The Simple Purpose of this Little Website.

Hi there. I’m Joe. 

I know I shouldn’t brag, but I retired from the corporate world at 30 years old 🤓. I’ll get right to the point – I started this website to ramble about money, saving, investing and my version of retirement. It’s therapeutic for me, and perhaps it will be mildly useful to you.

Now, when I talk about “retirement”, I have a slightly different definition than the prevalent societal one.

I simply view retirement as the event when you no longer need to work. It’s when you arrive at a place of financial independence, and therefore choose to opt-out of the traditional career grind.

The incredible thing about arriving there at a somewhat earlier-than-normal age, is the fact that you have the energy to pursue all types of hustles and projects. There is no reason why you need to stop being productive.

On this website, I’m referring to retirement from a “traditional career”, I’m absolutely not referring to retirement in an absolute sense. I have in no way retired from working as a whole, and quite frankly – never plan to.

The movement of individuals and families pursuing this goal has been termed – FIRE (financial independence, retire early). 

Now, here’s the incredible thing. In my view, you only need to be mildly successful in order to arrive at FIRE.

Yes, of course it’s different for every person. But for many, the amount of money they actually need to achieve FIRE is less than what they may have thought, if they make some smart moves and re-evaluate how they live their lives.

Before we move on, let’s get something very important out of the way. I am not a licensed financial advisor, therefore you should not take any information on this site as professional advice. These are the ramblings of a random person on the internet who happens to be obsessed with the FIRE lifestyle. Due to this, all information you will read here are my personal opinions only, and should be considered to be for entertainment purposes 😁.

OK?

Seriously, generally speaking, you should always consult with a licensed financial advisor before making any massive decisions about your finances.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the stuff you really want to know…

My net worth upon “retiring” when I was 30, was $1M.

Some folks think that’s a lot, and some can’t imagine how someone can retire with such a small amount. Especially since the earlier you retire, the more (potential) years you’ll need to be self-sufficient.

There are plenty of calculators and tools that will tell you how much you need to retire, with your set of numbers.

However, in many ways, I believe that’s not where you should start.

I would suggest starting by questioning every assumption you have about retiring from traditional hourly, or salaried work.

Because if you were go and use these calculators now, you would likely plug in all your numbers exactly like they are right now, and all your assumptions would be baked in.

The very first assumption many people make is thinking they know what they want. Do you really know what you want in life? Typical responses are very vague, lacking any useful clarity.

Other assumptions can be things like assuming you “need” a certain type/size house or “need” to live in a certain area, drive a certain car etc.

Spend 30 mins with a blank sheet of paper, and just scribble down every expense you can think of, and assign a priority from 1 to 10 next to each one.

For e.g.

Large house – 7

Luxury car – 4

Quality food – 10

Eating out – 3

etc

It’s a useful exercise, because it forces you to really evaluate what you actually care about, and assign a priority.

For example, if you have an expense that is sucking 25% of your income, and yet it’s relatively low on your priority-weighted scorecard, then that’s the first thing to re-consider!

This is how you get BIG wins. Not necessarily by cutting out a couple weekly takeaway coffees, costing you $7.50 😂.

You shouldn’t be shocked to hear that the two biggest variables in how fast you can achieve FIRE, are your income and expenses.

What’s more tricky is understanding how to pull the levers that affect these variables.

This is where this website, is perhaps – a little unconventional. Instead of focusing on how many coffees you buy (which we will also talk about it), I’m more likely to talk about how to develop an extra $1000 monthly income stream.

The majority of information in the finance space is far too focused on minutia, and less focused on the levers that can propel you to financial independence insanely fast.

The biggest factor by far is your income.

That’s why this website is called Income&

Everything starts with income. After the ‘and’, comes auto-capital-allocation (more on that later), and of course – investing.

Investing is what ultimately allows you to achieve freedom. But you can’t invest until you have sufficient income to allocate.

On this website, I’m going to talk about side hustles, banking, creating rules for your money, credit, debt, saving, budgets, expense minimization, strategic lifestyle architecture, and of course – investing. We’ll talk stocks (including day/swing/long term), real estate (including rentals, multi-dwelling, renovating, flipping), cypto (including trading+long term), business (including e-commerce, affiliate, traditional brick and mortar + more).

If you’d like to be notified when I release a new post, either bookmark the site, and check regularly – or join the notification-cult in the footer!

Chat soon,

Joe Taylor