest thing ever (short of buying a house): I bought a brand new Cadillac CTS. A zero-interest loan baited me into it, and let's be honest, I liked the idea of struttin' around in a Cadillac.
I said, \"A zero-percent interest loan? I can't afford NOT to buy this thing.\"
I've long since sold that car. Now, we only have a single vehicle - a 2012 GMC Sierra 2500HD, to pull our 10,000 Airstream travel trailer.
4. There will always be time to save later
Man, I hate myself for ever uttering such nonsense. It was that kind of stuff that had kept me working as long as I had, always deferring my better judgment for some point in the future. Dumb, Steve...dumb.
This same theory goes for the things that we think that we'll do after we quit our jobs. Instead of waiting or assuming they will happen \"later\", start doing those things now.
Because...if you aren't doing them now, chances are you won't do them later, either. Don't feel bad about that. It's just human nature.
5. If smart people still go bankrupt, what chance do I have?
Back during the mortgage crisis (which, coincidently, was around the time that I bought that 1,600 square foot depreciating asset called my \"house\"), I recognized how many people - truly smart people - were still struggling to make ends meet and get ahead.
And there I was, barely 30 years old, wondering what chance I had. If smart people can fail, where does that leave me? Why even bother? Ugh.
6. If my neighbor can afford that car, so can I
This keeping up with the Jonses crap hit me hard. I knew that I had a good job, relatively high paying and fairly stable. I assumed I earned at least as much money as my neighbors. If they can afford that new car, or pool, or renovation, or whatever...then so can I, damn it.
Cocky, Steve. Way too cocky.
7. I need these things to build my career
I was a kick-ass rationalizer. I convinced myself that a lot of what I was buying I \"needed\" to benefit my career. I had to \"look the part\", so the Cadillac fit there. And I can't come into work wearing the same worn out clothes every week, so I needed wardrobe refreshes. Expensive glasses (before my Lasik surgery) were a natural finishing touch.
To this day, I still remember plopping down about $230 for a pair of Oakley sunglasses (that I involuntarily donated to the Puerto Vallarta, MX ocean a couple years later). Over $200 bucks for a pair of glasses? Wow...
And weekly happy hours with my co-workers to, you know...\"network\".
Be honest, what are some of the dumbest things you've said about personal finance in your past? Do any of those things make you cringe today?
","tags":[{"name":"Financial independence","slug":"financial-independence"},{"name":"money","slug":"money"},{"name":"Personal finance","slug":"personal-finance"},{"name":"Change Your Life","slug":"change-your-life"},{"name":"Save Money","slug":"save-money"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"guide-career-tech-industry","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ipad-820272_1280.jpg","title":"Your complete guide to a money-making career in the tech industry","published_at":"2018-11-14T16:07:37.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"A few weeks ago, I received an email from a reader asking me if I would work in the tech industry again if I had the chance to do it all over. Like I said before, this IT business can drain the life out of you. Long hours. It's boring, but also exciting, frustrating and lucrative all at the same time.
I would do it again, but only because of the techniques that I have developed to keep this business from killing me. One can make a great deal of money in information technology - money that can be used to fund an early retirement lifestyle.
But, information technology can also kick your ass if you are not careful, trapping you into a box full of dragons and pit vipers clawing their way into your very soul ... yet tempting you to stay put with promises of shiny possessions and awe-inspiring power and influence.
How do we navigate the maze of a career in information technology? To maximize income potential and minimize soul-crushing stress is the definition of success in this business?
Let this guide teach you how to build a career in information technology...and live to tell about it.
![\"Business](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/business-man-1002781_1280-251x300.jpg\")
I have worked in information technology all my life. My first job straight out of college involved low-level programming using PERL (that's right, PERL!).
I slowly climbed up the food chain by managing production software migrations for a couple of years. Then, I dove back into web development over the next 8 or so years before finally getting my shot to lead an entire information technology department (a job that I promptly quit).
In my last job before retiring early, I was a database consultant.
Over the years, I've learned a thing or two about this business and what makes the difference between successful careers and unsuccessful ones - in Corporate America.
First, let's get this out of the way now: Information technology kinda sucks.
More accurately, working in IT sucks. I love writing web applications, but I hate working for a company that writes web applications. I love picking and choosing my own computing hardware, but I don't enjoy this same process for a business.
Working in IT can be incredibly stressful.
Businesses of all types depend on their information technology infrastructure and are willing to pay handsomely for its maintenance. But with those lucrative paychecks comes an expectation that things nearly always work, and when they don't, THEY MUST BE FIXED, and now.
And this brings us to my first point of building a career in information technology:
It's not a matter of \"if\". It's \"when\". In information technology, things will break. The insane complexities of how software products function with other software products is nearly limitless.
These complexities break shit, all the time. And rarely will you find a situation where software doesn't need to integrate with other software.
And when things break, the IT staff is on the hook to fix it - even if they have no idea what broke or didn't even designed the darn thing to begin with.
Learn to Google. No, scratch that. Master Google. Become an expert at finding answers, fast. The nice thing about IT problems is very simple: you probably aren't the first one to experience them, and chances are someone has posted about them before. Web sites like StackOverflow.com are your friends. Use them.
Some food for thought: I have found that the less a person knows about information technology, the more \"urgent\" problems become.
As important as information technology is to a business, most businesses largely ignore the technical implications of their decisions, relying instead on their \"IT guy\" or staff to figure it out, fix it, enhance it or debug it.
They don't give two shits about how their software choices affect their larger infrastructure.
And, this is why it's important for IT staff (and especially management) to educate their organizations the best they can about how their IT decisions effect the business. I know this won't always be possible. The larger the organization, the less likely they will be to actually care what their IT folks say.
But if we don't try, we'll never make headway.
Prepare yourself for insanely complicated networks and software installs. Almost nothing works to a company's specification out of the box. Config files will need to be changed. Settings tweaked. Network firewalls opened (or closed).
Nearly 100% of the time, the software will need to be configured so it runs precisely how an organization wants it to run...which usually isn't how it was designed by the manufacturer.
And naturally, all this needs to be maintained.
Understand this: A large percentage of a company's spending on information technology is due to needless complexity put in place by bottom-line decisions made by non-IT layers of management.
Consulting services means big-time money. When spending thousands, hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars for an enterprise software product, companies often hire the vendor to help them integrate the product into their environment.
The U.S. Government does this a lot, and they pay vendors huge sums of money for on-site consultants to hold their hands while getting things set up.
These vendor consultants often make a good deal of money. They are not only experienced technically, but they interface with customers.
Consultants are hybrids between pure technical staff and sales. They are the face of the company, and vendors aim to only put their best in front of their sources of revenue.
As a result, consultant positions often pay a great deal of money. However, stress can quickly become overpowering. Customer problems often require 24/7 support. If a consultant can't figure out a problem, he or she is personally on the hook until it gets fixed.
And let's face it, the shame and humiliation of failing in front of a customer can be a big deal. Nobody is perfect, but when customers pay $250/hour for a consultant who can't fix a problem, it just sucks for everybody involved.
If you're a consultant, the stress is high. You're often on-call. You travel quite a bit. But, you also get paid handsomely for it.
In customer-facing positions, the pressure is high, but the reward is also high. How much pressure are you willing to take? Deciding this early will make your career easier to manage. Take positions that truly interest you. Pass on opportunities that demand too much stress.
Because in IT, there will always be another opportunity down the line.
Colleges completely suck at preparing our nation's youngsters for careers in information technology, and especially software development. The reason is because the academic setting rarely resembles real life and how business is done in this country.
Most information technology related programs teach concepts from a start-to-finish perspective. That is, you have a clean slate to work with. You learn how to properly design an application, or put together an efficient network, or code up some pretty darn impressive algorithms that do some amazing number-crunching in a split second.
That's all great.
But what universities don't teach is how information technology in business actually works. In the real world, we very rarely have a blank slate to work with when designing new applications. We have business requirements to satisfy, management to please, complicated networks to contend with, weird or archaic technologies built in the 1980s to interface to.
But worse, many times we don't get to start from scratch, either.
Nine times out of 10 in my career, the work involved something that was already there. We aren't designing networks from scratch.
Instead, we are improving existing networks. We aren't designing software applications from the ground up. We are taking a pile of crap written by someone else and making it work. Or work better.
Most of the time, we don't get the luxury of clean slate work.
