Welcome MoneyHackers!
Here are three of my favorite posts to get you started; if you want to find out:
1. If $1 million will be enough to retire with, then click here, or
2. How much house you can afford, then click here, or
3. Why buying a new car is such a losing proposition, then click here.
Otherwise, please enjoy this article, then bookmark my home page (click here) and come back often …
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For those who don’t already know, I am a member of Money Hackers – a group of personal finance bloggers – and Lydia has just interviewed me; you can read the interview on the moneyhackers.net site by clicking here, or read the extract below:
What influenced you to start writing 7million7years?
I started out $30k in debt and made $7 million in 7 years, but the road was bumpy and I found that I had to learn most of the hard financial lessons myself. I started my blog so that others wouldn’t make the same mistakes that I did.
What encouraged you/where did you hear about becoming a 7 time millionaire in 7 years?
When I started out, I had two businesses which barely paid their own way, and I was in serious debt. But, I had no clear goal or reason to do any better. That all changed when I discovered my Life’s Purpose, which is to always be traveling physically, mentally and spiritually. I suddenly realized that I would need both a lot of free time and plenty of money to achieve what I really wanted in my life. In fact, I calculated that I needed $5 million in just a few short years. That epiphany started the amazing journey that took me from $30k in debt to $7 million in the bank in just 7 years.
What financial topic do you most enjoy blogging about?
My own financial journey and showing others how they can also free themselves from a life of work, debt, and drudgery by applying the same financial lessons that I learned. There are no scams or schemes needed to replicate what I achieved, if they just follow some good, old fashioned financial advice.
What crucial point have you learned through this experience of gaining 7 million?
Your money is there to support your life, yet most people act like it IS their life. No amount of money will ever be enough if you have no clear idea what you really need the money for. Find out what it is that you really want to do in with your life (and by when), then calculate how much passive income that you will need to get you there. Then come to my blog to find out how to safely build that income stream. But, once you have enough … STOP and smell the roses.
What 3-5 blogs are essential to understanding how to save money?
My blog isn’t really about frugal living and saving money, but more about accelerating your income through work, business, and investing. It’s also about protecting your wealth, through passive investment strategies (for example, using stock or real-estate). So, if my readers want to know more about saving than investing, then I recommend that they read:
1. JD Roth’s Get Rich Slowly
2. Steve’s Brip Blap
3. Pinyo’s Moolanomy
What is some financial advice you could give our readers?
Most people don’t really know how much house they can afford, so let me give your readers some very specific advice that will help them through every stage of their own financial journey: never have more than 20% of your Net Worth invested in your own house, and no more that 5% in all of the other ’stuff’ that you own (e.g. cars, furniture, computers, etc.). You can adjust the equity in your house by refinancing periodically (always lock in your interest rate when it is below 6% – 8%).
This means that you will always be investing at least 75% of your Net Worth, which is the only real chance that you have to get out of the financial rate race.
If you have your own blog, I’d like to hear how/why you started it … there’s plenty of space to share in the comment section, below …
“If you have your own blog, I’d like to hear how/why you started it”
I have a couple of reasons why I blog.
The first and most important reason is that once I have stated my goal to public and blog about it I feel more obligated to really work on it. I don’t slip from the goal that easily now that everyone can read how I’m proceeding. No one wants to fail in public! 🙂
The second reason is that as I educate myself on the run I also want to share what I’ve learnt. There’s a lot of information out there – other not so good and other great. It’s not always easy to to tell which one is which.
The third reason is that most of the information is in english which sometimes causes a barrier for a finnish newbie investors. Hence the reason to blog in finnish.
i see my greatest barrier is accepting risk. if someone (like me) has a highish salary and is contributing to a pension, the safe road is working until retirement. Starting a business or investing on the side may be a good option. Going whole hog and devoting all effort to an intrepid idea is risky. How can anyone like me succeed with only limited resources in time and money?
@ Healthy Cash – I agree that starting ‘on the side’ is a great way to go; as to your question: how much did Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), and Mark Zuckerberg (FaceBook) start with?!
@ Kohti – Thanks for sharing … now, I hope this opens the floodgates for our other blogger/readers to share, as well.
PS You should publish in both English and Finnish, as you are clearly fluent in both and your Day Trading experience may help to provide you with a unique perspective.
From my very first post in April 2006:
“The decision to join the blogging community is most likely symptomatic of my first mid-life crisis. In any event, I have set up this blog for a number of reasons. The most important is to impose some discipline on my personal financial planning and money management. While I have managed to make a reasonable start towards saving for my eventual retirement, there have been significant deficiences in my progress to date. Budgeting has been weak (when done at all) and investing has been done in a manner that gives new meaning to the concept of “random walk” investing. Putting my investing and other ideas down in writing should help clarify my thinking. Failing which, I get to look back and wonder what on earth was I thinking.”
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