This is the eighth year chasing FIRE, my financial freedom retire early journey. It turns out that the number eight is pretty significant according to Wikipedia. In Pythagorean numerology, the number 8 represents victory, prosperity and overcoming. It is considered a lucky number in Japan. In Chinese culture, eight gives an idea of growing prosperous, because the letter (八) broadens gradually. This is very fitting because after the odd 7th year that I had, this one has turned out to be very different. As I move into the second half of my FIRE plan it feels like I am picking up speed. The ..read more

How risky are you with your money? If you are not risky at all then you are definitely losing money. When you aren’t investing your money I can guarantee you that you are losing money. If you invest your money carelessly then I can guarantee you that you will lose it too. Lets have a look at 7 ways to double your money or lose it. There are many things that you can do with your hard earned salary. You can spend it on something or you can just keep it safe. If you are a saver you can save it. Investors will tell you to invest it. In between those options there are hundreds of other options ava ..read more

I have a love hate relationship with cars. I love owning them and driving them but I hate how they destroy wealth. Some of my worst financial mistakes have been buying cars. When I started on my journey to financial freedom I realised that I had spent a lot and lost a lot of money on cars. The problem was I really enjoyed owning them. So I needed to find a way to own them without losing a fortune. I wish I knew how to buy a car and save money. I am the first one to tell you to avoid cars in the first place. I just love bicycles and the idea of car free cities. There are many places in the wor ..read more

My favorite time of the year is the beginning of every year. It is a time of such positivity and energy. I try to make full use of it by making my plans for the new year and setting some goals to achieve. My second favorite time of the year is the end of each year. I like the end because it gives me time to look at my financial freedom plan review and see what I have accomplished. But it is not always like that. The truth is some years its my favorite time because I just want to see the back of the past year. These times are few and far between but 2021 was such a year. If you want to go anyw ..read more

The title of this book is what drew my attention at first. The fact that Warren Ingram was the author was also an endorsement that it would be good. Global investing has become more and more important and luckily more and more accessible. I say accessible but not easy. That is because investing by itself can be complicated. But when you add in different countries, markets and laws then it can become very complicated. So Global investing made easy is a very appealing title. Initially when I started reading I was disappointed. I don’t know what I was thinking but I was expecting a more detailed ..read more

I have never thought that you can beat professional investors. The main reason for my thinking is that you are an amateur and they are professionals. It just doesn’t make sense that an individual doing this part-time with limited resources can beat a professional investor with a degree and all the resources and the time to pick stocks. The other reason why I didn’t think an individual investor can beat an institutional investor is that nobody knows what will happen in future and so picking individual stocks is a gamble in the end. What we do know is that the market as a whole will increase ov ..read more

There are various stages on the journey to financial freedom. We all start with very little to no freedom. Then our amount of freedom increases as we progress through the six levels of financial freedom. Most people start the journey without even realising it. Or they start on it to have money to spend to buy the things they want and do what they want to. The problem is that they don’t ever get to the finish. Instead they get distracted and lose their way. Usually because they are unaware of the path and the levels of financial freedom. They end up completing part of the path but not the full ..read more

The stock market carries risk and so stock picking is a gamble even for the best. The future is unknown and nobody can predict the future. Picking individual stock out of thousands of others, to be the one that performs the best, is a gamble. There are only a handful of people who have been or are good at picking stocks. The best of the best pick stocks based on their “proven” method. If this method was so good then they would only pick winning stocks all the time and have no bad performers. Yet when you look at their portfolio you find that some perform and some don’t. So that means that it ..read more

At school we are taught a traditional view that retirement is a certain age when you are old and cannot work anymore. The assumption is that you will work your whole life to get to this point. Once you reach retirement you have saved enough money to live off without working or the state will provide for you. We need to redefine a new retirement of financial freedom instead of employment jail. The school system and our society is training you to be an employee for life. The idea is that you must work for your whole life until you reach the retirement age of 60-65 and can’t work anymore. Then y ..read more

It doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you earn. You need to maximize your tax free account (TFSA) to save thousands. This is one investment that every single person must have. It should be the first investment that you open and the last one that you close.  Imagine how rich you would be if you paid no tax. Well, it is possible with a TFSA. Many countries have this including South Africa. Everybody benefits except the taxman It sounds like it’s a savings account but it is not. Even though it’s called a tax-free savings account a better description is Tax-free investment account ..read more