Where to begin…
If you’re twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or even sixty-something, there are good odds that you are a debt-serf, and it sucks. Trust me, I know. I’ve been there.
In case you’re not sure what constitutes a debt-serf, allow me to clarify: A debt-serf is not merely someone who is in debt. A debt-serf is someone who must work for someone else or themselves to sustain their lifestyle.
Even if you have a house and a car but don’t have the big mortgage or car payment, you still have property taxes and insurance and utilities and fuel and car repairs and food costs and you need a little something for entertainment (right?) and did I mention fuel? The point being, you need your job anyway, and debt-serfs don’t ever feel free to walk away from that job without getting all knotted up in their stomach at the thought.
Of course, that’s just about everyone you know. You may know somebody who worked in public service for 30+ years and now draws a pretty good pension, or maybe a rich aunt or uncle you only see on the holidays, assuming they’re not traveling somewhere fabulous (again) but they’re older and somehow they have more money. Except you’re not totally sure why.
But how would your life change if you had an income that had nothing to do with your job? An income that could pay for all those expenses that never seem to go away and still have extra to drop into a growing savings account each month?
That’s financial independence.
It’s where I’ve managed to get, and I’d like to share with you all of the secrets I’ve learned along the way to get you there too.
Full disclosure: I didn’t get there in my twenties or thirties. It wasn’t until I was in my late forties that I achieved the kind of financial independence I just described. But then, I started from square one. I am a product of wins and losses, insights and mistakes, money earned, money spent, and money saved until I managed to codify a set of self-taught principles to achieve financial independence.
I did not read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, attend Financial Peace University, attend a Tony Robbins seminar, or even get some good pointers from my dad or grandmother. I am entirely self-taught. Would, if I could, go back, and, instead of teaching myself, pick up a few good books on the subject to get there with less trial and error? Without a doubt. It might might have shaved a decade or more off of my debt-serfdom.
But then I wouldn’t understand the principles that I now work and live by quite so well as I do. I hope to bring to this blog a different voice for finding your financial independence. A voice that isn’t gimmicky or oversimplifies things or gives you one solution when the financial world is spinning from one trend to another faster than ever before so that by the time you and a million other people have read that bestselling book, the opportunity is long gone.
This will be a blog about finance and investing principles guided by natural law. Principles you can apply to the whole wide world of finance to find the opportunities that match your time and place.
I distinctly remember graduating from college thinking I’d been born ten years too late. The housing market in California had just made a torrid run. Homes that used to be fifty grand were now one hundred and fifty grand. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had just rocketed from roughly 800 to 2,700 - a 330% gain - in the decade prior. As a student with limited funds, too busy with school to make any real money, all I could do was watch it happen and lament not being able to take advantage of all those gains.
When I finally did graduate with a degree in engineering and got that first job, I figured there was no way I’d be so lucky to have those opportunities in my lifetime, so I put my head down and started thinking like a debt-serf. Get a job, buy a too-expensive home to get my foothold in owning something, and live paycheck to paycheck for the foreseeable future. Sound familiar?
Little did I know, opportunities just like that were all around me. I couldn’t see them because I’d already told myself they weren’t there. It took a couple of decades of opportunities taken and others missed to realize the core truth of the first principle of my investing life: fantastic opportunities exist in every economic and market condition.
You might not believe it now, but I hope if you take this journey with me that you’ll come to know it as surely as the sun will rise in the morning.
I’m going to wrap this first entry up with some disclaimers and points:
First, I am not a licensed financial professional. What I write on this blog is my opinion and should not be taken as gospel for your investment decision-making.
Second, I made the decision to write this blog anonymously because I am still a professional working in a relatively high-profile job (yes, at my option, not because I have to) and wish to not have this blog distract from that work on the off chance it becomes popular.
Third, I still make mistakes. The only way you don’t make mistakes as an investor is when you have a say in how the financial game gets played. I believe those people exist, but I’m not one of them, and as I like to say, my crystal ball doesn’t work so well. That said, I have been very successful in identifying trends and opportunities before the talking heads and bestselling financial gurus were talking them up and have capitalized on them to multiply our net worth (I’ve been happily married for over three decades) from an already respectable base by roughly seven times since the “Great Financial Crisis” of 2008.
Fourth, I am passionate about the idea of financial independence, not just for myself but for as many people as possible. I hope to help bring that gift to you in my writing. A society with more financially independent people is a healthier society. One where the government is minimized in its importance and power over its citizenry, where individual liberty and freedom are recognized as some of the greatest gifts bestowed to us by our creator that this life has to offer.
Finally, being financially independent does not mean no longer working. We are made for work and there is dignity in work no matter the task, provided it needs doing. Financial independence means not having to work in ways that are not meaningful to you. That includes not being a debt serf to support your possessions.
Until the next post, may peace and prosperity be with you.
The Natural Economist
Next up…financial markets are rigged, and you’re the mark!