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The Simple Path to Wealth

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Where did you learn about money?

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llama

One of the resident llamas trimming the grass on the grounds of Hacienda Cusin

Photo by Danielle Duong

Greetings from Ecuador!

I’m here deep into the second of our back-to-back Chautauquas 2016. As always, a great time that has me rarely coming up for air. There is nothing quite as satisfying as becoming utterly exhausted doing something you love.

But the other day my pal Jay of Scavenger Life sent me a link to a podcast conversation he and I had a few weeks back:

Where did you learn about money?

In it we discuss from where our ideas, fears and attitudes surrounding money came. You’ll learn the deep dark secrets of our past all the way back to our childhoods.

Of course, the conversation ranges far beyond this, touching on the changing nature of work and employment, child rearing and more. I wanted to share it with you ASAP and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we did recording it.

This isn’t the first time he and I have talked.

Early this year, he and Ryanne interviewed me for their podcast:

How scavengers can achieve financial independence

(BTW, one of our second week Chautauqua attendees told me he discovered Scavenger Life thru this podcast and went on to earn the money for he and his wife’s trip to Ecuador following the Jay & Ryanne model of eBay selling. Funding college for their kids is next.)

A few months later, I turned the tables and interviewed them:

Running an eBay Store and Airb&b with Jay and Ryanne

So that’s our “psychology of money” story. What’s yours?

Meanwhile, Ecuador and Chautauqua are calling me back…

face-punch

Mr. Money Mustache administers his trademark face punch,

a Chautauqua highlight

Photo by Danielle Duong

Addendum: 

If you have more listening time and interest, here are some more jlcollinsnh podcasts.

Important Resources

  • Credit Cards are like chain saws. Incredibly useful. Incredibly dangerous. Resolve to pay in full each month and never carry a balance. Do that and they can be great tools. Here are some of the very best for travel hacking, cash back and small business rewards.
  • Personal Capital is a free tool to manage and evaluate your investments. With great visuals you can track your net worth, asset allocation, and portfolio performance, including costs. At a glance you'll see what's working and what you might want to change. Here's my full review.
  • Tuft & Needle (T&N) helps me sleep at night. They are a very cool company with a great product. Here’s my review of what we are currently sleeping on: Our Walnut Frame and Mint Mattress.
  • Betterment is my recommendation for hands-off investors who prefer a DIFM (Do It For Me) approach. It is also a great tool for reaching short-term savings goals. Here is my Betterment Review
  • Republic Wireless is my $20 a month phone plan. My wife is also on the $20 plan and our daughter who uses more data is on the $25 plan. Monthly total for three phones and plans: $65. We all travel widely and we can talk to each other from wherever we are and for however long we please. My RW Review tells you how.
  • Vanguard.com

These are companies I have personally vetted and recommend.

YNAB and Tuft & Needle both support this site with paid ads. If you click on those ads it shows them the ads are working for them and that support will continue.

Personal Capital, Betterment and Republic Wireless are affiliate partners of this site. Should you click though to their site from this one and chose to do business with them, this blog will earn a small commission.

Vanguard is not an advertiser or affiliate but, Vanguard if you are listening, we’d love to have you!

Filed Under: Chautauqua, Money, Travels

Comments

  1. I learned about money at home. My Dad (a dentist) taught me the Rule of 72 at a young age. I had an allowance, and while I did spend some of it on football cards, I always saved some.

    I knew as a kid in junior high that I would rather have $2, $4, $8, or $16 later on than a couple candy bars today. Back then, the stock market was delivering 18% a year, doubling every 4 years, so it was a perfect time for that lesson to sink in.

    So glad to hear you’ve been able to enjoy Ecuador. We’ve been once, exploring the Galapagos Islands, and I’ve got a surgeon friend who hails from near Guayaquil. Would love to get back there someday.

    Cheers!
    -Physician on FIRE

    Reply

  2. I learned about money from book and the good ol’ internet! My mom was always responsible spender and never had any major debt other than a mortgage. My father was quite the spendthrift and always had to have the latest tool and technology gadget. And heck, why only have one when you can own two for twice the price!?! So yeah, not the best role model for saving. Later in life I saw my father struggle because of his approach to personal finance and knew I didn’t want to be in a similar position.

