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Financial Samurai

Slicing Through Money's Mysteries

Don’t Forget To Look Up Sometimes

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Don't forget to have fun

Simple pleasures

Ok, I’m back from my 28-hour break! Thanks to so many for encouraging me to continue. Boy did it feel amazing to unwind after publishing my post on shutting this site down. Just the act of not responding to a single comment allowed me to recharge my empty battery by a couple percent. I’m feeling like a billion bucks now!

Oh, and around 888 of you told me I published my post on April Fools’ Day. What a coincidence! Well, not really. I would be a real fool to shut this site down when I already pre-paid for a discounted full year of hosting because I’m frugal like that. I also have financial obligations to a sponsor as you’ll see in the very next post.

Besides, ~74% of my traffic passively comes from search engines like Google. Therefore, I could theoretically not publish another word for at least a year before I notice a greater than ~26% decline in traffic. Go internet! You so amazing. 

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Step As Close To The Edge As Possible To Love Your Life More

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stepping-close-to-the-edgeIn my quest to make my life worse, to ultimately make life more enjoyable, I’ve continued to look for full-time work to test my resolve. Every time I step into an interview room, I change my mindset from a guy with financial freedom, to a guy who seriously needs to find work to pay his bills. It is sadistically exhilarating for me to get back into begging for money.

During the holidays, one potential employer locked me up in a conference room for six consecutive hours to interview and video conference call with eleven different people. Eleven! That’s ridiculous, especially since I didn’t have a break for lunch or a break to go to the rest room. Talk about a test of endurance – simultaneously being hungry, having to piss, and trying to charm a stranger. Freaking awesome!

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Financial Samurai Goals And Predictions For 2016

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Happy New Year everyone! It’s time for my goals and predictions for 2016. As always, the New Year brings a bunch of hope and excitement. Too bad I think 2016 is going to be a whole lot of nothing if you’re depending on the stock market or real estate market to boost your wealth!

I sincerely wish everybody reading Financial Samurai upgrades their side hustle engine from a two stroke to a rumbling V8 because we’re all going to need to do more. Every year end I put together a year in review post and follow up with an outlook of the new year. Thus, I’m presenting my goals and predictions for 2016 today.

Goals And Predictions for 2016

I’ve listed out 15 measurable goals I’d like to achieve, and I’ve also offered up five predictions for 2016. Some of you might spit out your milk with my last prediction, so it’s best you not eat anything while reading.



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The Best Personal Finance Articles Of 2015

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The Best Of Financial Samurai 2015Roughly 170 posts were published in 2015 on Financial Samurai. Each post takes anywhere from 3 – 10 hours to produce on average. Even after they are published, they are constantly edited for new insights from the community.

Every single post is written based off first hand experience and extensive research. I’m a big believer in writing from a point of authority. Pontificating at times is fun, but money is a little too important not to be taken seriously. If I don’t have enough knowledge on an interesting subject, I’ll invite someone who does to guest post. For new readers, you can check out my background here.

The Financial Samurai community is one of the financially savvy communities around. I strongly believe there is a positive network effect that pushes those in the community to do better. 45% of you make over $100,000 a year, 40% of you have saved over $500,000 for retirement, and 23% of you have a net worth over $1 million. You guys constantly provide new insights and take wealth building seriously. Keep up the great work!

Without further delay, here are the most popular posts by category. They are categorized by The Others, A Kick In The Pants, Retirement Dreaming, Invest For Glory, Real Estate Tycoon, Taxes Be Gone, and Personal. 

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Financial Samurai 2015 Goals In Review

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double-rainbow
Reviewing The Year With Optimism

This is my Financial Samurai 2015 goals in review. Every year since I started this site in 2009, I set goals and review goals.

For 2015, I created seven personal goals and five financial goals to achieve. I revisited these goals at the mid-year point to make sure I was on track, and now it’s time for a full on written review.

The writing in normal font was written in January 2015. The writing in italics is what I’m reflecting upon today. This is one long post so get your coffee ready!



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Are You A Morning Person Or An Evening Person? Discovering The Early Risers

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Get up early, get things done

Morning from A Year In Space

One of the ways to make more money is to work while others are sleeping or playing. You don’t have to be smarter than anybody else. You just have to do things other people aren’t willing to do, like get up before the sun rises to work on your side hustle.

Because in NYC I was required to get into the office by 5:30am, or in San Francisco to at least be awake by 6am to get smart before the US stock markets opened, I’ve found it relatively easy to carry on an early morning routine since leaving my day job in 2012. My body is accustomed to about six hours of sleep. So no matter when I go to bed, I’ll wake up ~6 hours later.

One evening, after a particularly long session of tennis, I passed out on the sofa at around 10:15pm while watching the TV program, The Blacklist. Like clockwork, I woke up at 3:30am and decided to write a post until 5am. I then wanted to use this opportunity to see who else was up during the wee hours of the morning. The easiest way to find out was to simply switch on my Uber driver app and drive from 5am until 7:00am.Inline image 1

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Why Is It So Hard To Ask For What We’re Worth?

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Let's Chat About Money by Colleen Kong Savage

The following is a guest post by Colleen Kong Savage, an illustrator and designer transitioning from SAHM for over a decade to trying to make it on her own as a freelancer. 

