All the highly technical, overly complicated wealth-building advice in the world can be boiled down to four words, that if followed will practically guarantee financial independence to those who follow:

“Buy Assets, Avoid Liabilities”

That’s it. Simply buy assets. Buy things that increase in value. Buy things that produce income. Avoid spending money earned in exchange for work on anything other than assets.

The problem is, most of us take the exact opposite approach. We buy liabilities. We buy things that depreciate in value – sometimes quite rapidly. We buy “experiences” like magical vacations. We spend an inordinate amount of money on entertainment, eating out, and expensive hobbies.

How do I know this? Because I spent the first 15 years of my adult life doing the exact same thing. I bought things on credit cards, racking up debts I couldn’t pay. I borrowed money to go to school. I spent every dime I earned, and then some, on the latest video game systems and cell phones and crap I didn’t really need.

Sure, a few of those things added some value to my life in the form of entertainment, or making things easier, etc. However, the large majority was a waste, because I can never reclaim those earnings. I can never reclaim the earnings that income could have amassed after being exposed to the magic of compound interest.

Now, I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who aspires to have nice things. In fact, I’ve enjoyed saving cash and buying a few things I put off for a few years while working towards debt freedom.

But one should recognize that for ever frivolous purchase, every spendthrift trip to the mall, we push financial freedom out a little further. If financial independence doesn’t happen to be a goal of yours, and you are quite happy working the rest of your life to pay monthly bills to banks, well, then you won’t have much of a problem continuing this trend.

For the rest of us, financial independence is a strong motivation on our day-to-day spending decisions, and certainly the larger life-altering decisions such as buying a house, a car, selecting a career field, etc.

From Liabilities to Assets

To start on a path towards building wealth you have to have sort of a mindset shift – away from acquiring more liabilities (things that suck money from your wallet in the form of monthly payments or depreciation) – and towards things that increase your bottom line (though appreciation and income).

Consider these two acquisitions, as a small-scale example:

• $200 for a new smartphone. If you decide to buy one, chances are you are taking on another $70-$100 monthly expense in calling and data plans. That’s roughly $1,200 in the first year (including your $200 upfront cost of buying the phone).

• $200 of Verizon stock. Verizon (VZ) currently yields roughly 5.4% in an annual dividend. Your $200 worth of stock would generate about $11 per year in dividend payments. Less than a dollar a month doesn’t sound like much, but it’s certainly cheaper than $1,200 in that first year. (Full disclosure, at the time of this writing I don’t own any stock in Verizon (VZ).

To carry this example further, assuming you decide to reinvest dividends, that $200 investment in Verizon would be worth $260.13 in five years, and that’s assuming no growth in the stock price itself and no increases to the dividend.

How much do you think that $200 smartphone will be worth in five years? Probably not much – an expensive paper weight, perhaps?

The initial investment amount is relatively low in this example, so the argument for buying assets doesn’t seem that compelling. However, multiply that example by five or ten times, to represent what you might spend on “less than necessary” items each month, and we are talking some serious money.

A $2,000 investment in Verizon stock at current yield levels would be worth about $2,601.55 in five years, assuming you reinvested dividends and the stock experiences zero growth and no increase in dividend payouts (not likely for a mature, healthy growth stock).

Another benefit of choosing assets over liabilities is that most of the time, assets don’t continue to drag on your cash flow in the way many liabilities do. In the above example, the monthly service charge for the phone quickly exceeds the cost of the phone itself, and continues to cost money as long as you keep it.

Not true of the Verizon stock, which after your initial purchase (and broker commission) won’t cost you a dime outside of taxes on dividend payments and taxes on any capital gains when you sell.

Flipping the Switch

The next time you are planning a major purchase, remember the above example and then ask yourself a few questions regarding your new potential purchase.

• If I had to prepare a personal balance sheet, would this item be considered an asset or a liability?
• Will this item add to my quality of life?
• Will this item produce income for me, or will I have to spend additional earnings each month to service its ownership (to insure it, maintain it, operate it, etc) ?
• Is the value of this item likely to increase over the next 5, 10, 20 years?

With the answers to these questions, chances are the decision to buy or not buy will become much easier. Always lean towards accumulating assets – in various well-diversified forms (real estate, precious metals, income-producing savings vehicles like CDs or bonds, etc.).

Minimize the acquisition of liabilities. Protect your cash flow earned from paid employment by diverting as much of it as possible into assets.