We are forced to learn what the organization already has in place, or debug existing systems, or learn how to connect to and interface with stuff that's already in use.
In other words, we are often confined to nonsensical policies, weird coding standards, pre-existing applications and lots of poorly-written code.
Universities fail to teach students how to debug someone else's code, to step through code line by line using tools like Visual Studio and inspecting every variable, every data structure, every interface, every API call, every ... everything.
Debugging code might be a small section of a larger class, but that's not nearly enough when 90% of a typical developer's job is debugging.
Successful IT careers depend on your ability to take something that is pre-existing and improve it, debug someone else's code and fix it, understand complex networks and work within them.
When I worked as the Director of Information Technology, I interviewed quite a number of people for software development and system administration opportunities. We only ended up hiring a fraction of candidates even though we had several positions available.
We didn't use any interviewing tricks. We asked straightforward questions and expected straightforward answers. We asked questions based on what was written on their resumes.
Most of the time, I wasn't impressed.
In short, too many candidates couldn't back up their resume's impressive accomplishments.
I need to stress this: Everything on your resume is fair game!
If you list experience with a programming language, it means that you've personally used that language enough to talk intelligently about it. Reading an article or writing a \"Hello World\" application isn't enough.
That is not experience.
That is trying to bullshit your way into a high-paying IT position.
Take a look at your resume and ask yourself, honestly, if you want your next interviewer to ask questions about a particular concept or capability on your resume. If you are prepared to talk about it, great. If not, don't risk it...take it off.
The second I discovered that a candidate included something on their resume that they weren't familiar with, the interview was over.
Secondly, you may be asked to demonstrate your knowledge during the interview process. Coding challenges are common for software development positions. Remember that the organization is not only interested in your ability to solve the challenge, but more importantly, they are observing your thought process to get to the answer.
Under pressure.
For example: How do you respond under pressure? How do you work through possible scenarios in your head and select the best one?
I've learned more from moving around than I ever did working at any one company, and this is especially true in information technology.
Every business has their own way of doing things. They have their own software development process. Their own network, coding standards and software tools. Their own everything.
Hanging around any one company long enough makes you more knowledgeable and experienced with that company's information technology process, but it does your career no favors.
In 14-years working corporate America jobs, I’ve worked for five different organizations.
Each company did things differently. I got exposed to different development processes, meeting schedules, work attitudes and company cultures.
Of course, the work itself differed from place to place and my experience interacting with a variety of technologies and computer environments continued to expand nicely.
Moving around gave me a huge leg up in my career. And, every time I moved to a different company, I got a raise. Often, a nice one.
There are exceptions, but the more that people move around, the more exposed they become to new ways of doing business. I like to think that each organization makes us smarter and more equipped to tackle problems that might seem unique to some. Move around enough and you will likely see it all.
In the end, no problem is all that unique anymore.
Working in information technology doesn't mean that you \"know everything\" in IT. It does, however, require that you know where to find quick answers.
The better you are at Googling, the easier your job will be, guaranteed.
StackOverflow.com is a software developer's go-to source for figuring out programs or blasting through technical roadblocks. It's a site where other software developers post questions and get answers from others in the industry. Like I said before, the problem that you're having probably isn't unique to you. Someone, somewhere, has had your exact problem - or at least one that is very similar.
Information technology is about knowing where to get your answers, and fast. Develop your collection of go-to sources. Know them, and know them well. Use them often. Understand their quirks. Because when time is critical, you can't afford to fumble around and get lost in the weeds.
You need answers.
I will wrap this guide up on a positive note. Although information technology can be stressful and life draining, there is that incredible feeling you get when you fix things. That problem nobody else could figure out, but you fixed it? That one.
Or the time you brought the company's website back online after a problem? That one too. Or walking (strutting?) out of a client's office building after totally kicking ass?
Successes in information technology feel incredible in large part because of how frustrating the business can be. Feeling good knowing that you were the source of getting something major accomplished isn't unique to this business, but it feels especially awesome after suffering through nights and weekends of torment, or spending hours researching a problem and trying out possible fixes.
The successes, when they happen, are unlike any other feeling I've ever experienced in corporate America.
This post was originally published August 2016 but has been updated and revised using the Revise and Republish strategy.
","tags":[{"name":"How to Think","slug":"how-to-think"},{"name":"Careers","slug":"careers"},{"name":"Corporate America","slug":"corporate-america"},{"name":"information technology","slug":"information-technology"},{"name":"work","slug":"work"},{"name":"Change Your Life","slug":"change-your-life"},{"name":"Save Money","slug":"save-money"},{"name":"Retire Sooner","slug":"retire-sooner"},{"name":"Leave Corporate America","slug":"leave-corporate-america"},{"name":"Millennial Money","slug":"millennial-money"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"working-til-retirement-scares-death","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/working-until-retirement.png","title":"Working 'til retirement scares me to death","published_at":"2018-11-05T15:38:33.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"Good morning and happy Wednesday! Today, I bring you a guest post from a newer blogger in the Personal Finance blogosphere, Cody from Dollar Habits. He and I have something in common - we both hate the idea of working until 65. Cody, take it away!
Growing up, I didn’t have many examples in my sphere of influence of anyone who retired early. My older relatives, for the most part, all worked up to the traditional retirement age before pulling the plug on a 40+ year working life. My mom retired almost 6 years ago at age 58 (thanks to a government pension) and I remember thinking that was the coolest thing ever. Soon after, I adopted the goal of retiring by 58 as well.
Side note - I am super proud of my mom for being able to retire as early as she did, especially with as many odds stacked against her as she had. She’s now busier in retirement than she ever was when she was working. Grandkids certainly help with this. Out of curiosity, I frequently ask her if she misses working or regrets retiring when she did. She is always quick to reply that she could not be happier with her decision and would have retired even earlier if she could have. Noted.
A few months after I graduated from high school, I was recruited and “sponsored” to join a well-known multi-level marketing (MLM) organization. Fresh meat. I bought in (literally) hook, line and sinker. Despite my best efforts, I spent a bunch of money and didn’t make a dime, but all was not lost. First, I was exposed to books and other personal development materials I likely would not have come across on my own. At a young and still impressionable age, these were life-changing. Second, at the conventions (oh yes, I went), the speakers spoke of a lifestyle which seemed foreign to me.
“Get rid of your J-O-B, your boss and your commute.” “Travel the beaches of the world.” “Don’t wait until you are old and gray to have the freedom to live life.”
Hold the phone!
\"This is possible?!\" I remember asking myself. The propaganda fulfilled its mission because the thought of that type of freedom and the ability to kill my 9-5 lit my fire and I doubled down, although, again, to no avail.
Fast forward about 6 years or so … I had recently been laid off and was pretty jaded on jobs at the time. I had been reading personal finance blogs since about 2007, but I wasn’t a regular reader of any with a slant toward early retirement. Thanks to some divine intervention, early last year, I inadvertently stumbled into the beautiful world of early retirement blogs.
Cue the amazement and bewilderment. My mind was blown. I couldn’t believe the stories I was reading. People walking away from full-time, high paying corporate gigs in their 30s?! Yes, please! I was hooked and have pretty much been obsessed ever since. For the record, we are a long, long way from reaching FIRE, which brings me back to the title.
The Thought of Working Until Traditional Retirement Age Scares the Crap Out of Me
I recently turned 30. This means if I work until the (current) traditional retirement age, I have another 37 years or so left to go. Couple this with the fact I’ve been working since I was 16 and all in, I will have worked for a total of 53 years. NO.THANK.YOU! The mere thought leaves me with a knot in the pit of my stomach.
53 years of work breaks down like this:
2,650 weeks
636 months
13,992 days
111,936 hours
6,716,160 minutes
* Assumes two-week vacation each year and a conservative 8-hour workday. All in, I’m currently committing around 10-10.5 hours per day to my job, including my commute.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/kids-girl-pencil-drawing-159823-300x200.jpeg\")
What it all primarily boils down to for me is a matter of opportunity cost and fear of loss.
To be more specific, here's why the thought of working the next 37 years of my life sends shivers down my spine.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/pexels-photo-262103-1024x683.jpeg\")
Motivation can stem from both positive and negative factors. In fact, negative motivation can be equally as effective as positive motivation, if not more so. Fear is one of the primary “negative” emotions, but if harnessed and used correctly, fear can be a powerful tool.