    I was inspired to learn more about money just 3-4 years ago from the father of my late best friend who taught me about the concept of financial independence. No turning back since learning about FI! His family lived in a nice home, but they never had new cars and had very basic furnishings throughout the house. But they took SCUBA trips all over the work 2-3 times a year. He retired at 55 with a pretty large nest eggs working as an accountant.

    Nowadays my wife and I have good jobs and are committed to pursuing FI. We have really ramped up our saving the past couple of years and our net worth already crossed the 7 figure mark earlier this year! Very encouraging for us and hopefully for others too!

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  3. At home, I learned the discipline and frugality. In school, I learned some of the mathematical tools. My parents weren’t educated enough to teach me math or finance (they never owned a stock in their life), and my teachers weren’t interested enough to teach personal finance and money skills. So, in the end, I had to put together the skills from two sources to get where I am today. And of course, I get lots of “continuing education,” roaming here in the blog world. 🙂
    Have fun in Ecuador!
    Cheers,
    ERN

    Reply

  4. Honestly I learned what not to do from watching my parent. Living paycheck to paycheck as a kid it was a real shock to have conversations with your parents where it was a reality to choose between a 20 dollar expenditure and keeping the lights on. This continued into college where paying for it became a major issue.
    Learning’s on the positive side I can trace back to classes in late high school and early college. Kind of ironic given the poor state of financial education in the schools today, but I found education in personal finance through numerous classes in economics starting with AP Economics in high school. Needless to say my experience with formal education in finance is a bit atypical.

    Reply

  5. My parents were smart with money and taught me well from a young age to know the value of a dollar and be smart with money.

    I had a junior high business class that had interactive real life projects. One project that I recall was “buying a car” we had to do all the financial leg work to buy a car. I even went to a few dealerships to do the research (this was before the Internet) most wouldn’t give me the time of day ,but one guy spent an hour helping me out and explained leasing and everything. I really got a lot out of that class.

    Another major source of knowledge came from reading the book the “The Wealthy Barber” which was part of the reading list for college. Back then I had a rough plan to make a million in the stock market and retire rich. Started my retirement savings back then and opened a brokerage account right after reading that book. I followed the principals in that book and was able to become debt free ,but so far not able to make that million and retire rich.

    It was only recently (last few years) that I found Mr. Money Mustache, Canadian Couch Potato, madFIentist, and of course this site that I learned much more about Money. One of the highlights was learning about index investing. Your stock series really helped cure my market timing and individual stock picking sickness. If only I had learned that years earlier it would have saved a lot of losses (Nortel and other individual stocks) which I thought I could pick the winners and time the market or just hold on to individual stock for the long haul and come out ahead (many went to zero).

    Now that I am really into this “FIRE” movement. I have a real documented investment plan with real goals based on actual numbers. I am tracking my expenses, income and investments using spreadsheets which give me the details required to measure progress and provide insight to my money.

    I am not done learning, and this community is great at sharing information and teaching. I would like to give a big thank you to you ,and all the others for adding to my knowledge on money.

    Techwiz

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  6. I learned from a combination of school lessons, life lessons from parents and friends and the Internet. My parents made me save 50% of everything I earned growing up, and then I watched friends and family for other lessons. The best lessons are learned from other people’s experiences so you don’t have to feel the consequences 🙂

    Reply

  7. Life lessons overall, but it took me until my mid-30s to go from wildly and foolishly spendthrift to frugal. When I finally got serious I started reading on the internet, beginning with Get Rich Slowly, finally moving on to MMM and this site, as well as many others.

    My parents modeled excellent financial behaviour, I was just very resistant to their message until later in life.

    Reply

  8. I firmly believe that frugality and the balance between consuming now versus storing up for later is both part nature and part nurture. I was raised in a very frugal household by parents that achieved FI fairly early (I suspect), and that environment certainly had an oversize impact on my spending and saving behaviors. But I also think the conservationist/minimalist mindset is hard-coded in my DNA. You read about a lot of other folks that strongly resisted the frugality mindset in their childhood household (even in some of the comments here). Frugality was modeled but I didn’t get a lot of technical money training. Because money didn’t grow on trees in our backyard, I had a job to earn spending money beginning at age 15. Earning the money that you spend at age 15 has a way of making you careful with it. By my senior year of college I was beginning to put (very small) amounts of money from summer earnings into the stock market. I studied accounting and tax as an undergrad/law student, and this education put me in a good position to learn through self-study the basic principles of money, investing, and taxes.

