Tag: stewardship
-
v1.01.01 Ch1 – Think About Money to Forget About Money
We’re going to spend a lot of time thinking about and dealing with money in this volume. You might get the impression that I’m advocating that you think about money all of the time. I am not. I advocate that you think intensely about money all of the time for a short period of time, in…
-
maintain a high savings rate
Action Save most of your income, instead of spending most of it. Discussion Conventional personal finance advice is to save 10% of your income, and spend the rest. This advice comes from within the paradigm of consumerism, which is the fundamental idea that quality of life scales linearly with consumption as measured in dollars spent.…
-
don’t keep a budget
Action A ‘budget’ here is defined as a list of maximum spending limits for your categories of expenses. This pattern is simply to intentionally not have a list of spending limits that you consciously adhere to, the opposite of pattern keep a budget. Discussion Not keeping a budget doesn’t imply that you don’t also have…
-
keep a budget
Action For every category of expense (food, transportation, shelter, clothing, entertainment, etc), decide the maximum amount of money you want to spend on that category per month. Then track your expenses, attempt to spend no more than the budgeted amount, and compare how you did every month. Discussion Some people find it easy to come…
-
track all expenses
Action Record every expense. Discussion In terms of simplicity/impact ration, this is one of the heaviest hitting patterns. Note that this pattern is not keep a budget. This pattern by itself doesn’t tell you how much to spend. It just requires you to track – and therefore know – how much you do spend. It’s…
-
a very low cost of living is magic
The Issue Spending money requires earning money, which requires exchanging labor in a job of some sort. The Response Aim to spend very little money while maintaining or increasing your subjective quality of life. The less money you spend, the less time you need to spend earning money, the more time you have available to…
-
have a cash buffer
Action Always keep a few weeks of living expenses on hand, and several months if not several years of cash accessible on short notice without penalties. Discussion When the tide goes out is when you discover who isn’t wearing pants.
-
spend less than 10k a year
$10,000 a year is $833 a month. It’s below the federal poverty level, and as such you could earn more than twice your expenses and pay no income tax. You’d also likely qualify for subsidized health insurance in the US. For an 85% Savings Rate, your annual income would need to be $66,667 Here’s a…