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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When you travel and return home, there is a clarity that comes with that. If only for a short period of time, you see things for what they are. I'm going to share my clarity from about 5 months of travel, with periodic returns back to the USA, before those memories are obliterated by day to day events.
I have had my surgery in Mexico. For anyone that wants an honest accounting of the process and costs, I have laid it all out in detail here. I cover the emotional doubts, fear of surgery in a foreign land, financial truth and the outcome. You be the judge of whether this is right for you. For me, it was. Spoiler Alert: It cost me less than 1/10th of the US Price.
It can be a frightening thing - choosing to go to a foreign country to get major surgery. The vast majority of us find that a bridge too far to cross. I took the leap of faith, and I have begun the journey. This article (and hopefully the one that will follow it after my surgery is completed) will give a totally fact based account of the experience so you can see if something like this makes sense for you.
I am returning from a 3 week trip to my home in Australia. I was born there, spent the first 25 years of my life there, then the next 30 years in USA. Each year I go back to South Australia to see family. As much as I love my home city of Adelaide, I’m saddened by what I see going on there and the liquidation of so much of the culture by selling it out to the highest bidder. This is the story of how a city can go from utopia to constrained in a relatively short time frame.
It is Q3 2019 as I write this, and all I am seeing on the news media is the word “Recession” thrown around in abandon on all the financial news channels. This is the new “clickbait” to try and scare people into watching their shows. But here’s a completely contrarian view of the topic that might give you a positive view and why I LOVE recessions
First, I’m not a fan of buying anything you don’t need. I’m also not a fan of supporting Big Tech and their ambitions to take over the world. There are, however, some battles we can’t win, so why not find a way to live with this dystopia, but financially benefit? Well here is one way you can do that.
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.