The One Year Marathon

Focus is crucial to achieving financial independence.  If you are early in this game, I have a suggestion.  Take a year and just go after it. See how much money you can save if you (and your family) make a point to focus intently on jumpstarting your finances.  Turn it into a game.

Are You A Genius Investor? Concentrate on Your Career

As noted before, most of us aren’t the Babe Ruth of investing. Therefore, we should just buy broad-based index funds (or ETFs) and move on with life. But there is another, subtle reason why index funds are the way to go for most people. Career Opportunity Costs When you spend a ton of time researching […]

Gamify Your Financial Life

Gamification is all the rage in the startup world. Trying to get in shape? Gamify with FitBit and compete against your friends. When I first started this website, I gamified the early stages by turning the process of creating content for MightyInvestor.com into a personal challenge

Unhook From The Spending Matrix – Understanding “Memetic Desire”

Have you ever heard of Memetic Desire, a concept developed by the French philosopher René Girard? I’m guessing not ;). Here’s a quick YouTube clip on the topic, and here’s a Wikipedia entry that goes a bit deeper. The basic idea is that humans develop their sense of desire by watching someone else desire something. […]

Checklist Manifesto – Can A Simple Checklist Revolutionize Your Financial Life?

Have you heard of the book Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande? It’s written by an elite hospital surgeon who found that using simple checklists can dramatically reduce errors in a hospital setting. The quintessential example of checklists being deployed effectively is aviation. Do you want your pilot skipping the pre-flight checklist and just winging it? […]

Bold Action, Thoughtful Frugality….

Simple Tastes

Sure, Practice Mindfulness – But What About Ambition In Life

We hear a lot these days about mindfulness, meditation, living in the present, etc.  These are all great.  Truly.  They have value.  But here’s a word that seems to have fallen by the wayside: ambition. It’s not polite to speak openly about ambition in life.  And there may be good reasons for this (see the […]

You Can Have an Amazing Life with Very Little Money

Why? Because, you can: get free books from the library. create an entire blog for free on WordPress.com (though spending $5 a month to host your own website is better). take walks for free. brew your own coffee or tea and enjoy it for almost free. pray and commune with transcendent reality for free. cook […]

The Summation Of Decisions

Your life will eventually be the summation of a lifetime of decisions, both large and small. A massive percent of the diseases afflicting Americans are related to lifestyle.  You see those people who are stiff, brittle, and limping along at 70?  This is to a large degree a function of a lifetime of decisions. What […]