I loved seeing this post on Business Insider featuring five different real-life examples of house hacking House hacking is renting out part of your home to cover your mortgage and potentially even make a profit. In the post, you’ll see owners who took on roommates for spare bedrooms or bought a duplex to live in one unit and rent out the other. One owner renovated an unfinished basement to rent out even more space. One couple had six-figures in student loans and worked low-paying social work jobs but still managed to house-hack into a situation that cut their mortgage payment [...]

In 2008, Dr. Regina Lark was laid off from her role as Director of the extension program at UCLA. A PhD in women’s history, Lark had worked in the university system since she graduated and was 50 years old when she was laid off. Yet, instead of finding another role in academia, Lark founded A Clear Path, a professional organizing firm based in Los Angeles, which now has 13 employees, seven figures in revenue and 15 years in business. I love Lark’s story as a real-life example of a late-career pivot. Too many late-career professionals assume there’s an expiration date [...]

According to a press release from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (known as the IPPYs), 500,000 new books are published each year in the US alone, with millions of new titles worldwide. The pitch I received also highlighted that 80% of people have considered writing a book! 80% seems really high, given that Statista calculates the mean number of books read in the US at just over one per month per person – and that includes e-books and audiobooks. Still, I often hear anecdotally that being a published author is a bucket list item. This hedge fund lawyer by day/ [...]

Analysis of Google search data, courtesy of luxury real estate platform RubyHome, shows that searches for ‘HELOC’ – the acronym for “home equity line of credit” -- more than tripled in the United States as of July 2023. This is the highest level of search interest in internet history for the topic. The report suggests that the increased interest is due to people looking for relief from rising costs and a buffer in case of recession. Here are three possible downsides to having a HELOC and corresponding ways to ensure you are using a HELOC the right way. Downside 1: [...]

I read a lot of personal finance, but somehow missed Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money when it debuted in 2020. I learned of Housel when a blog of his was spotlighted by Todd Tressider at Financial Mentor, one of my favorite personal finance resources: Is the goal financial, or is it just to become independent? Do you want more money, or do you want to no longer need to think in terms of money? Todd Tressider Tressider then linked to a Housel post on The Highest Forms of Wealth, a short but powerful piece that made me want to [...]

Becoming a digital nomad can be a shortcut to achieving financial independence because of geo-arbitrage – earning in a high-paying geography, while living in a lower-cost base. We bought a property in Costa Rica to secure that lower-cost base (see our budget for a month-long stay), while retaining predominately US clients paying US rates. Our move to Jacksonville, FL is less extreme geo-arbitrage, but still a good example given the significant cost savings compared to our previous expenses in New York City. If you’re looking for location independent jobs, so you can try geo-arbitrage for yourself, accountant is the top [...]

The other day I received a press release highlighting what Elon Musk could have bought instead of Twitter. One of my favorite perks in writing for Forbes.com is that I get story pitches from business owners, PR firms, authors and others looking for coverage. Much of what I see isn’t relevant to my beat or newsworthy, but sometimes I get an interesting survey or an advance copy of a book that is worth covering (I highly recommend The Risk Paradox!). While it is eye-popping to consider what Musk could have purchased instead of Twitter, it is an important reminder that [...]

After posting to Costa Rica FIRE multiple times each month for over four years, I resolved to take a break in fall 2022. However, I ended up taking off much more time than one season -- my last blog post was almost a year ago! As a career coach, I see these longer-than-expected gaps pretty regularly, when a job search or career pivot takes longer than expected. It’s one reason why achieving financial independence is so important. 1 - Financial independence as disability insurance In my case, I was shifting my writing focus to my Forbes.com column, but once I [...]

I am a runner. Not a fast runner in the grand scheme of things, but a runner nonetheless, who enjoys the challenge of distance running and particularly the marathon distance. My running log goes back to Dec 26 1998, and in the intervening years I've covered 13,150 miles over 2,547 runs. That includes 218 races of every conceivable distance between the mile and the marathon, with a few triathlons mixed in for good measure. Three summers ago, I even ran 31 days in a row. My latest running feat is completing 2 marathons over the course of 15 days. Completing [...]