Welcome To The Financial Samurai Forum (FSF)!

Financial Samurai Forum

Due to popular demand, I've launched the Financial Samurai Forum where the community can come and share their thoughts in four main categories:

  • Financial Independence
  • Real Estate Investing
  • General Investing
  • Career Growth & Exit Strategies

Financial Samurai has been up since 2009 and I'm proud to say we've got some of the most interactive and intelligent personal finance enthusiasts around. Just look at the Most Commented Posts on the right sidebar as evidence.

I'm impressed with the continued high quality of discourse over the years. Many of you have said that you've learned so much from other readers due to their different perspectives. So have I. It's important that all of us find our blind spots on our path to financial freedom. Further, being able to crowdsource knowledge from thousands of minds is an extremely powerful value proposition.

My #1 goal on Financial Samurai is for all of us to achieve financial independence sooner, rather than later. By getting our finances in order, we'll be able to more easily live our best lives possible. Here's more about why I started the Financial Samurai Forum.

Financial Samurai Forum Categories

The Financial Samurai Forum (FSF) has actually been up for a couple months now after I invited subscribers of my private newsletter to join. I've successfully figured out how to keep spammers away, which was one of my main concerns before launch. I've decided to concentrate on the following topics below.

Financial Freedom

Financial Advice From The Community / Reader Profiles – Need advice or like to help others? Share your financial situation, ask questions, and get feedback from other members. I receive e-mail questions from readers all the time, but can't answer them all. By asking the FS community and sharing your situation, your hit rate will be much higher.

Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) – Do you hope to retire early or have the freedom to do more meaningful work without having to worry so much about money? Already living the FIRE lifestyle? Ask questions and discuss your favorite strategies, experiences, the pros and cons, and more right here.

Family Finances – Finances get a lot more complicated once kids and/or aging parents are involved. Let's try and figure everything out from daycare to college savings, grade school, elder care, estate planning, insurance and more.

Taxes – Taxes are our largest ongoing financial liability. Therefore, we need to do our best to understand the latest tax laws and use them to our advantage.

Real Estate Investing

Managing And Investing In Physical Real Estate – Discuss experiences with investing and managing physical real estate. Talk about market trends, property selection, ups/downs of being a landlord, property management, tenancy issues and more.

Real Estate Crowdfunding – Examine and share research on the best real estate crowdfunding platforms, talk about investment strategies, regions, deals, and trends.

General Investing

Stocks And Index Funds – Talk about stock ideas, trading, market trends, your favorite index funds, digital wealth managers, and other equities topics.

Fixed Income Focused – Explore topics regarding muni bonds, treasury bonds, corporate bonds, convertible bonds, interest rate outlook, macroeconomic trends, the Fed, and more.

Alternative Investing And Derivatives – Discuss alternative investments and derivatives such as private equity, venture debt, venture capital, angel investing, P2P, options, swaps, forwards, futures, royalty investing, and more.

Career Growth And Exit Strategies

Career Growth And Higher Education – Ask and answer questions on topics such as raises, promotions, career changes, going to grad school, getting a graduate degree, taking a sabbatical and others.

Entrepreneurship/ Side Hustles – Share small business and self-employment stories, chat about the highs/lows of entrepreneurship, discuss side hustles and other moonlighting projects here.

Engineering Your Layoff – Don't quit your job when you can negotiate a severance. Discuss strategies for negotiating a severance and share severance negotiation success stories.

How To Register For FSF

1. To register for your own free account, simply click on the Register link in the forum menu or use this link: www.financialsamurai.com/forums/register/

2. You will need to read the Forum Terms Of Service on the registration page, scroll to the bottom, and click the accept button.

3. Next, you will be asked to select a Username. It must be unique and can not be changed after your registration is complete. Your username will be publicly visible, thus please do not use your email address as your Username. If someone already has the Username you input, you will see a yellow caution symbol next to the Username field. Once you have chosen a unique Username, a green checkmark will appear.

4. Enter your email address and a strong, secure password. Please use a combination of lower case letters, upper case letters, numbers and symbols.

