Typical financial advice often focuses on learning to tell needs from wants. Which is great! But it only gets you so far. Most of the choices we make aren’t about needs vs. wants. They’re about wants vs. wants, or need-wants vs. want-needs. Rather than making your spending decisions based on this false binary, here’s why you should instead listen to the feelings of future you.
While the online financial independence community is fantastic for inspiration and support, having a real life circle of friends who are like-minded on money comes with enormous benefits. Let’s talk about what those benefits are, and how you can build or strengthen a frugal friend group in real life.
Aligning your spending with your values with one of the first bits of advice many of us here when we get on the path to financial independence. But that advice usually goes on to talk about value — specifically what you get most value from — and not really about values at all. This is my case for why it serves you better to think about both what you value and your personal values when it comes to your spending and economic power.
We achieved early retirement and financial independence as DINKs (dual income, no kids), and of course having kids would change a bunch of things. Here’s our reflection on what we think kids would change. So tell us, what did we miss?