    Thanks for the cool Ecuador pics Jim!

    Reply

  9. I learned all of the basics of being thrifty, stretching a buck and finding ways to be generous even when not having much from my parents. However, they never had a clue about investing/ tax planning and it took me a decade to figure it out after finding you and some other FIRE bloggers. The cool thing is that I am now helping them with taking control of their investments. We just last week completed shifting the last of their investments to Vanguard after firing their advisor. They now are on “The Simple Path”.

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  11. My parents are CEOs so I learned about hard work, day in day out to earn. Though they work 7 days a week, 10 hours a day and spend money at fancy restaurants and on other spurious things now that they have income since they dont believe in what I do with ER. One is a political refugee who had bread soup as a kid, the other had shoes made of tires and got his first socks in his teens. They see no reason to save hard when they have enough to cover their expenses. One sometimes laughs at me since she thinks I’m trying to look poor-misses the point. I’ve been able to experience many luxury things because of them and now realize none of it bring me lasting happiness. That comes from my connections to people, nature, my health, inner peace, that type of stuff. Though parents do have pretty decent savings and no debt. Good role models in earning and avoiding debt while leaving plenty of room to optimize.

    That level of overwork inspired me to want to find another way. I had a few mentors teach me about saving and learning from mistakes, putting money to grow and cash flow instead of consuming it.

    I found ERE then MMM, Bogleheads, you, GoCurry, and Fientist and this is where I’ve learned the beliefs I now hold about saving hard now so I can reach a runaway point in my net asset value relative to my expenses while minimizing taxes and learning to enjoy life/satisfy my needs without excess financial costs.

    That was the easy part of learning, by reading, watching, and listening to wiser people.

    I probably have my deepest lessons from my mistakes though.

    I made a huge mistake loaning a friend something worth $2500, he payed back $500 and I learned not to loan money out. I dated a materialistic girl and realized spending wasn’t the way to a girl’s trust and respect. I bought VNR when gas prices dropped in Jan14 at 14/share, it spiked to 17 and I sold. Then it went down to 13 and I bought, then down to 11, I freaked and sold. Thank god I cut my losses-now it’s at .62/share… I got pressured into buying things I didn’t want, restaurants I didn’t care for and learnt from my mistakes more than almost anything. How to say no, what not to do (day trade, loan), who to stay away from

    Reply

  12. Basics (spend less than you earn, pay cash, no debts, save a lot, be frugal) from my dad, RIP Sr.

    Learning how to Invest and growing a FI mindset came way later, it’s a process I learned from FIRE blogs like yours, ERE, MMM and The Simple Dollar and it’s still ongoing.

    Reply

  13. Growing up, my father felt very strongly that discussions about finances were a private matter. There was never any discussion about percentages of earnings allocated to savings, needs, and wants. When I finished my undergraduate degree, he encouraged me to make double payments on my student loans because it would “pay down the principal, but we never broke out an ammortization table or anything. When I got my first full-time job with benefits, he told me I should put “the match” into the company 401K plan, but no discussion as to why. All good advice, but without much context.

    More than a decade later, a family friend mentioned MMM. Interesting posts, but through him I found you, dear JLcollins, and MadFientist, you providing the context for what is to be gained through the three behaviors (avoid debt, spend less than you earn, and invest the rest wisely) and the latter providing mathematical and graphical representations of the information contained in the dry IRS paperwork. I’ve also done a bit of research on my own since finding you both in an effort to tailor my saving/investing strategies to my situation, timeline, and resources.

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  14. Like so many others here, my folks didn’t actually sit me down and talk with me about aaaaaanything financial. Dad’s job put money into the account and mom paid bills from it. I learned very early not to pester mom when she was at the dining room table with a checkbook surrounded by printed sheets of paper and stamps and envelopes, uttering naughty words under her breath.