Why does asking for money make so many of us squirm? I’m not horrible at it—anymore—just not good. Money is the elephant in the room standing next to the cash cow. Some folks have no fear giving that pachyderm a happy slap on the rump, but others like me look the other way until we are forced to acknowledge it.

I started pursuing my freelance graphic arts business in earnest two years ago. However I have only one year experience asking for money because I had to spend my first year just asking for work. My preferred method of waiting for work to come to me had failed, so instead I sent job applications into a black hole—first as a midlevel graphic designer, then an entry level designer, and finally offering free labor as a 40-year-old intern, trying to get my foot in the door—to no avail. I advertised my illustration skills on job sites.

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Suck It Up Already! Suffering Is A Rite Of Passage

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Homeless Philippino boy studying under a McDonald's light

Homeless boy studying under a McDonald’s light

One of the side effects of reading a personal finance site is that you might end up getting a lot of anxiety, or FOMO, as the younger generation likes to call it. You read how much some folks are saving, how much they are making, and how early they’ve retired and fear you’re not doing enough!

It’s kind of like the advice from the sunscreen song, “Don’t read beauty magazines, they’ll only make you feel ugly.”

Well, I’d love for you to keep reading Financial Samurai, and I’d hate for you to feel bad for not doing enough with your finances. It’s part of the reason why I’ve got a specific category on Motivation to help encourage people to keep going. Just spending time reading a personal finance site is more than 98.5% of the population out there!

I was going to write a more empathetic article about how I understand it’s tough to get ahead. To not worry if you can’t max out your 401k because you’re unwilling to live more frugally. Or to just relax if you’re unwilling to work more than 40 hours a week to supercharge your wealth because life is meant to be enjoyed. Working on side hustles is hard!

But after going through a first draft of this article, I’ve changed my mind. Because we live in a first world country, I don’t understand why we complain so much.

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It’s OK To Love Money: Money Is Not Evil

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I love money said the bunny rabbit
“I love money,” admitted the bunny

Do you love money or wonder why some people do? Loving money is not a bad thing. It can actually help set you free, which I’ll discuss below. Despite my failed attempt to ascertain whether some people are just born with a frugal gene and thereby able to amass much greater wealth than the average person, that’s OK! 

I’ve found some great takeaways from the post, “The Unfair Competitive Advantage Of The Wealthy: The Frugal Gene,” such as:

  • The more people feel guilty about spending money on services they know they can easily do themselves, the more pissed off they will be if you say something. It’s therefore unwise to speak out against how people should spend their money. We all have our own desires, skills, and values. But as a personal finance writer, these are exactly the topics that make for robust discussion.
  • DIY can be seen as a side-hustle to make more money. Now there are zero excuse for folks who are unwilling to moonlight, start a side business, or create a product to generate passive income. You can simply increase the amount of DIY projects, like cleaning, to earn more money by saving money.
  • In any business transaction, question everything. Be thorough. Stand your ground, while listening to the other side’s point of view. Folks who let their emotions get the best of them in business usually lose. Get things in writing, make things clear, explain your situation, and go from there.
  • If you love money, you will probably be better at accumulating more money. You’ll do a lot more research on how wealthy people got rich, what to invest in the stock market, how to get a raise, and all sorts of money attracting stuff. You might even subscribe to a personal finance blog.

The love of money is something I’d like to discuss in this post because I finally read a comment from a reader who admits that he loves money!



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Some Things Money Can’t Buy – How About A USTA 5.0 Tennis Rating

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Everybody wants to be rich. At least, everybody wants to feel rich. However, there are some things money can’t buy. And one of those things is a USTA 5.0 tennis rating.

For all you personal finance and tennis fans out there, this post discusses one man’s rise to 5.0 in 2015 from 4.0 in 2008. Today, at 44, I still have a USTA 5.0 tennis rating. However, I long to get back down to 4.5 and have more fun.

Playing at the 5.0 level gets pretty brutal at my age, especially as the USTA seem to be letting more and more young Division I college players compete at 5.0. I believe a USTA 4.5 level rating is the sweet spot for fun and competition.

Getting To USTA 5.0 Tennis As An Aging Athlete

One of the most comical, yet sad things every aging athlete must face is that we no longer are what we once were. Our minds are there, willing us to keep fighting, but our bodies don’t cooperate. This is a post about perseverance.

At the beginning of 2015, I highlighted several personal goals in a post. One of those goals was to win just one USTA 5.0 rated tennis match. I had just gotten bumped to 5.0 after being a 4.5 for the past four years. It was a big surprise since I never believed that I belonged.

To give you an idea of the caliber of players in the 5.0+ USTA league, here are some bios:

* Cal team captain in 1998 who played No. 5 singles and owned a 25-6 match record that year.

* No. 6 singles player for USF in 2013. That’s right, he’s only 24 years old.

* Captain for UC Santa Cruz, and 2009 Division III National Champions.

* All-American in singles and doubles at Stanford for four years.

* Hall-of-famer at William & Mary with a 70-40 singles record.

In other words, these guys are legit. Winning a singles match against some of these young bucks is impossible. I’d lose 1-6, 1-6 if I’m lucky. Winning a doubles match at the USTA 5.0 level is almost impossible without a good partner. 



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