It is fear - my fears of working in a job for the next 37 years - which motivates me the most. Sure, the positive motivation for retiring early is awesome and certainly lights my fire. Things like control over my time, no more boss, no more commute, the ability to travel more, etc. are all incredibly motivating. However, far more motivating for me to get my financial house in order to pursue an early retirement are the fears and negative motivation outlined above.
My sincere hope and desire is these fears will never materialize and we will be able to, at some point, retire early (no small feat as a one-income family). I am now quite aware of just how early you can retire if you truly put your mind to it. While my framework for early retirement has evolved, I will still be happy as a clam if I can retire by 58, like my mom. However, knowing now what is possible, I plan to reach that holy grail far sooner. Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.
How did you come to find out about the online early retirement community? Did you have any offline examples of early retirement in your life? Do any of these fears resonate with you?
","tags":[{"name":"Guest Posts","slug":"guest-posts"},{"name":"Jobs","slug":"jobs"},{"name":"Retirement","slug":"retirement"},{"name":"work","slug":"work"},{"name":"Live Differently","slug":"live-differently"},{"name":"Change Your Life","slug":"change-your-life"},{"name":"How Life-Changing Things Happen","slug":"how-life-changing-things-happen"},{"name":"Featured Finfluencers","slug":"featured-finfluencers"},{"name":"Retire Sooner","slug":"retire-sooner"},{"name":"Retiring Early","slug":"retiring-early"},{"name":"Leave Corporate America","slug":"leave-corporate-america"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"},{"name":"Leaving Corporate America","slug":"leaving-corporate-america"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"this-is-why-i-retired-early","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/DSC06810.jpg","title":"This is why I retired early","published_at":"2018-10-30T10:05:55.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"The why is important. Really important. I've written about it. Others have written about it. Without a reason, your goals won't make a lot of sense and, frankly, you probably won't reach many of them.
Not because you aren't good enough to reach them. No, that's not it.
It's because you'll find another goal and then focus your attention on that until the next best thing comes along.
Trust me, I've been there. I know what it's like to set a goal because it sounded good to me at the time and then, as time gradually dragged on, I would lose interest in that goal and wind up changing course - sometimes, drastically. Every time, the cause was the lack of a reason.
My why was missing.
The more we understand our why...the purpose...the reason we're living differently than most of those around us, the better prepared we will be to see it through. To stick it out. To not lose focus.
Today, I'm spewing that reason all over this blog post...but, it won't be just text-based. Nah, there's enough text on the web.
I'm going to use photos.
Okay, let's get some last and final text out of the way before we get to the good stuff. I promise to make it good.
Why did I retire early?
Here's the deal: I may never own a home again, and that's okay. I believe homeownership to be entirely overrated (though I do agree that there are benefits - both financial and emotional, to owning a home).
Expensive cars don't impress me like they once had.
Every time that someone asks me \"What do you do?\", I never say that I work in information technology. That's too normal. Too restrictive. Instead, I say that I'm either \"early retired\" or \"we travel for a living\".
Below is a collection of photos that I've shot this year. My favorites. These photos represent why we sold two homes and 90% of our possessions, packed up our stuff and set sail into the sunset in our Airstream.
If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing.
Thanks for reading!
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It’s no secret the blogosphere tends to hold financial advisors in contempt.
The money blog movement is steeped in DIY gumption that does not lend itself well to seeking outside help. Additionally, even though bloggers won’t admit it, at some subconscious level they have a self-serving interest in admonishing the industry.
Let’s be honest; it’s a lot harder to sell eBooks, courses and affiliate links to people who are being served by an advisor.
I have had the privilege of having a foot in both the world of money blogging and the world of financial advising. Having straddled the rift has taught me a lot about advice in general and helping people.
Today, I am going to peel back the curtain a bit and offer an objective look at the world of financial advice and offer some tips on how not to get screwed.
I appreciate Steve for lending me his platform to discuss this issue, because one of three things will happen:
![](\"https://i1.wp.com/thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_1853.jpg?fit=286%2C300&ssl=1\")
I have worked successfully in the personal finance industry since 1999, and I continue to work in the industry.
Intentionally, I do not discuss my practice, resume or qualifications on my blog or other blogs because my blog is a separate outside business activity and I do not want to blur the lines or give the appearance of giving investment advice (which this post does not do).
I have seen several bloggers that have worked for brief periods of time in entry-level positions in financial firms, then leave their position and claim to have industry experience.
While technically correct, it's important to understand that the financial service industry works on an apprenticeship-style model.
Firms sponsor candidates for their exams, then once they pass their exam, the firms then continue to train and supervise them. New licensees may be assigned a role as a paraplanner or assigned to customer support roles.
It’s extremely rare that a large reputable firm will assign difficult planning cases to junior and entry-level employees.
Every firm operates differently, of course; some firms have an almost multi-level-marketing structure where they will recruit almost anyone. These firms tend to provide little in the way of support and training and rely on the recruits selling quickly to family and friends, just like Beachbody coaching or Young Living.
Typically, new recruits won’t stay in this model long, they will either wash out, leave to start their own firm, or try to seek employment at a more “reputable” financial firm.
A discussion on the inner workings of the industry is beyond the scope of this article, however, as a consumer of advice, you need to take away a few pieces of intelligence:
The perception in the blogosphere is that advisors simply gather up assets and charge 1.5% of the assets doing nothing more than what the client could have done for themselves.
This stereotype of the industry is a bit outdated.
To be fair, there are some advisors like that. However, the industry is evolving.
Today, advisors are moving past this cliché and are taking a more hands-on and holistic approach with their clients. Most advisors want the same results for their clients as bloggers, journalists and podcasters want for their audience - that is, to help clients reduce unnecessary fees and expenses.
Many advisors routinely recommend no-load, and low-cost investments. Many times, they may even recommend money blogger's perennial favorites like Vanguard or Fidelity.
So, contrary to popular belief, advisors are not engaged in an epic conspiracy to shut out the public from low-cost index funds. It is possible some are, but not as a whole.
Most clients with whom I have met other the years are extremely cost conscious. In fact, no matter how amazing of a plan I can present, the first question I always hear is, how much will this cost?
Most clients did not build up a sizable net worth only to be naive to fees - they demand and expect advisors to deliver value.
The world of financial advising is hyper-competitive, and most seasoned professional did not survive the onslaught of discount brokers, robo-advisors, index funds and other advisors by failing to deliver value to their clients.
All that said, there are many planning issues when working with an advisor that might create a legitimate concern...to name a few:
So, maybe I convinced you financial advisors are not so bad after all, and you are willing to give advisors a 2nd chance. Now, you might be thinking you need to navigate the alphabet soup of letters, credentials and licenses advisors may hold.
Time for the controversy….it kind of doesn’t matter.
Note: You should always check to make sure an advisor is appropriately licensed. You can go to ethics.net and do a background search on an advisor.
There is a slew of various credentials and licenses a financial advisor may hold. Most individuals in the industry will accumulate all these super special abbreviations over a career, hence the alphabet soup after their name.
None of these credentials ensures that you will receive good advice or that the holder has relevant experience.
In fact, I would go as far to say that if anyone tries to use a credential to convince someone of a plan, proceed with caution. Real experience is demonstrated; it’s not some fancy piece of paper hanging on the wall.
First, a word of caution: There is some pretty heavy financial terminology here, but stick with me. This is one of the most important elements in choosing the very best financial advisor.
Simply put, a fiduciary must believe they are acting in your best financial interest.
The problem with a \"fiduciary\" is no one agrees what \"your best financial interest\" is. Investment Advisors were fiduciaries before the \"Fiduciary Rule\" and despite the regulation, being a fiduciary doesn’t prevent some of them from giving bad advice or doing the wrong thing.
For years, Investment Advisors have used their status as a fiduciary as a selling point against Registered representatives who historically did not have the same fiduciary standard. Ironically, often the Registered Representatives are the more highly regulated of the two.
Registered Representatives work under a broker-dealer who is tasked with, among other things, making sure their representatives are behaving in a compliant and ethical manner. A Registered Representative must typically make sure all their communication with the public (i.e., social media, marketing, blog posts, etc.) are approved with their compliance department.
Investment advisors will often set up their own firms, and the advisor is their own compliance department.