5. Answer the verification question and prove you are not a spammer. All the answers can be found on the blog’s About page. If you haven’t read it yet, please do!

6. Once you submit your registration, you will receive 1 of 2 welcome emails and will be placed into the queue for administrative review. You will not be able to login until your request for registration has been approved. We do not want spammers in the forums, and this process helps keep them out.

7. If your registration is approved you will receive a second welcome email. The email body will state, “Your account has been activated manually by the admin and you can now login and post.”

8. Login and join the fun!

See You Around The FSF

It's going to take time to build the Financial Samurai Forum community, but I'm confident after another six months we will create a great place to hang out, have fun, and learn.

During non-post days, I'll be exploring the FSF to see what's going on and interacting with community members. So far I've already written about 200 forum posts, with many more hundreds to come.

Whenever I do something, I plan to stick it out for the long term. With my new goal of keeping Financial Samurai going until at least 2029, the FSF is one way to keep the magic alive.

Fun fact: I used to be a huge stock market forum participant from 1995 – 1999 when I was in college, searching for great stock ideas and sharing my investment thesis for positions I owned or wanted to own. Participating in stock forums rapidly boosted my knowledge about the stock market and gave me the ability to speak with more confidence about what was going on in the world. The knowledge I garnered and my enthusiasm for stocks ultimately landed me one of the best jobs on Wall Street in 1999. 

Way Of The Financial Samurai: Core Principles For Achieving Financial Independence

Financial Samurai Reader Demographics: Our Money, Location, And Beliefs

I've also got a podcast if you're interested. Check out my Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast channels. You can also subscribe to my free newsletter here.

24 thoughts on “Welcome To The Financial Samurai Forum (FSF)!”

  1. Sam,
    I just an article “written by you” on CNBC May 1, 2020 titled, 42- year old retiree who lost $600,000 due to Pandemic: “ I feel foolish for retiring early”
    Tell me this is more fake news and misprinted facts that the media is notorious for publishing? Not to mention they cannot help but discredit FIRE practitioners.
    The words in this article sound like something you would craft but with a completely different narrative.
    No one losses any of their investments unless they sell them at a loss and the article indicates nothing that you indeed made such a hasty decision to sustain your cost of living expenses.
    The article states you are thinking of going back to work for approximately 2 years to reset your finances. Really?????
    There has to be more this story than what was portrayed in the article.
    Sincerely,
    A Financial Samurai fan!!!!

    1. Hi Tony!

      Yep, they chose the dramatic title and cut out about 50% of what I wrote to make it sound more dramatic. I literally had like 500 words cut out in the conclusion about some steps I’m taking and helpful points to help others.

      Also, using words like “had to get a doula” purposefully made me sound like I was incompetent in cutting my expenses. Further, even after I told the editor three times that it wasn’t a one-time birthing doula, but a night doula Who came five times a week for several months to help with sleep training, they still wouldn’t edit it. Therefore, people far I spent $25,000 on a one-time birthing Doula. Oh well.

      Amazing how different my final draft is to the one they published.

      Sam

  2. Dylan Meyer

    Hey Sam,

    By sheer coincidence I saw an article of yours on my msn feed right around the same time I was in a bad place at work and was considering taking a severance package. One of your topics really caught my eye and that is around real estate crowdfunding. I am a Canadian so I don’t have access to the same companies as you but was wondering 2 things. 1) How would you suggest I filter the Canadian crowdfunding companies, and 2) Given there are many signals of a recession coming is now the time to go big into this type of investment.

    thanks,

    Dylan

  3. I just read your June article regarding retiring early. Great article! I’m 65 and finally retiring in August (after considering it for last 10 years). And I do think that your points are massively valid, whether its an early retirement or late. Luckily I don’t have to worry too much about the money, but I’m already concerned that people, family, friends will view me differently. I think work was more of my identity than I cared to admit or even realize. Certainly my position was not prestigious, but I managed 130 technical people in US, MX, UK and China with a $14m annual budget. I’m hoping and praying that i can keep my health and find new purpose in life, whether income producing or charitable. Thanks for the article.