Be vigilant about protecting your earnings – you worked hard for them!

Be intentional. Give every dollar in your budget a name and stick to your plan.

Do this over time and you will begin to rely less and less on paid employment, and inch ever closer to financial independence.

At the end of the week, or month, we’ll receive an income – earnings we receive in exchange for that time spent working. We pay all our bills using this income, and with the little left over, try to put away some savings for retirement and spend a little on things to distract us from the realization we have to go back to work on Monday.

When you think about it, working for an income is no way to spend your life. Consider the amount of time parents are away from their kids. Think of all the good one could be doing for their community if they did not have to work full-time for money.

Now back to reality.

Unless you are born into a family of millionaires, or inherit a large sum of money during your life, you are going to have to work to accumulate wealth. There are no shortcuts.

But at some point, most of us should aim to “retire” from the career that helped us generate that wealth, and move on to something more soul-satisfying. Now, if your soul is satisfied writing computer code, or answering telephones, or assembling parts, then by all means, keep doing what you love. The other 99% of us would probably like to do something different, but are not able to because of the need to generate an income from a regular job.

How Do You Replace Your Income?

Replacing your full-time income with investment income is no small feat, particularly if we continue to be in an environment of low interest rates, and similarly low yields on income-producing investments. With lower yields, it means we have to have a bigger pile of capital working for us. What exactly is capital?

My favorite personal finance book, Your Money or Your Life (that’s a link to my review) goes to great lengths to help readers understand the difference between savings and capital. To summarize, savings are dollars earmarked for near-term goals and expenses. This would include things like a down payment fund, or a car replacement fund, college savings, etc.

Capital is money that you specifically set aside to begin working for you. For example, if you have $10,000 in savings above your basic emergency fund and short-term savings needs, you might decide to invest that $10,000 in an income-producing investment, such as a bond, a dividend-paying stock, or even a CD or high-yield savings account.

At a 4% rate of return, that $10,000 would generate about $33.33 in monthly income. That’s not a lot of money, but you didn’t have to work for it either.

Now imagine you had $100k in “working capital” earning a 4% rate of return. That amount of capital would spin off about $333 a month – maybe enough to cover half your grocery budget, or your monthly utilities, or some other day-to-day expense. And the best part? You earned that money without having to work any extra hours, or miss any sleep.

Given these two examples, you can begin to see the secret to replacing your income. Eventually, the investment income each month would cover your basic life expenses. Maybe your lifestyle would require a $650,00 nest egg, where others could easily live on the $1,333 a month that a $400,000 nest egg yields.

Whatever your personal comfort level is, it is at that point that you are officially financially independent. You no longer have to work for an income. You may decide to work a few more years doing something you love to supplement that capital for a cushion, or as I mentioned earlier, maybe because you simply love what you do.

The Accumulation Phase

Here’s the tricky part. For most of our working lives we are in an “accumulating” phase with respect to capital. We may only be able to scrape together $300 a month to contribute towards capital, and if we only reinvested those 4% earnings, it would take a long time to replace our income.

During the accumulation phase, it probably makes sense to look outside these income-producing investments for higher opportunities to increase our capital. That’s not to say we could not augment our overall portfolio with investments more known for producing income, because those types of investments are generally regarded as safer than high-flying stocks and mutual funds.

However, at some point we are going to have to take some risks-calculated risks-for the hope of higher returns. Assuming we have a long investment horizon, we can afford to weather market ups and downs, and use the downs as opportunities to acquire more assets for less dollars.

Essentially, the goal here is to accumulate enough capital in various investments to cover your basic expenses, assuming this total amount was invested in income-producing investments. When your capital has reached this number, you can move it to more conservative investments and begin to live off the income they produce.

For example, you may have $100,000 in a rental property, $85,000 in stocks, $25,000 in bonds, and $30,000 in cash, all earning different rates of return. You’ll know you have “enough” when the sum of all your investments could be liquidated from their current investment vehicle and invested in a safe, income-producing investment such as those previously mentioned (CD ladders, bonds, dividend, etc.).

Total up your savings and investments and multiply by something like the current yield on the 30-year Treasury Bond (currently hovering around 4%). Divide that yearly earnings figure by 12 to determine your potential monthly investment income. You should now have an idea how close, or how far away, you are to financial independence.