Many times, they will produce marketing and advertising that otherwise would not get approved by the broker-dealer. In fact, this marketing ‘leeway” is often used as a sales tactic by firms to get Registered Representatives to leave their broker-dealer and become an Investment Advisor only.
Many times, an Investment Advisor will have much less supervision than a registered representative. Some of the biggest Ponzi schemes were pulled off by investment advisors aka “fiduciaries”.
I’m not advocating for one type of professional over another; all I am suggesting is that every group attempts to take the moral high ground, arguing that their way is superior.
The reality is there is not a credential or license that guarantees that a plan is what you want and need, or that it will perform as indicated.
You must do your homework, and don’t let your guard down because your advisor is an “ABC whatever”.
One of the biggest mistakes I see consumers make when selecting financial advice is confusing purchasing a product with designing a plan. The blogosphere loves to talk about how they like this, or they hate that. This product is great, or that product is too expensive.
Remember that cost, price and value are all subjective and situational.
A good financial plan starts with assessing a problem or establishing a goal and finding out how to solve that problem or reach that goal with the available resources. What is difficult for a lot of us to understand is that an imperfect situation may require an imperfect solution.
Not every client that walks through the doors has had the benefit of reading FIRE blogs or books for the last 20 plus years.
Sometimes, even the very best of planning is laid to waste by death, disability, lawsuit or divorce. These situations often require heroic measures such as life insurance, annuities with income riders, or even reverse mortgages.
It's important to focus on the why; why is more important than what.
When meeting with a financial advisor, ask them “why are you recommending this to me”, and “why do you feel it best serves my goals”.
Don't be afraid of unique solutions, they may be just what you were looking for. Asking why will help you understand your advisor’s philosophy, and you can determine if their philosophies correlate with your own.
Another mistake I see consumers routinely make is confusing bad application, bad design, and bad product.
Bad application is when an advisor recommends a product or solution that does not fit in with your overall goals and objectives. For example, if I go to the Ford Dealer looking for a truck and then get talked in into a car, it doesn’t matter how good of a car it is, it's not what I wanted and I'm probably going to be disappointed.
Bad design is when a product is designed efficiently, but increases cost unnecessarily or reduce performance. For example, if I go to the same Ford Dealer looking for a truck with maximum towing capacity, and they give me a truck with the maximum tow package but the smallest engine, the truck might be a great truck, but I’m going to be disappointed when towing uphill.
A bad product is simply when the product is not competitive among its peers. For example, imagine on the way to the truck dealer, a salesman sees me and talks me into some truck brand I never heard of before. The salesman claims it’s just as good as a Ford, and it will save me tons of money, so I agree to buy the truck (since he is licensed). When I get the truck, I realize it does not have the same reliability, quality and capabilities of the truck I really wanted.
An old business saying goes: if you have a happy customer they will tell one person; if you have an unhappy customer, they will tell five. I think that was written before the days of blogs, Yelp and social media. Today, if you have an upset customer, they will tell everyone.
Should someone experience a bad application, they will complain about how awful the product was, despite the fact it may be perfect for someone in the correct situation. Similarly, someone with a bad design may blame the vehicle rather than the person who set it up. Anyone who experiences a bad product may wash their hands of the whole vehicle class.
All of these people will immediately go out and complain on social media, and, before you know it, the very vocal minority will have you convinced XYZ thing is no good. This could lead to you missing out on the advice and planning you need.
Do your homework when researching advice online. Listening to the wrong people could end up costing you more than you realize.
To get the very best financial advice from advisors, you need to do two things:
It does not matter if the Advisor is a CFP, Fiduciary, Registered Representative, Hybrid, Fee-Only, or whatever. They all have one goal: they want you to work with them and not someone else and there is not a credential or compensation method that is any more or less impartial or fundamentally more altruistic.
Advisors do this exceptionally well, and that's to pick apart someone else's work. If you go into a meeting with an advisor and the previous advisor recommended ABC funds, well then, you are about to get a lesson on why ABC funds are the \"great Satan\".
Ask every advisor to design what they believe is the best plan possible, then you can take all the plans and compare the pros and cons of each on your own. If an advisor really has your best interest at heart and knows the best way to help you reach your goals, they should have no issue with putting their best foot forward without knowing what everyone else in town is recommending.
Not everyone will benefit from a financial advisor.
If your plan and goals are straightforward, an advisor may not add much value. However, if you are unsure whether you are on the right path, or maybe you feel you are paying too much in taxes or health insurance, a financial advisor may be just what you need.
Most advisors will offer a professional consultation for no fee or charge so generally, there is no risk to meeting with them and finding out what may be possible.
Just don't rush into anything and make sure you do your homework.
Author Bio: Michael has worked in the financial services industry for nearly 20 years. He lives in rural PA with his wife, two children, and too many animals. Michael shares his experience, unique insights, and profiles inspirational success stories at Your Money Geek.
","tags":[{"name":"In Retirement","slug":"in-retirement"},{"name":"advice","slug":"advice"},{"name":"Financial independence","slug":"financial-independence"},{"name":"Personal finance","slug":"personal-finance"},{"name":"Save Money","slug":"save-money"},{"name":"Retire Sooner","slug":"retire-sooner"},{"name":"Millennial Money","slug":"millennial-money"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"what-rich-means","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/DSC05871.jpg","title":"Before assuming that you aren't rich, understand what \"rich\" means","published_at":"2018-09-18T10:05:19.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"When I was a kid, I naturally assumed that people who drove around in expensive cars are rich and wealthy. They all must lead super glitzy lives of wealth, live in nice homes and generally just lead whatever I thought was the \"perfect life\" at the time.
Though many of those people are rich, I learned over the years that a high income and a relentless acquisition of expensive things don't, in reality, make anyone rich. They might have a high income, but so many people who spend beyond their means couldn't go three months without their high-paying jobs and still keep the majority of what they have.
Yeah, that's not rich.
Pseudo affluence is a powerful effect, and it lulls many of us into a position where we believe we're rich because we earn lots of money, but live a lifestyle on the edge where our debts are high and we're a job-loss away from having to sell that Mercedes to pay rent.
I think of this as being \"object poor\".
Object poor: A state of excess where the stuff (objects) in our lives represent a debt great enough to keep us working jobs for the expressed purpose of funding those objects.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/rich.jpg\")
I read an Apathy Ends article the other day about what it means to be rich, and it was too good not to share. The term \"rich\" doesn't only refer to the amount of money you have. Or stuff that clutters up your space.
Why aren't you rich? \"It’s not because you haven’t won the lottery, caught your “Big Break” or found a sugar daddy/momma to boost you into wealth,\" Apathy wrote. \"Those are the stories you see in the news, but they are not how the vast majority of people get rich.\"
Apathy argued that you're not rich because your definition of rich is just wrong. It's okay to spend money on things that make you happy. It's also okay to earn a bunch of money in your career.
All that stuff is good, but that alone does not make people rich.
It might be because you aren't patient. While some of us do get rich fairly quickly, that isn't the norm. Expecting a get rich quick scheme to magically get us super-wealthy is a one-way street to a life of frustration.
Why? Think about it. If it was possible to buy a course or take a seminar to get rich quick, why wouldn't everybody be doing it? If it were that easy, we'd all be super wealthy people and wiping our ass with $100s.
Life doesn't work that way.
Keep in mind that I'm not naturally a patient person. When I decide that I want something, I want it now. I want it yesterday. I don't like waiting, so this has been especially tough for me to overcome.
In fact, being patient was the toughest part in our drive toward financial independence and early retirement. I just couldn't wait to retire.
I've learned over the years that the accumulation of money, knowledge and experience is deep-seeded in time. Time allows everything that makes us great to grow and improve. To get better and more efficient over time.
That's right, it compounds.
Or, maybe you're just not investing enough. I've argued before that saving money won't get anyone rich. Investing your money in appreciating assets, however, will. Over time. That said, not every investment will work. In fact, we might lose money on some investments. It happens.
But, those of us with serious wealth did not get wealthy by stashing all those greenbacks in a bank account. Our bank accounts make the bank way richer than they make us. Banks are storage systems for our money, not wealthy-building entities...except if you own the bank, of course. :)
Investments are what build wealth - over time.
This graph helps us to visualize how powerful investments can be.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/stockmarket10years.jpg\")
Lastly, getting rich is about action, not just talk. It is easy to take a look at someone's success and assume they just got lucky. Or fell into wealth. Or believe that unless you have the exact same access to everything they have, you probably won't ever get rich.
