Soon to be mortgage free

Our Mortgage Will Be Gone In Four More Years

Gen Y Finance Guy Mortgage Snowball 28 Comments

We bought our house almost four years ago and we acquired it for ~50% less than the bank said we could afford to borrow. The bank approved us for a $750,000 loan but we ultimately borrowed $355,000 on a total purchase of $376,000 (47% of what we were approved to borrow). Anyone that has read my ten guidelines to rapid wealth building knows that as a rule of thumb, I recommend buying a house for 50% (or less) of what you are approved to borrow. In doing so, you set yourself up to be mortgage-free in five to seven years if you follow my mortgage snowball strategy. The GYFG household has just completed year three of our seven-year goal to be mortgage …

2018 Goals

My 2018 Goals

Gen Y Finance Guy Goal Setting 18 Comments

Where in the heck did 2017 go? Do you remember how slow time used to pass by when you were ten years old? I didn’t believe adults when they told me that time speeds up as you get older. As kids, we wish time would go faster and then the switch flips around high school graduation and we start wishing time would just slow down. Why do we perceive time differently as kids then we do as adults? I tend to believe that as a ten-year-old kid, a year feels longer because it makes up a much more significant percentage of our life. A year to a ten-year-old is 10% of that kid’s life. On the flip side, a year to …

November 2017 Report

November 2017 – Detailed Financial Report #35 – Net Worth $644,406 | Income $26,212

Gen Y Finance Guy Monthly Financial Reports 4 Comments

Last month, after 33 consecutive months of the same format of my Detailed Financial Reports, I decided to shake things up, starting with report #34 (October 2017 Financial Report). However, the introduction will still repeat from month to month, because 50% of my readers are new every month, and I want to offer them all the content in my initial intro. That said, I will still plan to modify the intro periodically when appropriate. If you’re a regular reader and only want to read the new content then feel free to just skip the intro (no harm, no foul). Intro Mission Statement: To Humanize Finance, Build Wealth, and Reach Financial Freedom. For those of you new around this corner of the …

Extreme Frugality vs. Relative Frugality

Extreme Frugality Is For The Birds

Gen Y Finance Guy Words To Live By 22 Comments

It’s no secret that this blog has nothing to do with extreme frugality. If anything, compared to my peer bloggers, I’m probably categorized as a spendthrift. I have even been accused of leading a rather lavish lifestyle, which I think is complete bollocks. Relative to my income I am “frugal” but that is not because I have crafted some master plan to live on as little money as possible. Instead, I have chosen to take the road less traveled to increase our household’s top line (income) to a point where saving 50% happens automatically, rather than obsessing over every little expense. I think that extreme frugality is for the birds! As I wrote in this post, there is a natural floor when it …

Turkey Day 2017

I Did It. I Invested In Death!

Gen Y Finance Guy Investing 44 Comments

It’s official: the Grim Reaper and I are now partners. However – let me be clear – we have agreed upon a firewall between our respective functions. The Grim Reaper himself will continue to fulfill his duties in transitioning people from life to death (I’m not into the whole blood and guts scene), and I also stay out of the realm of deciding whether someone’s time has expired or not. Additionally, I made him promise that he can’t take anyone earlier then they were naturally going to go or I just wouldn’t be able to participate in this arrangement with a clear conscience. It’s a matter of morals and ethics. My role in this arrangement is solely financial. I agreed to put …

October 2017 – Detailed Financial Report #34 – Net Worth $632,168 | Income $25,282

Gen Y Finance Guy Monthly Financial Reports 18 Comments

It’s time to shake things up with this month’s financial update. There hasn’t been much change to the format or content for 33 straight months, and I feel like the time has finally come to inject fresh life into this report and content. Mission Statement: To Humanize Finance, Build Wealth, and Reach Financial Freedom. For those of you that are new around this corner of the internet, these monthly reports are about full transparency. They are just as much for me as they are for you. It’s a hard decision to make all of your financial details public, but it’s also a very motivating one. The process I go through every month to produce these reports has been enlightening and life-changing. I published …

Life Settlements - Profit From Death

Death Is Our Only Certainty – What If You Could Ethically Profit From It? You Can, With Life Settlements

Gen Y Finance Guy Investing 4 Comments

Did you know you can invest alongside the grim reaper? Yes, you can actually profit from death. I know this sounds morbid and probably a bit shady, but let me explain. At the end of this post, I think you will realize that the alternative investment class discussed today provides a win/win for all parties involved, and may just be the perfect addition to your own portfolio. I’m constantly searching for new opportunities to allocate capital, specifically into investments that provide a HUGE margin of safety. This is because, unlike most, I approach investments with a risk focus first. Only after I understand the potential downside do I even begin to contemplate the potential upside. The investment vehicle that allows …

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett And I Share Our Thoughts On Life and Debt

Gen Y Finance Guy General Information 12 Comments

In this Warren Buffett series, I have pulled out a few sections from the 50 years of Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders that I recently finished reading. Although the entire series was filled with a ton of business and investment wisdom, all the pieces that I have pulled for this series are from the past seven years. I will admit that it is probably due to a recency bias, whereby after reading almost 700 pages, I remember more of the recent stuff than older. Needless to say, you bet I will be reading through those letters again in the future. This particular piece came from the 2010 shareholder letter. The pieces I have pulled out are sections that resonated with me. So, …

Building a Career

Connecting The Dots Looking Backwards – Deconstructing My Career

Gen Y Finance Guy Career 17 Comments

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. – Steve Jobs I’ve always been a big believer that every experience acts as a stepping stone to your end destination, however momentary it may be. I tend to think of the destinations as I go more like waypoints along a much longer journey. Each arrival is only a snapshot in time and after a momentary pause acts as the starting point on the way to the next waypoint. Sometimes there’s a real awareness of how decisions and experiences will connect in the future; but most of the …

Wunder Capital

[Sponsored Post] Wunder Capital – Investment Returns From Everyday Sunlight – Earn Up To 7.5%

Gen Y Finance Guy Review 2 Comments

The internet has revolutionized what we can invest in and how we can invest our money. These days it’s actually easier to make a list of things you can’t invest in, rather than those you can. There are now hundreds if not thousands of investment platforms popping up all over the internet. The internet has democratized and demonetized the barriers to investment, at least those that were once only open to the rich or institutional investors. Just as I am writing this post from the comfort of my home so to can you invest across any asset class imaginable. Unfortunately, there are still some investments that require you to be an accredited investor, like Wunder Capital, the investment platform I am going to …