We have gotten a few requests to do a post tailored to the older crowd ie: people in their thirties. The reason why we do not focus much on people in their thirties is because most people have “made it” or have not by this age. We have relatively normal standards on here and believe $1-2M by you early 30s should be the bare minimum to give any sort of life advice. Lets go ahead and cut the center and assume you are worth $1.5M or so by the age of 33. You have 27 amazing years left before physical decline really hurts your quality of life so let’s make the most of it.
Step 1: Elimination
You followed the rules on this blog and took advice from people who matter. You didn’t listen to foolish middle class people giving advice on how to get rich when they only make $200K a year at the old age of 35. You knew better.
Similarly, now that you look at your bank accounts and realize you can live off of ~$7K a month pretty easily anywhere in the world, it is time to maximize your good years. You are a bright person so you know the rules, you don’t burn any bridges by suddenly quitting your career for no good reason. Instead you begin eliminating items that don’t make you happy.
Samples below:
Problem clients. While they pay well you’re unwilling to work with them anymore at the cost of ~10% of your total pay. There is someone in the firm (younger no doubt) who would jump at the chance to work with this psychotic client. Hand it down. Not only are you going to make your life better in this transaction, the higher ups will more likely than not see you as a leader who is willing to give people responsibility! Maybe you take a short-term pay hit, but nothing can compare to hitting call forward on all of their calls and emails going forward.
In addition, maybe you’re the person running the Company. In that case, delegate the bad work to someone who wants it! With a couple million dollars and no reason to service the client, it is better to hand it over to someone who will do a good job. Your lack of enthusiasm will show. You know it. The client knows it. Make the move.
Downsize if necessary. One issue that many higher net worth individuals have is… Lifestyle inflation. Stop it right now. You don’t need to have a 3 bedroom apartment if you are a single guy. At max you may need two if you work from home. In addition? Please do not spend your money on multiple declining assets (cars) that you’ll never use. You’re going to burn money and time that could be spent on developing new relationships and even running game.
Don’t get us wrong, if you’re successful and worth 8 figures, then feel free to keep your toys. The point is simply to downsize if anything in your life is causing you stress. Stress is no longer in your life.
Chores, Errands and Other Time Wasters: Now is the time to get rid of all the annoying items that used to take up a few hours per week. No more laundry, no more parking (valet every time), no more connecting flights, no more cleaning, no more time wasting organization! Forget it all and delegate when possible.
Back when you were young and trying to put away a decent financial nut, $500K or so in your 20s, you were likely doing all of these things to reinvest in yourself and appreciating assets. No reason for that anymore. Sure this may cost you $500-1,000 a month but who really cares at this point? You’re creating time to enjoy life and again… Eliminate stress.
Step one is now complete. You have adjusted your life to free up a significant amount of spare time. You did not foolishly quit your career or company and instead have optimized your life to see what exactly you like and dislike.
Step 2: Quality Of Life Changes
The first step takes roughly 6 months to complete. You’d think it would be easier to pass clients down and reorganize some fixed expenses (downsizing if necessary) but it really does take 6 months. Now you have a much better lens to look through and its time to improve the quality of your life with your new routine.
The Money Question: Many people find that after they eliminate the major headaches from their career or business that they actually enjoy it even more. You will be positively surprised to find that a few major items can really cause 80% of the problems. Get ready to ask yourself the money question, how much of my time do i want to spend on making money?
This is going to be a tough one to answer. Naturally you do not trade time for money but the business processes and clients need to have oversight. Everyone will be different as cliche as that answer is. Simply look at yourself in the mirror and ask if you really want to work the same number of hours or half as much. Generally speaking, most people end up working 30ish hours per week managing projects, researching new ones and jumping in for the occasional headache here and there.
Second Home Base: It is fun typing this section, since the successful readers already know where this is going. By the time you’re in your late 20s you were hitting your stride and already traveled to your fair share of international destinations. You liked one of them the most. You are setting up a second home base.
Instead of having one place to call home you now have two and can adjust your new lifestyle to allow for 3-6 months of living in the new location. Naturally, you are already tired of constantly going to new places so you begin establishing a “presence” there and once and a while you can go ahead and take a trip to a new destination. At the end of the day… You already know that you have one spot in mind after visiting 30+ places by yourself already.
