.What Are You Willing To Do For Financial Independence?

By Barry Choi

 I’m honestly getting really tired of all the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) blogs, articles, and people out there. Don’t get me wrong, I think FIRE is amazing, and if you can achieve it, that’s great.

My problem is that in the last little while, FIRE has been making headlines because of people who have unique situations.

It’s easy to achieve FIRE if you have a high income and reside in an area where there’s a low cost of living, but for most people, that may not be the case.If you want to achieve FIRE, you can take a few steps to help you get there. You may not retire in your 30’s or 40’s, but I would say if you can retire a few years early without having to worry about money, you’re probably doing alright.

Full disclosure, I’m looking to retire early myself, but there’s just no way I’m doing what some people did to get there. What are You Willing to do for Financial Independence?

.More Money, Less Happiness: When Money Makes You Miserable

By  Michael Laurence — August 14 2019

More money, less happiness: When money makes you miserable

Money, the conventional wisdom says, doesn't buy happiness. Modern psychology seems to back this up, with studies suggesting that beyond an income of $75,000, money doesn't make you any happier.

This conclusion is simultaneously obvious and counter-intuitive.

As an abstract principle, most us acknowledge that money doesn't buy happiness. But, at the same time, we all want more of something material — a nicer house, nicer vacations, the ability to live in a certain neighborhood or eat at fancier restaurants — that we think would make us happier. (If you're J.D., you think maybe season tickets to your favorite team might make you happier.)

So, we're left with a conundrum. Or, rather, a series of conundrums: Does income in excess of $75,000 make us happier? And if not, why not?

.Which Financial Advice Should You Trust?

By  J.D. Roth — published 19 August 2019 (updated 22 August 2019)

Commenting on a recent article, Carmine Red asked an excellent question:

How do you evaluate the financial advice you get from other sources? Specifically, how do you decide if some piece of advice is for you, or if you should discard some adjacent advice. Is there an amount of pick-and-choose?

GRS definitely doesn’t seem like a dogmatic 100% one-way-of-doing things site, so I’d love to hear about the critical thinking you employ, and that I’m sure we can all use a little of since we’re getting bombarded by financial “do this!” or “don’t do this” instructions from so many different dimensions.

Carmine is right: GRS is not dogmatic. From the start, my top admonition has been “do what works for you”. By this I mean that you should test financial advice to see if it works for you and your situation.

There's little (if any) advice that applies to 100% of people in 100% of cases. Life is messy. Money is messy.

So, how can you decide whom to trust? How can you evaluate a piece of financial advice to decide whether it has merit? And if the financial advice does have merit, how can you tell if it's right for your life?

Today, let's take a deep dive into this question. Let's explore how to evaluate all of the financial advice you get — from the internet, from television, and in real life.