Plenty of finance gurus say you need to pay off consumer debt and have some money set aside for a rainy day, and I have to admit that’s the foundation. If that isn’t sorted, there’s little sense, mathematically or practically, in getting into investing. It’s fine to open a tax-advantaged account or a regular brokerage account just to see how the mechanics work, but at that stage your savings should flow in two directions. ...
Hi! We live in a world where hustle and workaholism are held up as the ideal, while a calm life on a smaller income is treated as poor “life performance”. That never sat right with me. A few years ago I came across FIRE — Financial Independence, Retire Early. It hooked me immediately, because as a pilot working on a B2B contract I can’t count on a meaningful state pension. Everything has to be built by myself. I started wondering how much I actually need to put aside. To my surprise, it turned out that if I resist buying useless gadgets and the urge for a fast, shiny leased car, I won’t have to work until retirement age at all. That discovery electrified me so much that for the past five years I’ve been digging into the subject in my spare time in indecent amounts. ...