Where to Save “Capital”

I can’t tell you exactly where to hold that capital until you’re ready to retire. You are going to have to do some homework here, and decide based on your risk tolerance and time to remain invested, which types of investments work best for your situation.

I will say this – your capital should be well-diversified across a variety of investments. At any given time, it might make sense to hold stocks, bonds, gold, silver, real estate, and during periods of extreme uncertainty, maybe even just cash. This way a real estate bubble, a stock market meltdown, or a period of currency devaluation, don’t completely wipe you out.

And at no time should you consider exposing your near-term savings, such as your tri-level emergency fund, to the same level of risk as your working capital. You might begin to feel that the pile of emergency savings could be better “invested,” similar to your other investments.

Moving that emergency money into capital and investing it all but guarantees you will experience a major emergency, at which point you’ll have to sell investments at the worse possible time, take penalties, etc. to finance your emergency. It’s just not worth the risk.

How to Get Started

Once you are debt free, and have established a year of emergency savings, begin thinking about the next steps of your savings plan. It is at this point that planning for financial independence really starts to become a motivator.

Begin asking yourself questions like…

• How quickly could I pay off my mortgage early?
• How much income would I need each month to live off without any debt payments?
• What would I do with my time if I no longer had to work for money?
• How can I continue to save money every month to further reduce my expenses?
• What types of investments should I look at outside of my retirement accounts?
• What are the tax implications of investing in taxable investments?

For me, the very idea that I may only have to work for some finite period of time, even if that is another 15 years, is motivating. Before I began to plan this way, I just assumed I would work until I dropped. But that’s not a great plan.

There are things I’d like to accomplish outside of my chosen profession, and things I’d like to see and do that I cannot while working full-time for an income. But as I am beginning to understand, it doesn’t have to be that way forever.

I do my best to avoid complicated mathematical formulas. In my experience, mathematicians do a great job of taking a relatively simple process and making it overly complex by applying a series of inexplicable formulas. I guess that’s why I was happy to run across an interesting concept the other day called “the multiply-by-25 rule.”

The idea is that you can estimate how much is needed in savings to generate enough income to pay for an item. The only factors you need to know are how much something costs you now, and at what interest rate your money will grow.

Of course, determining both in this period of a inflation and fluctuating interest rates is tough, but you can get a general idea of how the math works by looking at a real-life example.

A Working Example

We are fans of Netflix because it offers a relatively frugal entertainment option for family movie nights. It’s cheaper than going to the theater, and cheaper than an expanded cable package. At roughly $9 a month, our Netflix membership sets us back $108 per year.

To continue paying for Netflix out of passive income earning 4% per year, I would need a $2,700 ($108×25) savings balance. Since most of my savings are now earning closer to 3% I would need to multiply my costs by a factor of 33.33% (100/interest rate).

This increases the amount needed to pay for Netflix after reaching financial independence by $900 to $3,600. Maybe I should just cancel Netflix!

A Bigger Example

I have heard stories of people paying off their homes, cars and all other debts and living quite comfortable on a couple thousand dollars a month, or less. Assuming our goal is the high end of that estimate, how much of a savings balance would be required to spin off $24,000 a year in income?

If earning:
3% interest, you would need $800,000
4% interest, you would need $600,000
5% interest, you would need $480,000

And you thought you needed to be a millionaire to retire early! This exercise does fail to account for inflation, both in terms of cheapening dollars and the costs of goods and services over time. I doubt Netflix, or a similar company, will continue to offer one-at-a-time unlimited rentals in the year 2030 for $9. However, running these numbers does emphasize the importance of minimizing the number of expenses you commit to early on.

Our Netflix membership alone puts us $3,600 further away from financial independence. Our cable bill, although relatively small at $12/month, puts us $4,800 away from retiring early. When you start to convert monthly expenditures to the amount of money required to cover their upkeep it really helps you prioritize what is important in your budget.

Homework:  Apply this formula to some recurring expense in your current budget and report the results in the comments below.  Does this required savings amount change the way you feel about continuing to pay for the item?

The other day a reader asked for clarification on what financial independence meant. Well, I suppose it can mean different things to different people. To me, it means that my savings can be moved to ultra-conservative investments, and still spin off enough money each month to cover my basic living expenses. At that point, I technically do not have to work for money.