  4. This is awesome!!! Been waiting for something like this. I have my own ideas and love reading your posts to open my mind to new ways of thinking about things. The comment section has added to this by allowing a variety of other people to join into the discussion and express their perspective, which is important.

    Can’t wait to post and read all the discussions!!!

  5. Any chance you could add travel to the everything else category? I have lots to discuss about improving lifestyle through free or cheap travel techniques.

      1. This is perfect! I have been wanting to travel, but need to bring down the cost. Can’t wait to read your tip and techniques Drew! Thanks financial Samurai for this!!

  6. Good stuff, Sam. You definitely have a highly intelligent reader base and as you said, the value in sharing ideas is huge. Finding our blind spots when we get caught up in our own perspectives is super helpful.

    Thanks for putting this together. No doubt there is a lot of time and effort required to kindle this sort of project into a success. See you inside!

  7. I’ve already visited the forums and posted a number of times already. I enjoy the discussion and the chance to meet fellow personal finance nuts. The comments on your posts can sometimes be limited to the topic at hand whereas with your forum, the questions can be free form and take the shape of whatever the asker wants.

    I’m happy to see you’ve launched this to the reading public.

    1. Indeed. Free form, and it also allows me to ask a lot of questions and not have to spend hours and hours creating a post too. Most of my dialogue is short-form anyway, so a forum is a natural extension of how many of us communicate.

      I was one of the biggest stock market forum junkies in college, and looking back, I realize participating in a forum helped me tremendously get a job in finance and write effectively. I was constantly battle tested with my stock ideas!

  8. Simple Money Man

    Great idea! I see this as being a valued database and look forward to signing up. I’m glad you partitioned the forum to key areas and sub-areas because everyone focuses on similar and different aspects of their personal finances. :-_

  9. Requesting some serious discussion here and pearls of wisdom shared on the following:

    Background:we bought a 350k townhouse outside Washington DC metro area in 2016 using a VA loan at 3.5% rate with no down, no PMI, seller and bank paid the closing costs + the required VA upfront funding fee. Basically, we just got the keys to the house with zero out of pocket. We opted for 15 year payments and out monthly payment is approx. $2500.

    The current situation: we are ready to move into a bigger SFR and plan to rent this TH for the long-haul as renting in this DC metro area neighborhood is absolutely never an issue. Many government folks, especially military personnel can sign stable long-term leases for $2500.

    The question: Should we allow the tenants to keep paying the mortgage over next 15 years, so when both our kids are out of high school, they can use the proceeds from this Townhouse to pay their college expenses? Or, instead, should I deposit $65k each in Virginia state’s 529 plan TODAY that will buy them 8 semesters of college tuition at any Virginia school AFTER 15-18 years? This 529 plan will compound this 65K amount and it will becomes over 200K in 15-18 years.

  10. Congratulations Sam on starting a forum.

    You definitely have the readership to have lively discussions on any topic generated there. It also is a great way for a reader to start a topic of concern that may not have been addressed on the site and get a lot of support from fellow members.

    I’m sure it is a bit more of a headache for you to manage the forum (keeping an eye moderating things) but it is a great service to provide.

    1. Thanks. Yes, the goal is to allow the FS community to start topics that are on their mind and have others pitch in to share their thoughts because I’m sure other people have the same thoughts.

      No longer do FS readers need to be beholden to the topics that I only publish, and that’s a great thing.

      Great forums have great user moderators. I plan to reward the most active forum users in some way or form in the future. We have a great points system by comment that can be easily tracked.

      Thanks

    1. Bingo comment! I’ve purposefully made logging in easy, but also seemingly complicated for new members by writing a lot of instructions.

      The reason is to create a hurdle so that only the most serious want to join since it will require extra work for me to manage. I know that if someone takes the time to read the instructions, they’ll be better forum members.

      Having to answer questions to get in also raises the bar as well, especially against spammers. My goal is to create an intimate setting with fantastic discourse, and not an unmanageable forum filled with everyone.

  11. Sam, I am looking forward to this new forum and am planning to join, as you know I am rather busy in the real world, but will try to find some time to give my input on investing.

    Sincerely. Joe

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