It is always a good idea to take a moment to reflect on the prior year before working on the New Year’s goals. Many of you reading this blog are likely over achievers, and as an over achiever we tend to forget to celebrate our accomplishments. We are always onto the next goal. Equally, reflection also allows us to learn from our failures. And we also get an opportunity to see what might have seemed important to us in the beginning of the year lose its importance (or at the very least lose its level of priority). So, before I get into my 2016 goals, let’s take a look at how I did in 2015. 2015 Goals In Review [Fail] …
Opportunity Looks A Lot Like Hard Work
Do you have a busy season at work? If you do, do you realize how mission critical it is for the progression of your career and your financial success? For me the busy time of year is the 4th quarter. Especially in the new role. However, I also recognize that this is the time of year that it makes the most sense for me to go above and beyond to put the hard work in. For the past 6 weeks I have progressively gone from working about 50 hours a week to 90+ hours a week. This past week alone I have worked from 4am to 9pm almost every day (the week before Thanksgiving). Now let me point out that …
[Guest Post] Making Changes is Hard [Part 2 of 3]
Hey there Freedom Fighters! Today Mr. CEO is back with part two of his 3 part series. We are only days away from Christmas and New Years, so I encourage you to carve out some time over the remaining days of the year to reflect on 2015. What went really well? What didn’t go as planned? What do you want to improve on? Take some time to be grateful and spend time with family. And do yourself a favor and set your goals before January 2016 rolls around. I would recommend no more than 3 major goals. One for your Health, One for your Wealth, and One for your Social Self (relationship oriented). Without further ado…Mr. CEO the blog is …
[Guest Post] A Million Dollars Isn’t $h1t…Unless You Don’t Have It
The following is a guest post submitted by community regular JayCeezy, sharing a few ideas he has picked up along the PF road we all travel. GYFG welcomes guest contributions, please click here for more info. A financial mentor of mine told me something that stayed with me: “A million dollars isn’t $h1t. Unless you don’t have it.” But once you have it, what are you going to do with it? Why? I’m not an expert, but I am experienced, and want to share these ideas, passing along useful tactics and strategies my PF mentors generously shared with me. Maybe you will find some of this worth passing along, someday. You might not need a million if everything goes your way, but …
Earning Your First Million Dollars – A Stroll Down Memory Lane
Have you ever heard the saying that “earning the first million is the hardest?” Or what about “the 2nd million comes faster than the first?” Supposedly it gets easier and faster the further along you travel in your financial journey. These questions got me thinking about how long it took me to earn my first million (or more accurately asked, how long it would take). This required me to go back in time and reconstruct my earning history. The Social Security website makes this pretty easy. You can also request copies of your tax transcripts from the IRS website (I filed my first tax return in 2003). Luckily, I had saved copies of all my tax records back to 2006 …
[Guest Post] Freedom Fighter Interview #20 – Will @ Lifetime and Money
Today we have our 20th Freedom Fighter interview in this series. Our guest today recently started his own personal finance blog about the trade offs between living life and earning money. At 33 years old Will recently paid off all his student loans and is using his blog as a turning point in his financial life. He calls San Francisco home and although he pays a premium to live in such an expensive city, he has a high six figure salary to support it. I will let Will take it from here in his interview below: Who are you and what do you do? What is your story? How are you fighting for your Freedom? Where did you start, where in …
November 2015 – Detailed Financial Report #11 – Net Worth $311,820 [+71.9% YTD]
GYFG here checking in for the November monthly financial report. If you have been reading these reports for a while you will notice that I introduce each month with the same intro month after month. I do this for two reasons, a) for the newbies to the site (which make up about 50% of the sites traffic) and b) to remind everyone what these reports are all about. By all means if you have read the intro at least once, then please feel free to skip down to the “Summary of November 2015” section where the new content begins (click the orange link to be taken there automatically). For those of you that are new around this corner of the internet, I …