That mindset is a fool's game, and if you believe that, then you're right: you won't ever get rich. Count on it.
People often look at my wife and me and believe that we're one of the lucky ones. We have no kids (a conscious choice), made good money by pursuing IT degrees (another choice) and grew up in loving and supportive families (okay, that was dumb luck).
But, they ignore the choices we made over our careers to maximize our investments. To max out our retirement accounts by the end of our working careers. To show up at the office every day. To care about our work even when it was super, super hard to do.
And, to sell both of our homes and buy a 200-square foot Airstream in which to live. To only spend $50/month on restaurants. To cancel cable/satellite television service. To put every damn purchase we made through the ringer to make doubly sure that every dollar that we spend is going toward something that we need. Genuinely need.
If \"luck\" takes that much work and discipline, then luck's way overrated.
There is a fine balance between a carefree lifestyle of unimportance and caring way the heck too little and losing sight of reality. Both of those extremes do us no favors in wealth accumulation.
I am not a fan of giving too many shits, but I'm also not a fan of overthinking this whole financial independence and early retirement thing. People confuse the time it takes to become financially independent with a sense of complication it takes to get there. Building wealth isn't complicated.
To me, being rich is a mindset.
It's not some arbitrary dollar figure. Or a level of prestige. Or the car we drive, house we live in or position we hold.
Being rich also isn't about comparing yourself to others or sizing up your nest egg with your friends, family or coworkers. You aren't necessarily less wealthy than your neighbor because you drive a Civic and they drive a BMW X5.
In fact, it could mean you're in a better financial position, not worse.
Read a typical article about what it means to be rich, and you'll read a bunch of paragraphs about money. About earned-income, net worths, jobs and amassing fortunes.
That's only true if you equate being \"rich\" with money.
If you are one of those people, stop it. Stop assuming that money is what makes people rich. Money is a superficial representation of wealth, and there are so many more meaningful ways to think about riches.
If you don't consider yourself to be a happy person, I bet your insistence that wealth and success is tied to money is a big part of the problem.
Once we rid ourselves of the assumption that being \"rich\" means that we have a ton of cash, there are so many way-more-meaningful ways to think about being rich, including:
I consider having a bunch of good friends to be a sign of not just \"being rich\", but possessing extreme riches. Money doesn't come close to offering the same type of value that friends can offer. I learned this one the hard way.
Not everyone has a good relationship with their family, but those who do are rich people indeed. Especially around the holidays!
I believe that having hobbies is the spice of life. The more hobbies we have, the more productive that we tend to feel especially after the drain of full-time work is off of our shoulders.
Most of us need community. We just do. We're social creatures by nature, and communities help to nurture what comes so damn naturally to the great majority of us. Though you wouldn't necessarily know it by watching the news, positive and healthy communities are all over the place because we make them what they are. The \"richer\" that we are with community, the richer the community becomes.
Apparently, smiling more can help us to live longer. Whether or not that's actually true, smiling definitely helps our stress level. Smiles also help send positive vibes into the airwaves around us. They fill those around us with a sense that everything's okay.
What say you? Are you rich? If so, how do you define \"being rich\"?
","tags":[{"name":"In Retirement","slug":"in-retirement"},{"name":"Financial independence","slug":"financial-independence"},{"name":"money","slug":"money"},{"name":"Save Money","slug":"save-money"},{"name":"Retire Sooner","slug":"retire-sooner"},{"name":"Psychology of Spending","slug":"psychology-of-spending"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"counterpoint-information-technology-jobs-can-fulfilling","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/apple-2788662_1920.jpg","title":"Counterpoint: Information technology jobs can be fulfilling","published_at":"2018-02-28T12:05:21.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"PK","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8996cf15108de330807f18f0ac19b8a9"},"html":"Last week, I read Steve's post “Why are careers in information technology unfulfilling?” as I too have spent my entire working career in this field. Fact is, I’m still there. I understand the viewpoint presented, yet I also felt there is - or could be, a different perspective. Rather than dumping this entire post into a comment, we decided a separate guest post was better.
Let’s jump in.
The three main arguments in the original article were:
I would guess that most people who think about software engineers assume they sit in a cubicle with headphones on. A lot do. I did (at least when I could get away with it). Many software engineers are introverts and unskilled in the fine art of socializing. Still, I have met a number of IT people who are very extroverted and they are, by nature, very much people oriented.
In my career - and I don’t believe my career was all that unique - I wrote software that directly led to the employment of 1000s of people. The same software enabled dozens of businesses to thrive and be profitable (some of which were publically traded so by extension stockholders benefited as well). I was, and am, proud of my contribution to that software product.
Throughout my career, I have found that writing software was a form of helping people solve a problem. When I could, I would sit with end users and watch them use my software. When I observed something that seemed awkward I would ask the end user about their process to gain insight. After receiving their feedback, I would make software changes to help solve the issue. Hearing a ‘thank you’ and the occasional grateful response was fulfilling and rewarding.
[Note from Steve: This kind of autonomy in your job is a huge boost to job satisfaction. I've worked on projects like this before and fully attest to the difference this can make]
To Steve's point, IT work often involves hardware and I can’t agree more that working with hardware is impersonal. My mantra when I was in these situations was always “I hate hardware.” There is absolutely no reasoning with hardware, there is no warm connection with hardware. Unfortunately, software doesn’t work without hardware.
In my career, I have been the guy on call 24x7 for operational issues and when “the system is down”, businesses not only lose money, they lose customer trust and brand. Steve used VISA as an example. If VISA’s systems were down, do you think people may switch to American Express or MasterCard? As a consumer, I may or may not change. As a business owner that relies on accepting payments, if I couldn’t receive payments, I would certainly look to make a change.
At the same time, information technology is not the only job that places workers under stress and pressure. Examples abound.
My uncle was a research neurosurgeon. He typically didn’t see patients until other neurosurgeons determined that the patients’ condition was likely terminal. He was, for all practical purposes, the last resort. I cannot begin to imagine how he dealt with the prospect that very few of his patients would live and that he would need to discuss depressing prognosis with family members. I couldn’t do this type of job. I would buckle under the stress in these dreadful life circumstances, but my uncle had a passion for research and for neuroscience. It was that passion, I believe, that kept him going.
Steve contrasted an accounting job as possibly being less stressful. I think, after reading a number of posts by The Wealthy Accountant, I would not characterize accounting as not having stress, especially during tax season. Every CFO that I have known during my career talked about the hours and stress of producing financial statements, especially for the companies that were public.
My own career had its share of stress and pressure. At times I had operational responsibilities. On one occasion, the fiber optic cables connecting our data center were broken when a railroad bridge, where the cables ran, was moved laterally 10-feet by a flood. I got the dreaded call from the VP about how much money the company was losing and asking why I couldn’t get service restored “NOW!”
After I pointed him to the Weather Channel story about the flooding (yes, the storm made national news), I got a little reprieve. I still needed to resolve the problem but I at least had my VP helping and not harping. This incident became a learning experience for me. I learned. I grew.
There is a difference between occasional stress and unreasonable stress. When a given job is nothing but stress, there is something wrong. Maybe the process is flawed. Perhaps the wrong resources are being used. If your job is nothing but a source of stress, it probably is time to consider your options. This applies to any job, not just Information Technology.
After personally seeing salaries at a .com company, I couldn’t agree more. Steve mentions Amazon as an example. Browse Glassdoor for salary information and you will see that Amazon, and many name-brand internet companies, do pay generous salaries. I can also attest to the difficulty that exists in walking away. While Steve up and quit his job (for good), I’ve walked away from more than one position and each time had the difficult decision to leave money on the table.
One point that Steve did not mention is stock. A lot of Internet-based and startup companies use stock and stock options to attract workers. This is where, in my opinion, tech companies really handcuff you.
For the right candidate with the right skills, you can receive a $75,000 - $100,000 stock grant when you are hired. The company often sweetens the deal by providing an additional $10,000-$20,000 grant every year. Of course, every grant typically vests over a 5-year period. Thus, how can you ever leave? There is always a carrot that is hanging out there in the 3-5 year timeframe that keeps us working jobs not just for the dependable salary, but for the extra stock perks.
