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Financial Security ---- Best strategies learned and shared ---- for Financial Freedom

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No Ordinary Duck
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There are a host of people on this forum who have reached Financial Freedom and Financial Security.

In my view most financial advisers have little to no idea of how to reach Financial Freedom for themselves
let alone anyone else. By putting forward your experiences positive and negative (If you have some) your
not advising but sharing your experience and how it has helped you reach this goal.

Let's face it that's where the vast majority want to be. There are strategies that definitely work and anyone
can take part.

So if you have an experience or an example of what you or someone you admire did or do. Please
share it with all of us. This should be a very interesting discussion, full of practical examples.

I guarantee you the contents of this thread could be worth a great deal more than a trip to receive advice
from someone who is trying to achieve what many here already have.
 
from a person who was retired early before the plan was fully in place ...START EARLY ( at least the planning part )

my other bit of advice is go get a FULL medical before buying your investments , it gives you a better idea of your income stream on the way to 'financial security '

ie my original plan was to retire January !st 2020 ( give or take a few weeks ) Centre-link stepped in and and told me to retire very early in 2017 and back-paid me six months to do so .

the strategy part well that is much like a camping trip , have a good idea WHERE you want to go , and figure out a reasonably safe way to get there ( and what you need to learn on the way like how to put up the tent , cook on a fire , etc etc. )

i would have included some basic maths education , but governments are changing/twisting definitions and fudging data , you are probably better off with ( the dark side of ) psychology , and developing a cynical streak
 
A good strategy is garnering an informal list of gun posters here or elsewhere whom you judge to be in good faith with their postings. That trait is of primary importance. Then, most particularly the fundamentalists but being wary of single stock experts who are conspicuous, as they are often wolves in sheep's clothing. Such guns will also seem to be prospering, particularly from the share market. Also a watchlist of their holdings which you can infer from their postings. Then consider their every utterance as they appear. Then apply your own methods to their implied stock selections. Needless to say, I would exclude myself from such an illustrious cohort (humble)
 
Yep.
divs4ever said:
...START EARLY
Click to expand...
This was my advice to my 18-year-old client this morning who is about to get a $3,000 tax return.

She wants to blow it on a trip to Bali. I was trying to get her to invest it now (plus plus of course) and be able to blow 100k on a trip to Monaco in a few years time, when she is able to appreciate a thousand dollar bottle of champagne... rather than taking extraordinary risk later in life like me (pointing out that that can go either way)

The mum (a CFO of a big property company here) thanked me.
 
yes learning from second-hand experience is a lot less painful than full-on hands-on learning
 
Other than the obvious "start young", as someone who is, shall we say, a little work averse (probably the result of being tiger parented as a kid), my favourite strategy is straight out of the FIRE playbook.

Before splurging on something that you know is a want, not a need, don't view it in terms of $. View it in terms of rat race time ie. how many hours do you have to work to earn the $ required to buy that thing, and make sure you work it out using your after tax income as that changes the equation significantly. Then think to yourself, is the enjoyment this thing will bring me really enough to offset having to slog it out in the rat race for X hours to afford it?

Obviously depends a lot on the individual as it's essentially a psychological technique and we are all different in that regard, but for the younger generation who are perhaps just as work averse as I was (and still am!), it could be quite effective. It worked well enough for me. I don't use it that much anymore since most of my income is from investments rather than from working these days (and I'm going FIRE soon anyway), but the technique was instrumental in helping me get my investments going when I was starting out.
 
cynic said:
True, but those lessons from the "school of hard knocks", are often more effective, due to the pain, from direct experience, tending to garner more attentive students.
Click to expand...
a big difference from crashing in real life and destroying your savings ( have done both ) a crash in public forces some sort of 'pull yourself together ' reaction ( often with good advice ) being crushed financially is much harder to rebuild confidence ( and can be embarrassing to seek good help )

a big advantage i have had is the ability to discern luck from good judgment in hindsight ( it is really easy to get over-confident on a lucky streak )
 
LOL.
My Brother and I used to equate purchased items as in how many buckets of grapes we had to pick to buy them.
 
Basically it’s a two step plan.

1. Spend less than you earn, so that you can clear any debts you have and start generating savings. (Try saving a minimum of 25% of your income, and try to earn as much income as possible)

2. Use these savings to buy assets, that generate income, preferably when the assets are mispriced and can be bought for less than they are worth.

