There’s a simple personal finance mantra everybody should consider following: one spouse, one car, one house, one job. The idea is that if you stick with one of everything, you’ll maximize its usage, minimize extraneous expenditure, and live happily ever after.
We get in trouble when we want too much.
But one of everything can get quite boring. Thus, the divorce rate is ~50%. The average car ownership is six years. The median home ownership is seven years. And the average person job hops every three years.
I want to review each item to see what’s truly ideal. I suspect the answer is different for everyone. Feel free to share your thoughts below.
A large financial windfall can either be a joyous occasion or a stressful occasion. It all depends on how well you plan. Because it’s generally easier to spend than to save, I always recommend folks sit on their cash for at least a month before making any moves.
Washington D.C. based 
Now that I’m a father, one of the first things I did was call up my life insurance provider to review how much life insurance I have and go through the various term life insurance options.
It’s a worthwhile goal to be great at something – 
Before I 
One of the biggest benefits of financial freedom is the ability to spend more time helping other people. Although writing about building wealth is useful and donating money is good, adopting or fostering a child reaches a next level of kindness. 
Knowledge brings about wealth and power. If this wasn’t the case, you wouldn’t have families spending $20,000+ a year for their children 
After hearing direct feedback from about 80 of you through social media, 
Like many of you, I’m frugal to a fault. For 13 years after college, I saved 50% – 70% of my income partially due to 
For the record, I believe the best holding period for real estate is forever. By not selling, real estate owners ride the unstoppable inflation wave and never have to pay any onerous commissions and long term capital gains tax. But forever is a long time.
As a 40 year old, I’m an old first time dad. I’m reminded of my old age every time I bend over to pick up my little one from the bassinet. My lower back aches and my knees sometimes dangerously buckle if they bend too far. Oh to be 25 again!
Now that the economy is on fire, all Americans should be rejoicing in their wealth, right? Wrong! Only 52% of Americans own any stocks according to a recent Gallup poll and only about 63% of Americans own real estate according to the Census Bureau, down from a high of about 69% in 2004. Given these figures, the bull market has left a lot of people behind.
From a personal finance writer’s point of view, I found a pot of gold with 
Everything in personal finance seems to go around in circles.
Part of the reason why I bought a smaller house in 2014 was because I wasn’t willing to rent my own house for the market price at that time of ~$8,500/month. The price to rent my house had grown from about $5,000/month when I first bought it in 2005. If I had a couple kids and a penchant for throwing tons of money away on rent, then maybe I would have stayed.
If you plan to get married, then you better not get divorced. Otherwise, what’s the point? You’ll end up wasting money on lawyers. You’ll absolutely disrupt your finances. And if you have kids, they might have to go to therapy in order to make better sense of the cruel realities of the world.
One of the most popular posts on Financial Samurai is 
Making a small fortune is really fun. You can do so more easily if you can correctly predict a trend. Not only will you earn a much higher return on your investment, you’ll also suffer less anxiety and grief.
A couple FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) friends and I were having some beers the other night when we got to discussing what were the things that most helped us achieve financial independence at a relatively early age. Here were some of the responses:
One of the 
The following is a guest post by Steve, a 40-something year old reader and consulting client who is currently traveling the world with his family after a 20 year career in mass media. So many times we’re just too paralyzed to make a change because we just can’t see a path forward. It’s these stories that keep me so motivated!
Debt is an interesting animal. Most of us get into debt because we WANT something we cannot afford. We want a private school education so we borrow $50,000 to learn something we can learn for free on the internet. We want to live a fabulous lifestyle in our 20s so we put everything from fine dining to designer clothes on our credit cards. We want to stop paying rent, so we leverage up 4:1 to own a property that will crush our finances if we need to sell in a down market.
Although I’ve said that 
Everything is relative when it comes to money. If we all earn $1 million dollars a year and have $5 million in the bank at the age of 40, none of us are very wealthy given all our costs (housing, food, transportation, vacations) will be priced at levels that squeeze us to the very end. As such, we must first get an idea of what the real average net worth is in our respective countries, and then figure out the average net worth of the above average person!
In my post about 
If you want to achieve 
One of my biggest concerns about early retirement was running out of money. What if there was another massive correction in the stock market? What if my rental properties went vacant for an extended period of time? What if Financial Samurai died? What if I accrued unexpected medical expenses? What if I underestimated how much I needed to be happy? Such worrisome thoughts can paralyze even the best of us.
It took me 16 years to build a portfolio that generates over $200,000 a year in income. It took only four years to build the same income blogging. Why?
I play tennis mainly at two different locations.
With the average savings rate below 5%, a median 401(k) of only $110,000, and an average 401(k) balance at retirement age 60 of around $230,000, many Americans are financially screwed as of 2017. Just do the math yourself. Add the average Social Security payment per person of $18,000 a year to a 4% withdrawal rate on $230,000 and you get $27,200 a year to live happily until you die at 85. That’s clearly not enough!
I’m always looking for new investment ideas due to excess cash flow. All of you who spend less than you make should have the same problem. But given we are near all-time highs in the stock market, good ideas are harder to come by.
Let me paraphrase an insightful passage I read that describes the difference between someone with a welfare mentality versus someone with an 