7 Hidden Gems To Kickstart Your Journey To Early Retirement

7 hidden gems in the archives of The Money Habit with the highest potential to accelerate your financial independence goals.

Over the past two weeks, the blog has ballooned by by more than 50k additional readers. These readers have been going voraciously through the archives, accumulating over 300k page views. I was thinking the other day about how neat it is that folks can have completely different journeys flipping through past articles – you can tailor your interests to investing or saving, or focus on just the philosophy or satisfying your curiosity about what the day to day life of being retired is like.  

As I was thinking about this, though, it occurred to me that there were some articles that I really, really hoped everyone got the chance to read. I’d think, “Please let them read X. They can really kick butt and take names if they read X.” So I decided to make that a reality. Today I want to highlight some of the articles I think have some of the most potential for accelerating your progress towards financial independence, or which can at least provide you a sample of the kinds of techniques that, if not currently relevant for your stage in life, can be put to use at a later date.

The Foundation

If you haven’t had a chance to check out The Four-Step Blueprint to Retirement and How Much Do You Actually Need to Retire?, I highly recommend perusing those first. I liken them to the map of where you’re going..

You also want to make sure you have a system for measuring your finances. In Two Metrics You Need To Track For Financial Success, we cover the two metrics that have the greatest impact on your progress to building wealth as well as some free and low-cost options for how to create your own dashboard so you can see your progress every day, real-time. (Warning: It gets addictive and you’ll find your newfound enthusiasm translates to more momentum and more progress).

If the first two articles are the map, the metrics article is your compass for whether you’re move in the right direction.

Now that you’re all set on that front, we’ll get to some of my favorite gems in the archives.

7 Hidden Gems to Accelerate Your Financial Independence

1)  Being Retired Has Better Perks Than Being in the 1% – One of the biggest rebuttals to pursuing the early financial independence path is a fear of perceived deprivation. Won’t you miss the finer things in life if you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel to achieve a 60%+ savings rate? Not at all! Here are a few ways in which being retired compares favorably to blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as a working world fat cat.

2)  A Harvard Education In 10 Minutes – A philosophical article. $135k+ of Harvard tuition boiled down into one article of takeaways on what I learned about success from interacting with some of the most impressive people I met on campus.

3)  Move Your Money: A Rotation Strategy Worth $1000-$4000 Per Year – Having money often unlocks passive ways to snowball your wealth. Here is just one strategy I use to earn thousands of dollars each year leveraging the sign-up bonuses of different online brokerage houses. It takes as little as half an hour, and I explain how you can do it, too. Looking for others like this? Check out The Super Secret Source for The Best Mortgage Rates that will save me $146k over the life of my loan.

4)  All About Index Fund Investing: How To Generate 8-10% Returns – Over the course of my own FIRE journey, I’ve employed investment strategies which involve options, municipal bonds, leveraged bond funds, individual stock picking, actively managed mutual fund selection, and low-cost index fund investing. I talk about the research behind low cost index fund investing, and why it’s a good fit for 85%+ of the population, as well as when it isn’t. For those who want further related reading, check out The Ultimate Guide To Understanding Bonds.

5)  Netting High-Paying Jobs and 30%+ Pay Increases – If you’ve wondered why there is such wide disparity in the career trajectories of people in your field, this article may be for you. Aside from talent and ability, here are the things you can do to ensure the highest paying jobs and raises in your field.

6)  ABP: The Secret To Not Wanting Fancy Things – The activity I found which drastically reduced by desire for fancy, expensive things.

7)  You Can Pay Zero Income Tax In Retirement – Legally – Understanding tax code can cut your retirement timeline by years. Here’s a little-known structure for paying zero income taxes – legally –  in retirement.

What’s your favorite article – whether it was on this list or not – and why?