Roadmap to Financial Independence

So how does one reach financial independence (FI)? It certainly doesn’t happen overnight. The point where one reaches FI is a function of three things:

• Diligent Savings. To build enough capital to live on interest and dividends takes years of faithfully saving and investing. We are still in the “capital building” stage ourselves, and invest in a variety of tax advantaged retirement accounts and taxable accounts. Currently, our plan is to max Roth IRAs, invest in my 401k through the match, and with anything left over, build our FI savings capital buying dividend stocks through our discount brokerage, Zecco.com, and tax-efficient mutual funds at Vanguard.com in a mix of stock funds, bond funds and international index funds.

• Debt Freedom. Reaching financial independence is hard enough, but adding a pile of debt to the mix makes it next to impossible. We have already eliminated all consumer debt (credit cards, student loan and car loans). We’d like to eliminate our mortgage in the next 5-7 years. However, building savings capital and paying off our mortgage early will mean there will be little money for anything else. Which takes us to the third component.

• Reduction of Monthly Expenses. Saving money every month on regular expenses not only helps increase your disposable income for savings contributions, it’s good practice for living financially independent. It also means in most cases, you don’t necessarily have to become a millionaire to retire. In early retirement, you would need a nest egg of $600,000 to spin off enough money to cover $2,000 in expenses (assuming a 4% return, before taxes).  You would only need $450,000 to cover $1,500 a month in expenses given the same terms. That’s a significant difference in the amount of savings needed to reach financial independence.

Other Sources of Income in Early Retirement

Once monthly expenses have been reduced, and fairly well defined, we can begin to get a good idea of the amount of money we’ll need saved to retire early. But one thing many formal calculators and financial gurus forget to take into account is that most people will not “retire” early at 50 years old and never earn another dime from some type of work. Sure, they may not earn what they made while working full time, but most early retirees go on to work in another field they are passionate about, splitting time between their passion, their family and a hobby or two.

In the example above, if our expenses were $2,000 a month in early retirement, but we were able to earn $500-$700 from part time work, consulting, or something similar, our savings needs would be much lower than if we planned to earn nothing. This often means people can technically reach financial independence much earlier than they previously anticipated.

Do any of you have plans for early retirement? What steps are you taking today to get there?

The good news is you don’t really need a book to learn about financial independence (though, if you do decide to read more on the subject, I highly recommend Your Money or Your Life). All you need to do is remember the seven secrets below.

Secrets to Financial Independence

1. Pay off debt. Yes, even the mortgage. I can hear the mathematicians screaming now – “PAY OFF YOUR MORTGAGE?” What about the tax deduction? What about all-time low interest rates. I don’t care about either one. To reach financial independence I’m all about reducing monthly expenses. A mortgage represents the highest monthly expense in most family budgets, and ours is no exception. Knock out credit card debt, car debt, student loans and the mortgage and you’ll owe a monthly payment to no one, which puts you on the fast-track to financial independence.

2. Quit buying crap. And while you’re at it, quit signing up for crap. The other day I sat down to try to tally our monthly expenses. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Problem is I kept forgetting little expenses we’ve signed up for. Oops, there’s the Netflix charge; then the gym membership fee. The other day the TiVo bill hit. I enjoy all three of these examples immensely, but altogether they represent about $50 a month. Talk about being nickel and dimed! Of course, there are other things I’m forgetting to list here. You can see how challenging it is to come up with a total monthly outgo figure these days!

3. Forget about trying to impress people. Do you have any idea how much money is wasted in a lifetime trying to impress other people? Just think of the things we buy, and the options we choose, for show rather than for practicality. Flashy cars, big houses and expensive jewelry matter little to those working towards financial independence, because we recognize you’ll be paying for that stuff long after we hang up the employee badge.

4. Make savings a top priority. If I had a financial do-over, I’d start saving half of my income from the very first day I started working. I can think of no faster way to accumulate wealth, build financial discipline, and expand your creatively frugal way of thinking to make things work on a meager income. Trouble is, very few of us ever thought to do this, so right out of the gate we needed more like 90% of our income just to pay for all the goodies we accumulated. To make it happen, talk to your payroll office and elect to have 50% of your paycheck deposited in an online savings account (I’ve reviewed a few of the best online banks in the past), separate from your primary checking account. Now, live on what’s left. Every year you pull this off you are essentially buying (saving) a year of freedom from earning an income.

