We are a community of contrarians that embrace the art of "Financial Sustainability". FS is an alternative to Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) and focuses on a whole life approach to becoming and maintaining your financial and personal independence in a debt enslaved western world. If you are sick of always working, never getting ahead and knowing that there has to be a better way for you and your family, this is where you will get the answers and motiviation to change it all. Read our Philosophy and our Articles to get started.
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There are many theoretical approaches to retirement funding. If you ask a 50-60 year old their strategy, you will get a very different answer than to ask a 30 year old FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) person about their strategy. Much has to do with willingness to take on risk. I investigate these different approaches and why both are fundamentally flawed and present a simple answer that I have used successfully.
I have just returned from 3 weeks in Mexico, and spent a week in the town of San Miguel de Allende, meeting with expats who have chosen a life outside of the USA & Canada. When you see your daily life from the outside, looking in, you get a perspective that is quite frightening. Let’s talk about the expat phenomenon and what drives someone to leave the country of their birth, in search of greener pastures.
History has a nasty habit of repeating itself. And the current red flags in the USA have an eerie similarity to the build up to revolution in Mexico of the pre-1910 era. If you knew next week’s lottery numbers, you could be an instant multi-millionaire, so let’s use that trick to try and speculate on how things might go, and how you could play this to your advantage.
According to Nielsen ratings in 2017, the average American family spent 7 hours and 50 minutes per day watching TV. And what did that average American family get for selling nearly 8 hours a day of their time to the square screen? A mass state of hypnosis that has carved out social norms that are far from normal, far from healthy, far from financially beneficial and far from unconstrained.
Given the choice of going to school or surfing, if you live near the ocean it is a pretty easy one to make. But has anyone ever told you that surfing is really the best education you can have?
There is a growing movement towards financial independence and a minimalist approach to life. Although I applaud anyone who takes responsibility over their expenses, how quickly we forget that in western economics access to capital is the reason we are not third world country. This is so well demonstrated in the documentary “One Dollar A Day” and the pain & suffering that a lack of available capital can bring to a society. It teaches us a lesson about good vs. bad debt.
We should all take the best care of our teeth. But in the USA, costs are outrageous. Insurance doesn't cover most dental procedures and patients are often presented with $10K+ bills for basic dental work. If they realized there was a better option right on their doorstep, this could all be avoided. Welcome to medical tourism, and the border town of Los Algodones, Mexico.
The bull market we’ve had will be ending soon. This is just natural. Markets go up and markets go down. The bull market has been active since about 2010, fueled by low interest rate money but with the natural market cycle spurred on by the China Trade Wars, it won’t last much longer. What should those pursuing FI or FIRE do to adjust? Do they have what it takes to handle this?