Rant #7

Rant #7 – You Can’t Force a Horse to Drink

Gen Y Finance Guy Rants 17 Comments

People never fail to amaze me in this world. It is quite amazing how illogical people can be. As you all may recall, I recently wrote about the analysis and decision I made to go solar…it was a no brainer. Well, anytime I get excited about something, I naturally share that excitement with others. I pretty much become an evangelist. My wife and I were having dinner one night a few weeks back catching up with her parents. They had just returned from a month long road trip. I had brought up the fact that we had decided to go Solar while they were gone. They were immediately interested, so I proceeded to tell them everything I had learned over …

Net Worth Conversion Ratio

Net Worth Conversion Ratio – A Measure of Wealth Building Efficiency

Gen Y Finance Guy Financial Ratios 36 Comments

There is never a dull moment in Personal Finance, am I right? I am not sure if it’s just me, but I am constantly think of ways to look at personal finance through different perspectives and lenses. A while back I took a stroll down memory lane to figure out how long it would/had taken me to earn my first $1M in earned income. That analysis got me wondering how much earned income Mrs. GYFG and I had earned on a combined basis (I will share shortly). But ultimately the reason I wanted to see how much we had earned as a team was to figure out how efficient (or inefficient) we had been at converting our income to wealth …

February 2016 Detailed Financial Report

February 2016 – Detailed Financial Report #14 – Net Worth $362,579 [+14.1% for 2016 YTD]

Gen Y Finance Guy Monthly Financial Reports 27 Comments

GYFG here checking in for the February 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 February 2016” 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, …

Identity Theft Protection

[Guest Post] How to guard yourself against identity theft and credit card fraud

Gen Y Finance Guy General Information 8 Comments

Today’s post is contributed by Phil. A few weeks ago he reached out asking if he could write a piece for the blog around protecting and preventing identity theft. Luckily I have never had to deal with my own identity being tampered with. He also shares a few stories of scams that happened to a friends mother and a relative. I personally don’t know how people fall for these things, but I guess they do. Reading through his two stories, I know there is absolutely ZERO chance I would have ever fallen for either scams. We would all also like to believe that our friends and family are smart enough not to fall prey to the scammers out there as …

February 2016 Goal Status

Monthly Goal Check-in #2 – @ 3/1/2016

Gen Y Finance Guy Goal Setting 13 Comments

Can you believe that another month has already come and gone? It seems like yesterday that I was pressing submit on the first check-in for the year. Isn’t it crazy how we perceive time to move faster as we age every year? I have always wondered why that is. A part of me believes that our ability to constantly stay plugged in because of technology that makes time feel like it’s moving at a faster pace. But recently Adam Chudy introduced me to the Farnam Street Blog where I read the following insightful quote: Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthy and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend …

Financial Independence Lens

Looking at Savings Rate through the Financial Independence Lens

Gen Y Finance Guy Financial Analysis, Financial Freedom 22 Comments

In previous posts I have talked about how we currently strive to save 50% of our after tax income and how important your savings rate is in building wealth rapidly. But after listening to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast, it made me realize that this may have not been enough to sway you. What I mean, is that this may need to be translated. It is very easy to conceptualize and visualize what a 50% savings rate means to in terms of dollars. But what does it mean in terms of Time Freedom? What may not be as intuitive is what it means for your ability to reach financial independence. I had already previously internalized the fact that a 50% …