5. Be aggressive early on. I’m a conservative person by nature. I don’t like to take big risks – with money, or life in general. But if I could talk to my 20 year-old self now I’d tell him to live a little. Invest a little money (10% of your portfolio or less) in that stock you just know in your gut will be a winner, because you know the quality of the people in management, or you believe in their product. Don’t be afraid to invest in that “aggressive” portfolio in your twenties, and early thirties. You’ve got time for ups and downs. You’ll win some, and you’ll lose some, but at least you won’t have any regrets.

6. Be conservative as you near financial independence. As passionate as I am about taking risks when you are still young, I am equally passionate about being conservative in the last few years leading up to reaching your “number.” That’s the time to start dumping the risky stuff, and start gearing down into low-risk investments. Some of your nest egg should be in cash, a little in bonds, or if you like simplicity, maybe something like a LifeStrategy Income Fund that takes the thinking (and emotions) out of investing your nest egg, or at least a portion of it. Be sure to check recent returns on such funds, as many billed as “conservative” lost their shirts in the recent downturn. At this point in your journey to financial independence you should be fairly immune to market swings, and more concerned with protecting the principal you’ve worked to accumulate.

7. Determine your own “number.” Speaking of your “number,” don’t let some financial egghead across a desk look down his nose and tell you that you need exactly $1.4 million to “maintain your style of living in retirement.” Garbage. Most of these guys immediately follow this with a sales pitch for an annuity, or a scare tactic about clients living to 90 years-old and running out of money. If you are dedicated to living frugal, paid off all your debts (see step 1), and built a comfortable nest egg based on your individual needs, you should be just fine.

Financial independence doesn’t have to be a mythical place we only visit in our day dreams. There are enough people out there living it, writing about it, and experiencing the joys of being free from the requirement to earn an income to survive. Learn from them. Model your behaviors after them. But be careful who you follow.

As author Thomas Stanley proved in his book, The Millionaire Next Door, most self-made millionaires look a lot different than the Paris Hiltons of the world. They probably drive a two year-old car (or older), shop where you shop, and live in a modest home. They don’t wear flashy jewelry, have a string of letters after their name earned from a decade of schooling in the Ivy League, and their idea of a fun family vacation probably looks like a week-long trip Disney World, not Paris or the Mediterranean.

The real secret to financial independence is to start living your life with that goal at the forefront of all your financial decisions. The longer you put it off, the worse your chances of ever succeeding will be. But for those who start early, and stay passionate about their dream, the payoff at the end is one of the more freeing experiences we can ever enjoy.

I’ve always been a big proponent of developing a side hustle – an additional income-producing endeavor you cultivate along with your full-time job. A side hustle might be related to your full-time job, or it could be something completely separate. In my case, I do very little writing at my full-time gig, and nothing related to personal finances. But past experiences, an interest in writing, and a passion for frugal living came together to form this blog and my side hustle.

What if we took this active-active income model to the next level? What if we used this side hustle to invest and create a third, passive income stream? This would be the ultimate in income diversification, and provide maximum coverage in an income emergency, such as  a job layoff or a huge stock market tumble.

I first read about the three-way income model at Money Hacker and thought it was a great concept. I immediately thought about how I could apply it in my own financial life. Keep in mind the difference in active and passive income for these purposes is active income requires me to work actively to generate an income. Passive income continues to grow whether I continue to do work or not. Here are my three current layers of income:

• Active Income #1. My first, and primary, source of income is my full-time job. Until two years ago this was my only source of income. My wife and I recognized that to meet our financial goals of becoming debt free and building a sizable savings fund, we would need to increase our income. After I struck out trying to find part-time employment, and spent a summer mowing lawns in 100-degree temperatures, I came to the conclusion it was time to try something else. Enter the side hustle.

• Active Income #2. In addition to my full-time job, I spend about 20 hours a week working on my blog, and related freelancing opportunities. This makes for some long days, but the per-hour earnings rate is much higher than traditional forms of part time work, such as retail or manual labor. Of course, this wasn’t true in the beginning. I made about $3 per hour the first few months of blogging when time invested yielded very little return.

• Passive Income #1. Creating a passive income stream is the area of this three-way income plan that I need to work on the most. As it is now, we have very little in the way of passive income, save the little bit of interest that accumulates in our online savings account, and the minimal stock dividends that accumulate on the couple stocks and mutual funds we own. Once completely debt free, we’ll be able to afford diverting more of our income to investments, and boost passive income.