With this stated, doesn’t salary bind us all, at least until FI? Are we not all working so we can achieve the goal of FI? In reading several FIRE blogs, I have run across individuals who are more willing than I am to make sacrifices so they can achieve FIRE sooner than later. Some may choose to accept the unfulfilling aspects of work so they can accumulate their FI target sooner and can then step away from the unfulfilling work. I choose a balance where my salary may not be as high but I am able to find my level of fulfillment.
When Steve wrote “Our expectations change over the years and we soon begin to depend on that money to fund our lifestyles that become more and more expensive as we earn more and more money”, I couldn’t agree more. The challenge we have and the discipline we need is to not become a slave to our jobs simply because of the salary. We need to remain focused and live within our means while staying focused on our FI goals.
Keeping our eye on the end goal should mitigate the effect of the golden handcuffs.
I believe information technology jobs are not very different from any other job. Most (all?) jobs can be unfulfilling at times. A job is work. When my kids entered college, I told them to find their passion. If they can find work in the area where their passion lies, they will enjoy a fulfilling career. If they simply found a job to pay the bills, they would have toil.
Find where you fit. As a software engineer, I found fulfillment by the expressiveness of creativity in solving a problem. As a manager, I found fulfillment by mentoring and helping my staff grow (sort of like a parent with their child).
Find your passion. If you are struggling with your work, make a change. Your time is too precious to waste being unhappy and unfulfilled. I’m not saying that everyone will be entirely satisfied with their work but there is no need to be overly stressed and miserable either.
Good luck.
","tags":[{"name":"Guest Posts","slug":"guest-posts"},{"name":"Careers","slug":"careers"},{"name":"information technology","slug":"information-technology"},{"name":"work","slug":"work"},{"name":"Live Differently","slug":"live-differently"},{"name":"Change Your Life","slug":"change-your-life"},{"name":"How Life-Changing Things Happen","slug":"how-life-changing-things-happen"},{"name":"Save Money","slug":"save-money"},{"name":"Featured Finfluencers","slug":"featured-finfluencers"},{"name":"Leave Corporate America","slug":"leave-corporate-america"},{"name":"Millennial Money","slug":"millennial-money"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"kill-it-pay-yourself-first","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/jonatan-pie-383173-unsplash.jpg","title":"Kill It: Pay yourself first","published_at":"2018-02-26T11:00:13.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"Let's face facts: Budgets kinda suck. They aren't fun. They take time and effort to create and maintain. And, they typically cause so many of us to manage our finances completely backward. Maybe it's time to ditch the budget. Maybe it's time to pay yourself first.
Wait, what? Ditch our budget? Yes. Hear me out.
Traditionally, budgeters take their money and pay other people or entities first. That could mean the government through income taxation, social security taxes, property taxes, etc - or loan repayments, or monthly service fees, or anything else. Those things tend to come first. Then, whatever we have afterward becomes ours to do with as we please. To spend. To save.
This means our retirement comes in second (or third, or fourth) behind other people or entities - including our own spending.
When you pay yourself first, on the other hand, you flip the equation on its head. Paying ourselves first means we fully fund our retirement accounts before paying anyone anything...yes, even the government. And best of all, there is nothing illegal about it. It's called a 401k (or a 403(b), or SEP IRA) plan.
These accounts let us take our own income and immediately contribute pre-tax money into a retirement account that will grow along with the stock market before the government gets its hands on our money. Amazing, isn't it? And better yet, many corporations will match a certain percentage of your contributions. That's free money!
And, that's what \"pay yourself first\" means. You're funding your future before forking out your hard-earned money to anyone. In essence, you are pre-paying your retirement expenses now. And, you aren't paying a single penny in taxes until you withdraw that money later in life. Even better: pre-tax accounts reduce your taxable income as well, which cuts the amount of money you're required to pay to the government.
Such a deal!
It's not just about your 401k, either. Roth IRAs are a pretty sweet deal as well, which requires that we pay taxes now but allows us to withdraw tax-free in the future when we actually need the money. We fund Roth IRAs with post-tax money. But, they are still a good deal. No tax later!
Opinions on this question are varied, but I like to set the minimum threshold at around 15% of your income. That doesn't necessarily mean that you should go into work tomorrow and immediately increase your 401k contribution to 15%. It's okay to do this gradually. If you aren't saving anything, start with just one or two percent, then increase it over time.
Save as much as you can. Before my wife and I quit our full-time jobs, we saved a whopping 70% of our combined income. We did this by maxing out our 401k and Roth IRA accounts. We also opened a Vanguard Brokerage account and funneled money into it. Lastly, we opened an Ally savings account to build up a sizable liquid asset collection of money. In other words, money that we can get at quickly and easily. We have three years of living expenses saved in an easily-accessed savings account.
But, this took time. Saving money in general always takes time. Once you begin paying yourself first, your lifestyle will adjust accordingly. Soon, you won't need that additional money to feel happy or satisfied.
Do these four things to begin your savings adventure:
If your employer offers a 401k retirement account, use it! If they match a percentage of your contributions, contribute at least this much. This is 100% free money. No gimmicks. No exceptions. Matched contributions amount to extra money for your retirement. If you already have a 401k, consider increasing your savings percentage. Remember, this reduces your taxable income, too, which keeps more of your money in your hands.
Open a Roth IRA account if you don't already have one. Roth accounts are built using post-tax money - your \"after tax\" take home cash. You won't pay taxes on this money later in life when you withdraw those funds.
Consider a savings account for easily-accessed cash. Look for high-interest accounts to make a little money on whatever you have saved there. Ally's online savings accounts typically offer interest rates around 1%.
Make it automatic. Setup auto deductions from your paycheck or checking account to fund these accounts. Don't rely on you to make those transfers every month. It's way too easy to forget or lose interest. Automation is key.
When we talk about saving money, it's easy to pinpoint retirement accounts as the primary destination for that money. In reality, your retirement accounts are the only thing to focus on when you pay yourself first.
Let's talk a second about emergency funds.
What happens if you get into a car accident and need a few thousand dollars for repairs? Or a medical emergency sends you to the ER and, naturally, a nice big bill in your mailbox days later? Or a family member has an emergency and needs some money, quick? Or, you suddenly lose your job and you're forced to live for months without any income. What happens?
Well, you sure as hell can't withdraw any money from your retirement accounts (without penalty). In fact, you don't want to withdraw money from your retirement accounts anyway. You want that money to stay put.
You may not have several thousand dollars sitting around in your non-interest bearing checking account, either. And you'd hate to put emergency spending on your credit card, right? Because...credit card debt!
This is where your emergency fund comes in. Emergency funds are typically stored in a savings account separate from your checking. This is money that should never be spent unless an emergency requires it. It's money that you've set aside for when you need it most. You can always depend on it being there. It's lying in wait, for a situation you hope never comes.
Great, but how much money should we keep in our emergency fund? It seems everyone has an opinion on this point, and I am no exception. I recommend at least three months of living expenses - minimum. This will easily support you through sudden job losses for a little while, and will probably provide enough resources for any other emergency that might befall you. Yup, three whole months.
Fund your emergency savings first (especially if you don't yet have any!). Then, focus on your retirement savings. My wife and I use an interest-bearing Ally savings account to hold our emergency stash. Each month, we'll get small interest payments that help pad that stash a bit, which is cool.
Lastly - the benefit to using a savings account rather than your checking account is separation. You'll be less likely to spend your emergency savings if it's not easily accessible from your everyday spending account. But if you do need access to it, it's still relatively easy.
It's a win-win with emergency money.
In the personal finance community, we get to read a lot of people's stories about why they chose a path to early retirement (or at least financial independence). Commonly, the impetus stems from working unfulfilling jobs, and many times, those jobs just so happen to be in IT.
I'm a primary example. I worked in information technology my entire professional life. From the moment I graduated college, my life revolved around the computer, as if the computer had this invisible gravitational pull that kept me locked in. I spun and spun, and it eventually felt like a soul-sucking monotonous drain on my life. I wanted out, and badly.
Through my career, I've met a LOT of people who are unsatisfied with their careers in information technology. Most continue to work in IT simply because they need the money (often exacerbated by lifestyle inflation), but that genuine feeling of happiness that we all like to feel just isn't there for so many of us who work jobs in technology.
But, why? What makes so many of our careers in information technology so unfulfilling? Why is it so common?
