$83 a month for Internet? Is it a combined cable TV package? If not, that seems really high to me.
How I became financially independent in 5 yrs
- Thread starter Onward
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Spent most of last 20 years where food, housing and vehicle was provided, 7 day work weeks. Monthly expenditures around $250, cigs coffee, chips and toilitries.
So far this year I have given away 70% of what I have made helping others,
most of it was not asked for but just because I could. I went about 15 years without medical insurance but now have it through work for free. Vacations have been extreme which would blow the cost of 10K a year living out of thye water.
I did go 18 months without a day off and slept on a foam pad on the floor at work. Wages have not always been that great but coming out of a divorce almost anything was fine just to get away from the ill feelings.......
So far this year I have given away 70% of what I have made helping others,
most of it was not asked for but just because I could. I went about 15 years without medical insurance but now have it through work for free. Vacations have been extreme which would blow the cost of 10K a year living out of thye water.
I did go 18 months without a day off and slept on a foam pad on the floor at work. Wages have not always been that great but coming out of a divorce almost anything was fine just to get away from the ill feelings.......
laurinsane
Dryer sheet aficionado
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I could definitely live off of lentil soup and a very simple diet. Not sure about the mercury in the tuna fish these days. It all depends on your level of comfort. The bottom line is, the less you are willing to live with, the faster you will reach FI.
Haven't gotten into reading the whole blog but I'm sure I will.
Also to comment on earlier posts. I loved RDPD. Just gets you thinking about money in a different way. I don't care if Rich Dad was fictional or real. The concepts get you thinking. How can I make my money work for me instead of me working for my money?
Haven't gotten into reading the whole blog but I'm sure I will.
Also to comment on earlier posts. I loved RDPD. Just gets you thinking about money in a different way. I don't care if Rich Dad was fictional or real. The concepts get you thinking. How can I make my money work for me instead of me working for my money?
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Onward
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Lately I've been really impressed with Jacob's blog. It's one of my favorites. Sometimes I think he's a little too sure of himself, but I can easily overlook that.
Major Tom
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Thanks to this forum, I discovered Jacob's blog a few days ago and have been glued to it. His assertion that you should aim to keep your housing costs in the range of 200-400/month per person threw me a bit until I realized that he's talking about just the land rent and not including the cost of their RV.
Now I don't feel quite so bad for my monthly rent of $640 including utilities in the Bay Area (in a nice house). I'm still looking for lower though. Not yet ready to move to another city.
Now I don't feel quite so bad for my monthly rent of $640 including utilities in the Bay Area (in a nice house). I'm still looking for lower though. Not yet ready to move to another city.
bow-tie
Full time employment: Posting here.
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I think you have to be incredibly sure of yourself to pull off what he's doing. It explains all of us working longer to stash a bigger nut to live off of. I don't have the cajones to try what he's doing... trying to find some sort of compromise.
I agree, the book does indeed get you asking those questions.
Of course, the book would have been much more useful if it had actually offered a few substantive answers to those questions, rather than just a bunch of fluff, rhetoric, and hand-waving. Putting aside the nonsensical assertion that real estate values will rise indefinitely (which looks downright comical in the current post-meltdown economic context), and the outright illegal advice (openly advising readers to engage in liar-loans to obtain mortgages for investment properties they wouldn't otherwise qualify for), the book is frighteningly short on the details regarding how to actually implement "making your money work for you."
The best thing I can say about RDPD is that it gets people thinking about their finances. Kiyosaki's credibility took a further nosedive when the "Rich Dad" conference series bearing his name was exposed as a scam, luring people into overpriced training and encouraging participants to rack up tens of thousands of dollars on their credit cards to pay for training and investments, even going so far as to provide people with scripts they can use when calling their bank to obtain higher credit limits!
The jury is still out on whether Kiyosaki is doing more harm than good in the personal finance world.
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I learned the hard way that this point is extremely important.
They're just training to be adults.
I would go further and say it gets people thinking about the different ways income can be generated (the quadrant). To financially uninitiated people (like me, back then) who equate pay with a j*b, RDPD can be an eye-opener.
IMO, Kyosaki is a shameless capitalist and marketer, but I have to say his book changed my thinking in some very beneficial ways.
No, I really do mean the total rent. You could add the depreciation cost of the RV to the rent we pay if you want to. We bought the RV in cash, so the number to add would depend on the sales price and how long we stay here.
This limit is pretty hard to meet in CA although it's easier in NorCal up near OR. Extreme measures are required in the bay area.
We used to pay $660 in rent for a two-bedroom house when we lived in Indiana---$330/person. California is very expensive, but it is easily possible to find $200-400/month/person places in other states.
Heck, in Honolulu that's only $390/month, it's under cover, and it's just a 10-minute walk from the beach... don't have to wear a wetsuit, either.
I think Jacob has established a gold standard for ER accumulation & distribution that would have Joe Dominguez & Amy Dacyczyn gnashing their teeth in envy. Think of Jacob's techniques as a gigantic Chinese buffet with all-you-can-eat pricing. There's an ice cream machine in the corner and a huge pan of steamed broccoli in another corner, but you're going to put your meal together using a little from everything. A few may have the commitment and discipline to reach the five-year goal, but others will take a little longer to get there.
I suspect a lot of the commitment is inspired by the workplace "environment"...
Incidentally, I just published a book about it a few days ago. I see it's discussed elsewhere on this forum, so I hope it's okay to link to the thread.
REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
I suppose it's just a coincidence you don't post for three months and then when your book is published, you just happen to drop by and mention it... 
Nah, there's a reasonable explanation. I started my own forums in July and have been busy there. I came back here when I got a pingback from the other thread. Then I started looking around and saw there has been some development in this thread since the last time. If I hadn't gotten the pingback I must admit I probably wouldn't have dropped in. Too busy to keep up
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Onward
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I'm happy to see you here and hope you will hang around.
Bestwifeever
Moderator Emeritus
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Nah, there's a reasonable explanation. I started my own forums in July and have been busy there. I came back here when I got a pingback from the other thread. Then I started looking around and saw there has been some development in this thread since the last time. If I hadn't gotten the pingback I must admit I probably wouldn't have dropped in. Too busy to keep up
Are your forums generating some income for you? That would be nice.
Oh yeah! Last month I made $45 in ads on the forums (and $112.5 on the blog). This month is not looking so hot (yet?).
A few of my blog readers had been pushing for creating the forums for quite a while (actually in part because they felt their questions/interests didn't quite fit in on this forum ... "What you want to turn the A/C up to 85F to save money?! Crazy..") and I was holding back on the software installation because I didn't want the hassle. Then I finally gave up---more hassle in saying "not yet" than in installing the software. It turned out to be pretty easy to install. The good thing about it is that people can get to cover a topic without waiting for me to bring it up on the blog so they can discuss it in the comments.
A few of my blog readers had been pushing for creating the forums for quite a while (actually in part because they felt their questions/interests didn't quite fit in on this forum ... "What you want to turn the A/C up to 85F to save money?! Crazy..") and I was holding back on the software installation because I didn't want the hassle. Then I finally gave up---more hassle in saying "not yet" than in installing the software. It turned out to be pretty easy to install. The good thing about it is that people can get to cover a topic without waiting for me to bring it up on the blog so they can discuss it in the comments.
haha
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
This can be a breeze in high cost areas too. One illegal rents an apartment, then his 5 buddies move in with him. Sleep on the floor, share costs and $1450 rent doesn't seem steep at all, it is easily within your parameters.
I know of houses in Seattle where eight people share a $2000 rent, do the math, easily passes the test.
The rest of us are unbelievable spendthrifts.
Ha
Sea Kayaker
Recycles dryer sheets
I'd like to try my hand at ultra frugality one day... lets say two years for a start. I have 5 acres of property on an island on the B.C. coast. Could have a big garden... one can simply row out past the kelp beds at slack tide to catch crab, salmon, cod. Lots of berries in the summer, fruit trees galore. Could have chickens as well. The concept is so appealing... yet I still awake every morning at 5am to a screeching alarm clock and commute into the meat grinder that is my career. I think (I hope) I am close to an epiphany. The ability to radically change my life is right there if I have the courage to do it.
Shucks, my grandfather did it with a very early edition of this book:
Amazon.com: Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management (9780486209746): Maurice G. Kains, J. E. Oldfield: Books
Keep in mind that my father spent most of his formative years creating plans to escape from this idyllic vision.
haha
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
These things appear to run in waves. Big New England based back to the land movement in the 30s, another big hippie-based one in the 70s and now apparently another 40 years has a new group eager to do this. If someone is interested, it might help to find some of the magazine articles and such from the 70s that tell the tales of the not so fun events that sometimes came down. Adds a little balance.
Ha
Ha
My guess is that these movements are formed at peak market (20s, 60s, and 90s) through a disillusion with the exuberant state of affairs. They become visible about a decade later. For example, 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago, frugal living was widely shunned. Now it's getting popular and those who have been practicing all along become visible as forerunners and leaders. Popularity is simply determined by whatever way the middle leans. My guess is that it's the middle that breaks eventually because they never fully understood the lifestyle they tried to adopt.
More stuff in Robert Prechter's books.
More stuff in Robert Prechter's books.
haha
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I had older friends who did this in the 30s. They had a good time, but they were truly wealthy and heading down to NY or Boston for an occasional weekend was do-able. I also saw a lot of it first hand in the late 60s and 70s. My overall impression was that people who went into the marijuana business did OK, for the rest it was a very hard slog. And particularly for the women, although the 70s back to the landers were strongly patriarchal and women seemed to get the short end pretty frequently anyway.
A terrific novel about California No-Cal 70s hippies who head to Alaska is Drop City by T.C. Boyle. You find yourself really caring for the characters.
IMHO, adequate cash flow seems to smooth life for many and perhaps even most people.
Ha
Purron
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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While the super frugal/on the road lifestyle may work for younger folks, I have serious doubts this would provide a secure future in our older years. I should mention we are influenced by seeing loved ones decline in health and ability.
DH and I are homebodies, so are not inclined to take this path. Living in a $300 a month place, even in the cheapest areas, frankly doesn't appeal to us. Even if we wern't the stay at home types, I'd have concerns regarding the long term viability of such a lifestyle.
Just an opinion. I do find this topic interesting and can surely pick up some tips.
DH and I are homebodies, so are not inclined to take this path. Living in a $300 a month place, even in the cheapest areas, frankly doesn't appeal to us. Even if we wern't the stay at home types, I'd have concerns regarding the long term viability of such a lifestyle.
Just an opinion. I do find this topic interesting and can surely pick up some tips.
This got me thinking: isn't this "escape planning" usually pretty common, whether you grow up in the city, the suburbs, or the country?