    That said, good habits were deeply ingrained. Driving and maintaining cars until the wheels fell off was the norm. I can count on one hand the number of combined hotel stays and airplane trips between when I was born and when I turned 18; “vacations,” as such, were always road trips and always either camping (building character) or staying with relatives (building community). My parents didn’t have a car with power windows until 2003… but pop splurged on an Apple II+ in 1981.

    I like to think they had their priorities in order, and on good days maybe I do too.

    Reply

  15. I learned it by watching Breaking Bad. Sadly, I can’t get mine to turn blue.

    Seriously, I think I figured it out by not having much of it growing up, while still having to work unpaid chores around the house and yard. Learned work ethic, then picked up a paper route and part time fast food jobs in high school.

    As for learning about money with respect to financial independence and foolish wastefulness, got that from MMM.

    Reply

  16. We started with MMM and White Coat Investor, and eventually found you too! By that time, your book was mostly review for us, but the information was so clear and user-friendly that I reviewed it in a blog post and my in-laws saw it. They read your book and narrowly escaped a predatory advisor. They now have the confidence to invest on their own. Thanks for all that you do!

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  17. Learning what I wanted for myself and family was the pivot to then learning more about money.
    Learning that I didn’t want to work forever helped to speed up that learning and accelerated our savings plan even more.
    Learning that you never stop learning about money (your fine book as a case in point!) keeps you on your toes and provides more fuel to keep the dreams alive.

    Enjoy Ecuador, it is cold and wet here in New England. But that’s detail you don’t need to know…

    Reply

  18. Really great to hear you on Scavenger Life this past week. I’m a part time scavenger (and Airbnb host) myself, and have been pleasantly surprised TWICE now to see you on their show.

    As for money, I’d say I learned about it from podcasts. I first stumbled upon Dave Ramsey when I was in my debt payment mode (I know the blogosphere isn’t a big fan of him, but he’s a good gateway drug into this world).

    My parents weren’t actually great with money, from what I can tell now, so my goal is just to avoid what they did and make sure I can get into to the finish line much faster than they did.

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  19. My Dad was an accountant and did tax returns during the tax season. He taught me about investing and stuff like the rule of 72. My mother was a homemaker but she was a saver. She was always put her money in savings account & CDs. I can remember my parents arguing about her investments. My father wanted to put the money into some mutual fund to earn a better rate of return.

    My father was an early proponent of no-load mutual funds (ETFs didn’t exist back then or weren’t well known). That was my preferred method of investing until a few years ago when ETFs became more cost effective.

    My parents grew up during the Great Depression so they knew poverty. In hindsight, they had an unhealthy relationship with money. My father (whose net worth at time of death was 7 digits) refused assisted living and home health care visits because “he couldn’t afford it.” Just his pension & social security covered 90% of the costs and he would have to live to be 289 years old to run out of money at that rate but he would rather die than spend money…and that’s what happened. My mother was even tighter with the money than my father.

    I think I live a modest lifestyle given my income & net worth but to my parents I was a spendthrift & wastefully extravagant. I will say that when it came to me (education in particular) they were more willing to spend money but spending money on themselves was akin to cutting off an arm. Ironically, when my father died my net worth was about 90% of his net worth. I had been able to accumulate almost as much in half the time. I don’t agonize over spending decisions that are less than 0.1% of my net worth. That cover 99% of the expenditures I have.

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  20. My father’s unwise use of credit cards showed me the pitfalls of debt. My parents didn’t argue much, but when they did, you can bet it was about money. My mother was much more frugal than my father. So I definitely learned a lot by observing them.

    I got my first job at age 14 (and have been working ever since), so that was a nice introduction to handling my own money. My parents sure weren’t going to buy me a car or the other things a teenager wants, so ‘get a job kid’.

    I didn’t really learn about investing until I was out of college and landed my first job. They offered a 401(k) with a nice match and that started my self-education on stocks, investing, savings, etc.