As a happily retired information technology dude, I've had time to think about this phenomenon. I believe it can all be distilled down to a few basic problems.
The large majority of us humans feed on the enthusiasm and interaction with people. Even the most introverted among us need people in our lives to feel like we're connected. People enable very organic relationships that most of us intuitively understand. With people, we aren't dealing with the 1s and 0s of computer languages where every damn decision is computationally determined based on a series of predetermined variables that aren't governed by emotion or external factors. Computers aren't organic.
Careers in information technology are about systems, not people. We work with inanimate objects. Machines. We don't get to converse with them and establish relationships like we do with people. It's just code, or hardware, or networks, or machinery. So impersonal.
We don't get to \"change a computer's life\" like we could with another human being. Connections like those simply do not exist in technology very often, and that absence of an organic relationship can, over time, begin to drain our sense of purpose. All we do is work with machines. Dumb terminals. And at the most basic level, they are all pretty much exactly the same. Over time, this becomes relentlessly tedius.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/giphy-7.gif\")
Technology is everywhere. We depend on it in virtually every facet of our lives, and when it works, it's great. Everything seems to be tied into \"the system\". All things are connected. Cities can monitor every stop light through a series of cameras accessed from a central location. Internet providers can pinpoint sources of congestion and bottlenecks through sophisticated network monitoring apps. Schools uses technology to connect students to the world outside. Businesses rely on technology for their livelihoods.
When everything works, life is good. But, almost nothing always works in information technology. Tech systems are connected in weird and complicated ways. Variables change. Insanely tight deadlines encourage engineers to cut corners. And, people interact with systems in ways that we didn't (or couldn't) anticipate. In some cases, hackers and other nefarious entities intentionally screw with the systems that we've put together. In other words, things go wrong...all the time.
Here's the larger problem: When our entire world runs on the collective hum of technology, problems are instantly magnified. Businesses lose money every second that the network is down (imagine if Visa couldn't process credit card transactions for 10 minutes - they'd lose millions). What if stop lights in your city suddenly went dark? Or the power grid collapses?
Technology problems have profound consequences, and those who work in information technology feel that pressure. Pressure leads to stress, and that stress builds over time. It becomes a nearly constant strain on our lives. And, those of us who work tech support-type jobs feel it the most. Managers want to look good by keeping their systems operational and often put pressure on their staff to do whatever it takes to keep everything humming along.
We might be able to keep up with this pressure for a few years. Eventually, the pressure of technology begins to break us down. We fix one problem only so we can move on to another. Problem after problem, we keep churning through \"the system\", fixing this, enhancing that, developing a new cool feature that we hope never breaks. And around and around we go.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/giphy-6.gif\")
If information technology is so unfulfilling, why do so many people work those jobs? We work them primarily for the money. Tech jobs pay well. In fact, they have to pay well or most of us simply wouldn't do them.
We use those higher salaries to help ignore the stress of the job. We buy things to make us feel better and relax. Our expectations change over the years and we soon begin to depend on that money to fund our lifestyles that become more and more expensive as we earn more and more money.
The golden handcuffs keep us working stressful IT jobs because the alternatives seem dire. If we bring in $150,000 a year working a highly stressful tech job at Amazon, there aren't many who would entertain a $75,000 accounting job at a local firm, even if that job is far less stressful.
We want the money, and our careers in technology keep us wanting that money. It happened to me. It happens to a lot of us.
The longer we work unfulfilling jobs, the more frustrated we become. Until, one day, something finally breaks and we just can't take it any longer. We decide on another path. Maybe a different career. Or, at least in my case, that path was early retirement from full-time work.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/giphy-8.gif\")
It comes down to three primary factors: Technology jobs are about machines, not people. Those jobs are typically highly stressful and pressure-packed because our entire society relies on those systems working harmoniously together. And lastly, money keeps so many of us working jobs that we don't enjoy. Pulling the plug on lucrative careers can be tough.
Too tough for many of us.
Sometimes, society can dismiss a lot of early retirement talk by chalking it up to highly paid tech workers. \"So, Steve made a ton of money in technology and then retired early? Yeah, just like every other early retiree. Go figure!\"
The reality is it's a lot harder to escape highly paid jobs than people realize. After all, this is what we've all worked so hard to achieve. We all want a high paying job, right? Once we have them, it's tough to give them up!
All that work we put into getting our college degrees (and racking up student loans), reading books, working incredibly long hours, putting up with insanely complicated layers of management that expect miracles...all that finally comes together into a highly-paid job that probably comes attached with \"success\".
To give all that up - even with a lot of money in the bank, isn't easy. Though high incomes can make it easier to retire early, they also make it tougher for many of us to stomach the stark difference in cash flow. To go from $150 Gs a year to zero (minus capital gains, of course)?
Don't take that for granted. Believe it or not, it's much easier said than done.
","tags":[{"name":"Careers","slug":"careers"},{"name":"information technology","slug":"information-technology"},{"name":"work","slug":"work"},{"name":"Change Your Life","slug":"change-your-life"},{"name":"Working in Corporate America","slug":"working-in-corporate-america"},{"name":"Save Money","slug":"save-money"},{"name":"Leave Corporate America","slug":"leave-corporate-america"},{"name":"Millennial Money","slug":"millennial-money"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"million-dollar-early-retirees-ruining-personal-finance","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/mountain-3070995_1920.jpg","title":"Are million dollar early retirees ruining personal finance?","published_at":"2018-02-14T12:05:09.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"I stumbled across a blog recently (and I'm hating myself for not remembering what one!) and read an explanation of why the personal finance community just doesn't feel right. It's not them. It doesn't represent them. They don't feel as if they belong.
The reason? In large part, the relatively high net worths of those who have achieved financial independence.
We track these numbers over on the Rockstar Net Worth Tracker.
The argument was clear and direct: The top [nearly] 80 bloggers on the tracker possess over a million dollars. More than 20 are over two million and a select few have surpassed $5 million in net worth.
Phew, that's a lot of money!
And good for them. But for those of us who'll never see that kind of money in our lifetime, how are we supposed to feel welcome in a community where so many are practically rolling in the dough while others are struggling just to make ends meet? Do rich personal finance bloggers represent us?
Perhaps a better question: Can they represent us?
I sympathize with the sentiment. It can be tough to feel connected with those who have (and earn) a great deal more money than us. I remember a comment last year expressing disappointment that my wife and I made such high combined salaries. They thought that they were reading words written by someone with an income more similar to theirs. Umm...sorry?
Here's the thing: The Net Worth Tracker is just for fun. We don't verify those numbers at all. Bloggers all have different ways to track their net worth. Some include the value of their homes, others don't. A few might even include the collective Blue Book value of their cars. Others may not. And, yes, there may be some who artificially inflate their numbers so they appear to be more rich than they actually are.
In other words, don't take these net worth numbers seriously. Certainly don't take a net worth number as some validation of money expertise. That's not what this is all about. If numbers make you uncomfortable, it is okay to ignore them. We maintain the Tracker for fun. There's no standard.
Second, don't blindly accept the term \"retired\" to mean an end to productive life or income. Retired bloggers still very often make money. Sometimes, a lot of money. Their blogs might generate income. They may have rental properties that bring in thousands a month. Side hustles. Pensions.
Don't get bogged down in the details of each and every blogger. Trust me, you'll go insane. Bloggers can (and will) say whatever they want on their blogs to present an image they want others to have of them (ie: \"expert\", \"author\", \"coach\", etc). These endeavors often bring in money. Are they truly retired? How much of it is actually true?
How can we possibly relate to \"retired\" bloggers with cash flow? Ahhhhh!!!
Remain calm.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/giphy-downsized-large-1.gif\")
I believe we can learn from those around us even if their lives aren't carbon copies of the ones that we lead. In fact, I've always sought out those with higher incomes and larger net worth numbers. I want to learn from those who've already achieved what I hope to achieve.
But...
The truth is the personal finance blogging community cannot represent all of us. It's just not possible. Each and every one of us comes at this topic from our own very unique perspectives. While some have struggled every moment of their lives, others were born into richer families with a much easier path through life. Some of us have computer science backgrounds and bring in huge incomes while others work retail and service jobs.
Here's the thing, though:
Different perspectives from bloggers make this a much more well-rounded community. There will be something for everyone regardless of your personal situation. From those who are climbing out of hundreds of thousands of debt to those who wipe their ass in hundreds, it's this variety that makes the personal finance community what it is.