Specifically, we plan to use the majority of active income #2 (side hustles) to build a portfolio of income-producing investments. Why? Because I recognize that earnings from active income pursuits are never a sure thing. In my personal example, I could be laid off from my full-time job tomorrow. Advertisers could decide to slash budgets, or some regulatory change could seriously affect my online earnings. I could get sick, or injured, and no longer be able to continue working at a 60-hour per week pace.

For these reasons it makes sense to develop a passive income stream over time to further diversify our sources of income. Early on, the passive income portfolio won’t pay for an extra value meal at McDonalds, but over time our goal will be to grow passive income to the point where it covers all of our required expenses each month.

Passive Income Portfolio Possibilities

What types of investments might make up our passive income portfolio? There are a couple requirements. To be truly passive, the investment has to be a “set it and forget it” type of investment. The simplest form of passive income investment may be a simple savings account. You deposit money, forget about it, and it earns a little bit (very little bit) of interest each month.

As you have higher sums of money to invest you can typically move up in rate of return over a simple savings account. Sticking with deposit accounts for a moment, higher investments in products like money market accounts and CDs will yield higher returns and build our passive income more quickly. A diversified mix of bonds, treasuries and dividend-growth stocks have even higher rates of return (traditionally), but must be spread across a variety of sectors for ultimate diversification.

In addition to financial investments, there are other ways to build a passive income portfolio. Authors of books often earn royalties on copies sold, though the argument could be made that books don’t promote themselves, so the marketing effort required might eliminate the “passive” feature of this investment. In this case, the work is done up front and the residual income that follows could be included in a passive income portfolio.

Over time, we may also use active income to invest in paid-for real estate, and consider rental income and real estate appreciation as passive income. Again, unclogging a toilet at 3:00 in the morning is far from passive, so if you want a totally hands-off real estate investment you will probably need to hire a property manager.

For me, the main benefit of building a passive income from active earnings #2 is that it extends the life of those earnings. If I simply spent them each month on a bigger mortgage, or a car payment, they would be forever gone. Eventually, when my side hustle dwindled away I would have nothing to show for the years of work. This way, passive income will continue to flow long after I quit working for money, guaranteeing financial independence in the years to come.

The most important lesson I learned (or had reinforced) from the book is the idea that I just need to get started. Many of us are paralyzed by the investment choices so we sit around and do nothing. Suddenly, we’re fifty-five years old with barely anything in savings, and twenty years left on our mortgage. That puts you about as far away from financial independence as you could get!

Here I sit at almost 32 years-old, and not a lot of savings to show. But, we’ve had some big wins in the last several months. We’ve knocked out a lot of debt, paid off our car, and rebuilt our emergency fund after a family emergency took its toll. In the next year we’ll be debt free, except the mortgage, and can then really begin to focus on our dream of a semi-retirement before traditional retirement age.

Maybe I’ll continue writing in semi-retirement; maybe I’ll find some other side hustle I enjoy. Regardless, in 15-20 years I’d like to find myself doing more meaningful with my days than working in an office. I’d like to teach, mentor, and coach young people. I’d like to do more volunteer work. I’d like to do many of the things I’ve had to forgo to this point just to keep the family checkbook in the black. When we reach financial independence we will have the freedom to use our life energy for something more worthwhile to use than earning a paycheck.

In the coming weeks and months I’ll begin to share more about my strategy for achieving financial independence. Some big decisions will have to be made regarding our future plans. Will we invest in taxable accounts, or tax-advantaged retirement accounts (or both)? Will we go with mutual funds, high-dividend stocks, bonds, cash, or some combination?  How will real estate play into our plans? What will we do for health insurance? How does our kids attending college affect our plans?

Lots to sort out, but fortunately we have plenty of time. Our number one priority is becoming debt free. In the mean time we continue to save in retirement accounts, but soon we may add other investments to the mix. Of course, I’ll be seeking your input along the way as well. From the comments, I know many of you are now enjoying a semi-retired lifestyle and I deeply appreciate your input, as do other readers.

While this post was about “financial independence,” it’s worth mentioning on Independence Day that many men and women around the globe are putting their lives on the line for our independence. Many others have come before them and paid the ultimate sacrifice. Take a moment today to remember those who serve their country, and their families. Without their sacrifices the idea of financial independence would be merely a dream.