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  21. I learned the importance of money growing up. Although I tended to tune out the conversations, my parents would talk about money at the dinner table all the time when I was younger. Then, after I went to college and got a job, it was my parents who said I needed to start contributing to a retirement plan. It wasn’t until a couple years later when I really started to see my bank account growing that I decided that I needed to make sure I was being responsible with my money. I read and watched everything I could find on personal finance and stumbled upon the FIRE community. Now, I actively participate in those money conversations with my parents and even share new information with them that they didn’t even know. I love the freedom and flexibility this community has offered me, and I’m excited for the future.

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  22. A.M. Radio. I was feeling disgusted with FM and switched to AM out of curiosity. Someone was talking about saving and buckets. And having different buckets for different levels of saving. I started listening until I kept hearing the same questions over and over. Then I lucked into early retirement.

    I may have always been this way, too. When, as a kid, someone asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up I said I wanted to be retired. Course I also said I never wanted to grow up. I’m still working but I thinking I’ve managed to accomplish the second.

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  23. I like the point you made on the podcast about how becoming FI doesn’t mean you have to quit your job. “You don’t have to do anything”. That’s the whole point. Love it.

    HA HA, nice face punching pics from MMM! Someone on my blog started referring to you and him as the OGs (original gangstas) of FI. I think it’s fitting, don’t you think?

    Reply

    • OGs, eh? Not bad.

      But I prefer “The Godfather of FI” 😉

      Truth is, Jacob of ERE and JD Roth of Get Rich Slowly were both on the scene before MMM or me….

      Reply

  24. I learned a bit about money from home, and a lot more through reading. I tend to be a DIYer so when I want to learn about a subject I go read as much as I can about it (usually on the internet).

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  25. I learned about money from my Dad. He taught me the basics and taught me the basics of the stock market and money.

    When I got into college though that’s when I really started to take it a step further and learn from all the great financial blogs that were out there.

    I became obsessed with optimizing my finances and learned as much as I could. Even today I still try to gain an additional edge which is why I read so many blogs/books.

    At this point I feel like it’s diminishing returns but I still have fun doing it 🙂

    Reply

  26. I have learned the basics of savings, spend less than you make, shop for things and don’t buy on impulse… from a very young age, mainly from my mother.

    From there, I went on to learn about investments, indexing, vanguard… mainly from blogs and research papers. (Oh! and from my education and work in finance, I guess.)

    Then I went on to teach my parents about indexing and got them out of actively managed funds they had simply because their jobs suggested those funds…

    Now, I showed both my younger sisters the basics of personal finance and investing when they turned 18. They are in college now, no debt, saving, and working towards a life of financial independence. 🙂

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  27. I often think about this, have a bit of a serendipitous background:

    I grew up in the great city of Nashville, TN during the 90s. My school didn’t have a bus system, so my Dad usually always picked me up from school, on the radio he would always have it turned to 99.7 WTN.

    That time a day there was this guy on the radio talking about ‘being better than he deserved’ and talking about the pitfalls of debt. Not to mention the cool theme music of Pink Floyd’s “Money” and that awesome “Baker Street” saxophone.

    So thanks to Dave Ramsey starting “The Money Game” radio show in Nashville in the early 90s, I got money lessons in 15-20 minute increments (how long it took to from school to home) 5 days a week from a very young age. By the time I was in 4th grade or so I could answer the calls pretty much how Dave would answer the caller.

    My Dad also had a great impact, he retired at 48, he was an ex-military, blue collar union worker that had great success bootstrapping himself from growing up in a pretty lower class environment to making six figures a year….but always admitted he wished he knew more about how money worked. I must have taken it his advice to heart since I graduated with a degree in finance, first in my family to go to college!

    My goal is to beat him in retirement age!

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  28. Hi JL – I really enjoy your writing. I first learned about succeeding with money from my Dad. He was a career man at 3M, and I watched him buy company stock with his checks. He also gave me 3 shares when I was born. I then learned about failing with money from myself as I spent my teen years wasting my money on heavy metal CD’s and fast-food munchie binges. When I didn’t have any money after that era, I realized I wanted to learn more about what my dad was doing. I didn’t get wise with money until I started living a commission/independent-rep lifestyle, and investing my big checks. I started realizing, my spending habits were the only thing keeping me dependent on a job, and I could be as free as I wanted to be if I spent, worked, and invested wisely. A financial adviser helped my wife and I buy our first mutual funds, which opened my mind to new opportunities, and I just wanted to learn and get as free as possible. I love to work on projects I am passionate about, and help people. I just want to find my purpose in life, and let the spiritual world guide me to whoever I am supposed to be. Money helps me on my journey to find my purpose. Thanks for the fun, educational, quality, fast-paced writing that acts like a mirror that I can look into, and find a deeper version of myself. God bless, and look forward to reading more. Bill @ Wealth Well Done.