It's okay if you can't relate to every blogger. It's cool. Nothing wrong with that. I can't relate to those who bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars through their blogs, but I sure as hell can learn from their successes. I don't care what their net worth or income is. All I care about is soaking up as much of their experience as I can. I look at these moments as if they're a course in school - only this time, a useful one. One that I can directly take knowledge out of and apply to my normal life.
That won't mean you'll learn from every blogger, though. That's okay too.
The personal finance community has been one of the most welcoming groups of people that I've seen. Ever. When you post about one of your successes, people actually cheer. Most of us give a shit about the people in this community. We blog, but we also work together toward our collective goals and ambitions. Meetups happen all over the country. We even have a conference once a year called FinCon where bloggers get together and learn from one another (and mingle with sponsoring vendors, of course!).
Here, check out this Tweet that I sent out one evening:
\nWe are officially $13,000 away from being millionaires. And I'm like, \"Cool, I guess!\"
\n— ThinkSaveRetire.com (@ThinkSaveRetire) January 16, 2018
In less than 24 hours, I had more than 130 \"likes\". These came from folks richer than me as well as those who are climbing up the ladder. This encouragement doesn't happen everywhere, but it does in personal finance.
Or, how about this one from Cait Flanders who recently published a book.
\nIt's here, it's here! The Year of Less is finally here! ??https://t.co/BgNHGFfaD2 pic.twitter.com/rylzQWe4fp
\n— Cait Flanders (@caitflanders) January 16, 2018
Over 80 \"likes\" in just three hours. Guys, this community is ultra supportive!
Breathtaking isn't a strong enough word to describe Zion National Park in Utah. It's amazing. Super unique. But, very, very crowded, especially during the summer, any holidays and spring break (and fall break?). I snapped this shot when we were visiting my folks, who live in Utah, this spring.
Oh, and by the way - happy weekend! How many of you are taking the week between Christmas and New Years off from work?
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20170418-DSC01715-1024x576.jpg\")
Check out yesterday's photo.
","tags":[{"name":"Financial independence","slug":"financial-independence"},{"name":"Photography","slug":"photography"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"christmas-week-photos-valley-fire","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20170408-DSC01257.jpg","title":"Christmas Week in Photos: Valley of Fire","published_at":"2017-12-28T12:05:11.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"Here is one of my favorite shots of my lovely bride sitting on a deserted road in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. Valley of Fire is an amazing place to visit, easily more unique than most of the parks we've seen.
![\"Courtney](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20170408-DSC01257-1024x576.jpg\")
Check out yesterday's photo.
","tags":[{"name":"Financial independence","slug":"financial-independence"},{"name":"Photography","slug":"photography"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"christmas-week-photos-snow-covered-yellowstone","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/21641162_10154851265368456_4805766156419239518_o.jpg","title":"Christmas Week in Photos: Snow covered Yellowstone","published_at":"2017-12-27T12:05:25.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"After wintery weather in early September, Yellowstone's distant mountains glow with snow on a cold fall day. Geese were making all kinds of racket in the lake that you see in the foreground, too. They just wouldn't shut up.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/21641162_10154851265368456_4805766156419239518_o-1024x683.jpg\")
Check out yesterday's photo.
","tags":[{"name":"Financial independence","slug":"financial-independence"},{"name":"Photography","slug":"photography"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"christmas-week-photos-lake-shastina","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20170602-DSC00802.jpg","title":"Christmas Week in Photos: Lake Shastina","published_at":"2017-12-26T12:05:12.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"Hey all! Welcome to Christmas week. This week, instead of talking about personal finance, I'm giving you people one of my very favorite photos each day from our travels this year.
Here is beautiful Lake Shastina in Weed, CA, under the setting sun. We parked just steps from the water, but sadly, we didn't yet have our inflatable Kayak. Penny, our rescued Boxer, liked dipping her paws into the water, but she's definitely not a natural swimmer! :)
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20170602-DSC00802-1024x683.jpg\")
Check out yesterday's photo.
","tags":[{"name":"Financial independence","slug":"financial-independence"},{"name":"Photography","slug":"photography"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"christmas-week-photos-grand-canyon-yellowstone","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20170913-DSC02974.jpg","title":"Christmas Week in Photos: The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone","published_at":"2017-12-25T12:05:46.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"Here is the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, a stunning geologic feat that's absolutely breathtaking to visit and even better to photograph.
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20170913-DSC02974-683x1024.jpg\")
From the National Parks Service website:
","tags":[{"name":"Financial independence","slug":"financial-independence"},{"name":"Photography","slug":"photography"},{"name":"Generating Income","slug":"generating-income"},{"name":"Build Wealth","slug":"build-wealth"}]}},{"node":{"slug":"side-hustle-idea","feature_image":"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/girl-2940655_1920.jpg","title":"My side hustle idea; whatcha think?","published_at":"2017-11-21T11:00:28.000+00:00","primary_author":{"name":"Steve Adcock","profile_image":"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ae0b2f8d459bad06e6d287fa4a74b1ea"},"html":"The Yellowstone River is the force that created the canyon and the falls. It begins on the slopes of Yount Peak, south of the park, and travels more than 600 miles to its terminus in North Dakota where it empties into the Missouri River. It is the longest undammed river in the continental United States.
And, you're probably making the rounds throughout the blogosphere with those folks who've actually posted something today - like this article, which is quickly turning into something relatively meaningless...
I've published this post to say something important.
Thanks. Thanks for your readership this year. It's been an amazing ride as we've traveled the country and watched this blog turn into, well, something. You people are awesome. Keep saving. Keep investing. Keep smiling.
Now, on to other things...
How many of you are on Pinterest?
I am, but I've largely neglected our Pinterest profile until just a few days ago. I need to get back into it and truly figure it out. My wife was the main resource behind Pinterest for the longest time. For months, though, it sat untouched. Now, I'm trying to spark some activity.
Check out our analytics graph, especially the huge spike on the right:
![](\"https://thinksaveretire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Screen-Shot-2017-11-19-at-9.08.47-AM.png\")
Amazing what happens when you finally start paying attention to it again. The thing is, Pinterest is a unique medium. It's not like Twitter or Facebook. Those two social media outfits are pretty easy to master. You post. You tag. Boom, boom - done. But, Pinterest is different. Things matter more over there.
Your graphics need to be well-done. Nice, bright imagery. Short and sweet text. The algorithm that Pinterest uses doesn't care too much about the date and displaying things in a chronological order. It cares about quality, and that's the tough part about becoming successful on Pinterest. You actually gotta do stuff...the right stuff, over time, consistently and dependably.
It's a challenge, and I'm going to try my very best to accept it.
Also, I have this side hustle idea and I'd love your feedback.
I'm thinking of developing a blog notification service. Kinda like a Feedly, but much more configurable. This service wouldn't be a reader, though.
The concept behind this idea is simple: The service handles all of your blog notifications/subscriptions for you. Meaning, you aren't forking over your email address to each and every blog that you'd like to follow. Instead, you're linking a blog to your account here, and this service sends you notifications each time a new post is published instead of the blog itself.
You'd manage all of your blog subscriptions from one place. You can create groups of blogs and manage them together. Mass unsubscribe. That stuff.
But, you can also customize your notifications. For example, if you only want notifications from your list of sports blogs when they talk about, say, the Baltimore Orioles, then you'd specify that the keyword \"Baltimore Orioles\" must appear in the title of the post. The service only sends you updates that meet that criteria. Or, if you only want to be updated if a blog publishes a post within a certain category, then you can set that up too.
Basically, the idea is custom notifications managed through a single, consolidated service. The service connects with each blog through their RSS feed and only sends updates that meet the criteria you set up. Your email is never provided to the blogs themselves. It stays here.
A premium component might be the ability to roll up your notifications into a single email sent at the end of each day. That single email would contain all of your post notifications rather than individual emails sent throughout the day as the updates happen. Of course, you'd also be able to view your notifications through your dashboard on the website.
Does this make sense? Would you use a service like this? Also - would you pay to use a service like this?
Lastly, I'm taking the rest of the week off from blogging. No posts. Nada. I'll be enjoying some time with family as I hope you people will, too. A long weekend to forget about personal finance. Investments. The hell with all that stuff for a few days. Relax. Eat some turkey and pie. Enjoy yourself.
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