—————————————————
3. Care about your capital, be sure that your super etc isn’t being eaten up with fees or unnecessary insurances, and is invested well. If you own a home make sure you have the best negotiated interest rate you can get, keep your spare cash in offset accounts to reduce interest on the loan.
 
If something can be measured or calculated then measure or calculate it. Because having factually correct information is rarely if ever a bad thing.

Secondly, related to that, convert everything to the same units of measurement. If one set of numbers is annual then express all the other numbers in annual terms as well. etc.

Because it's an easy way to fool yourself by saying "I earn $100k a year and spend $30 per day on lunch" which makes the lunch expense seem incredibly cheap. In truth that's $11k a year eating lunch if you're doing it 7 days a week and that puts it a very different perspective. That lunch caper is putting a huge dent in your ability to accumulate capital for investment in your earlier years of working.

So (1) get the figures and (2) express them in the same units. This goes for everything both on the income and expenses side.
 
Grab the opportunities that are actually available. Don't sit there waiting for what you thought or hoped would happen.

If someone had asked me on my 18th birthday then never in my wildest dreams would I have said that I'd end up making money through being on radio or operating concrete saws. In practice neither has ever been my primary occupation but both have earned me significant $ all of which were put into investments.

Point being not the detail but to be open to whatever comes along.
 
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Some nice input.

For me, I could not see a way of making large amounts of Excess capital working for a single wage.
It wasn't long and I was working for myself.

One of my earliest realizations came in my 20s
The concept of Scalability. I went on over many years implementing it as often as I could.

Some examples. If I could make $25 an hour and I had others making 22 and I made $3 from them
and I did this 10 times I doubled my earning capability.
Later I had an excavator which I hired out for $120 an hour with a driver and I kept the profit
If I had 10 of them Id make 10 x the profit in the SAME time.

Couple this with Leverage (Buy the 10 Excavators) and Compound the Profit and you seen understand
Good Debt/Bad Debt. What's your Hourly rate?

I also did this with Lawn Rounds. Clients were worth $15 in the Dollar as a regular customer .So a $20 cut was immediately worth $300
if sold in a round. I found a way to Scale that by employing a very important few people. No They didn't cut lawns I gave them
$100 for every $20 of clients they secured. They made far more than those cutting the lawns.

Sharkman touched on another lesson learned very early on.

EG If I go to buy a car and in 20 mins of negotiation I manage to save $1500 on the purchase price---then I just worked for $4500 an hour!
So In the negotiation of anything with a monetary attachment, I convert Time to an hourly rate.

Works both ways. If you conceded X$ in a time frame you have lost that equivalent / hour.

Be quick to recognize failure and Slow to withdraw from success.
Money Makes Money, unlocks opportunity, and in abundance opens doors.

The wealthy have a property portfolio.
The extremely wealthy have a business portfolio.

Keep out of the middle.(Local deli)

Either produce sell or both Millions of Small ticket items (Ask the inventor of Whiteout) or Top Only Fans contributors.
OR
Produce or sell Very Large ticket items.( Ask a Real Estate Agent--the owner not the sales guy.)

Create Passive income which you own the best I have come across is being an equity partner in businesses with Profit share.
Rental properties are another as is Air BnB.

Hope some of this is helpful as you apply it to your own circumstances.
 
Smurf1976 said:
Grab the opportunities that are actually available. Don't sit there waiting for what you thought or hoped would happen.
Click to expand...

the difficult part is understanding an opportunity when you see it ( and having the nerve to pull the trigger )

few of the opportunities i have taken were 'no-brainers ' ( but double check the figures if you have time FIRST )
 
Smurf1976 said:
Point being not the detail but to be open to whatever comes along.
Click to expand...

yeah , but i grew up in the era of pyramid schemes ( ? oops , multi-level marketing schemes/scams )

not so easy to see beyond the glib sales pitch , brilliant experience to spot ramping teams , though
 
Telamelo said:
Yeah even when seeing my GP I get reminded "time is money" lol says to me make another appointment/come back another time (so GP can 'milk medicare' as much as possible)
Click to expand...
Make an appointment next week for your TTF check.

What's TTF, doc?

Oh sorry, I mean your annual check up. TTF is the billing code (Trip to France).
 
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