    Reply

  29. Unfortunately, I’ve mostly learned about money from the school of hard knocks. Neither of my parents were great role models, but I do owe them both a debt of gratitude for giving me a sense of self-actualization. I was raised to believe there wasn’t anything I couldn’t accomplish through logic, hard work and persistence. I was stupid enough to believe them. 🙂

    I’m doing my best to pass along more money knowledge to my kids. My oldest, who is 15, is showing interest in economics and personal finance. He seems to be a naturally frugal guy – so far building a NW more than $3K through savings of gifts, allowance and a willingness to delay gratification. He has stood on the brink of making several purchases (gaming computer, stereo system, etc..) and has backed away on his own. Last week we calculated that his $3K in savings would be worth $26K and with a $48 monthly contribution (60% of his current allowance) $85K by the time he is my age. That kind of blew his mind.

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  30. Well, I learned about money through bitter experience. Going to college was something that cost me thousands of dollars. Taking 7 years to exit with a 4 year degree was also not the smartest, from a financial point of view. I walked into a well-paid engineering job after school but even then I failed to learn my lesson. I promptly ran up even more debt. It was only about 5 years ago when I started paying attention to the ridiculous fees and charges and losses that one accumulates from poor ‘financial hygiene’! Since then, I have cleaned up my act and although I have a mortgage (and so am not technically debt-free), I have paid off over $100k of debt and build quite a serious net worth too. There is hope for everyone, I truly believe that! If I had any advice it would simply be that ‘a journey of a thousand miles starts with….a few small steps, and a few more, and a few more…just get in the habit of walking in the right direction. Don’t run, because you will quickly become short of breath’! (I’m sure wiser men have said the same thing in a more succinct manner…!)

    Reply

    • I can completely relate – Your learning experiences are similar to mine. I think your analogy and advice is perfectly succinct.

      Here’s another one. A financial journey is like a sailing passage. The wind blows from different directions, sometimes behind you making your journey an easy one, sometimes on the nose making it arduous. A good sailor plots his course to achieve the fastest and safest possible path for his particular vessel.

      Reply

  31. I learned about money on the streets. I watched those cocaine dealers and escort services.

    Then I learned more about money by watching people that I knew die. At death, you get to see what people really care about. Usually, that next breath, being pain free, or not having to wear a diaper is the most important thing in the world. After death, all the loving family fight over all your earthly possessions and never speak to each other again.

    then your wife goes and remarries another man. he has fun spending everything that you worked for and usually turns your wife into an alcoholic.

    This is how I learned about money. No one is getting out of here Alive!

    Reply

  32. I learned about money from the internet. My family was dirt poor. Dirt poor enough to know what that phrase literally means. Thankfully, I got recruited into an amazing college and got away from poverty. College couldn’t teach me how to be rich though. I found Get Rich Slowly when I was 22, and am so grateful for all that I’ve learned from him. I have made errors along the way, but thankfully the knowledge is there.

    Reply

  33. I learned about money through trial and error. I read several books as a late teen/early twenties, but even though I had the info in my headspace I never really applied it. I was always careful not to carry debt, but when we realized we were about to have to start rolling credit card debt over since we weren’t making enough to pay the bills… things started changing fast.
    Thats where the FIRE community comes in. I’m not particularly worried about quitting work entirely, especially now that I have my “dream job”, but making sure my family is taken care of whether I am around or not is a goal worth pursuing. The likes of you, MMM, Gocurrycracher, Madfientist, etc have all played a hand in my financial knowledge. I now hope to carry the torch and help others learn about and become wise with their money habits.
    Thanks for putting everything out there for us!

    Reply

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