No More Alarm Clocks: You’ve been waiting for this one… for years! Before you were like the latest rap video trying to crush sales numbers every single week… Week after week after week!
http://youtu.be/om07MCkuTM8?t=3s
No more.
Instead you’re now in position to set up a consistent and healthy sleeping schedule. Don’t get it twisted. You’re still going to wake up early since you know its the easiest way to stay ahead of the competition and make the most money. The difference? You no longer have to work those late nights for the unnecessarily intense client. You’ve got consistency at this point. Which means, smooth sleeping patterns.
Step 3: No More Worries
This is now your number one enemy. Worry.
Under all circumstances you must avoid this monster. Do not do anything that will cause it to awaken (unnecessarily risky investments, debt, marriage etc.). Here is a good rule to start it off. If you have to think about it for more than 48 hours and it is not going to make you money, it is a deal breaker. Do not think about it for more than a second. Simply say thanks but no thanks and move on with a smile from ear to ear.
Step 4: Follow Your Interests
We’re getting to the tail end of the steps here. Now is the time to follow any all interests that you have. Maybe you want to build your dream house, maybe you hated our comment on cars and want to build a modded up super car. Go for it!
Just remember to avoid tripping up step one and three. If it is going to cause you to have an actual headache, then go back out there and make a few thousand dollars extra per month until you can buy it worry and stress free.
Most people will tell you to “follow your interests and passions” from day one. All of these people of course are con-men. Trying to get you to work for $150K or less (wasting your valuable time). At this point you’re already free so you can go ahead and pursue that interest of yours.
Step 5: Health is #1
Again you already know this but this needs to be the final step. The reason why worry and stress are to be avoided is because your health is going to be your new #1 priority. This does not mean you live in a bubble, it means that you do not do anything that is going to severely damage your health. Nothing.
Parties, drinking and drugs may be your main interest, just be smart about it. Most people are not smart about it, but if you can intelligently use these things to your advantage (house parties and simply abstain) then it can benefit you to no end.
With that small warning out of the way, feel free to party just don’t spend any good years of your life in the hospital.
Recap:
So there you have it. Once you’ve made your way to becoming relatively rich (about $1.5M at age 33) it is time to 1) eliminate stress, 2) get rid of all worries, 3) save yourself a ton of time and 4) downsize all unnecessary fixed expenses.
Now everyone can see why we do not bother with longer posts that address this topic. The key is really quite simple if you’re already at this level. Do anything and everything that makes you happy, do not do things that make you unhappy.We do not care what your hobbies are, if you cannot find a way to be happy knowing that every second can be spent doing what you want… then we cannot help. Naturally? Practically no one has this problem.
This is exactly why people who say “money doesn’t buy happiness”… Don’t have any.
Another solid post! It seems that people who ask these questions are just trying to find an excuse to not even try at all! Assuming you have your head on straight you’ll be loving life with your finances in order.8mm not there yet (mid twenties) but I’m on the way to about $1M by 32 if things keep going to plan. We’ll see how it works but the advice here continues to work, just increased my pay by 15% through your advice on emailing/networking. Thank you guys.
Agree, best site on the Internet. No sugar coating and actual advice on what to do instead of BS feel good inspirstional non-sense.
Solid work there sir. Keep your foot on the gas, once you see the numbers turn to $700-800K or so, you’ll just need one more push over the edge.
Thank you. More songs in your posts please!
Ha. Will consider it, the last two just had fitting songs at the moment.
Gold.
What are your best opinions on alternative income streams? (I hear multiple income streams being thrown around a lot)…
We have a post search – passive income
Most people throw around everything as passive income, when in reality they have to put in time for that “passive income”. In short anything you have to spend more than 10 minutes on, is not passive income.
I always understood why the late 30s crowd wasn’t addressed. They basically do not want to hange directions in their careers, business or lifestyle. So we all know they are simply stuck in their own mind. You guys have mentioned this issue in the past
Damn typo – Change**
Agree, as soon as you’re free there are really no excuses. It is simply hard to go away from the life you’ve been living for the last 10 years or so. That said, there is still no reason to spend more than 10 seconds unhappy for the rest of your life.
Keep your health in check and have a blast!
Guessing you guys don’t believe in the quote “money doesn’t buy happiness?”
The only people who have a right to an opinion that believe money doesn’t buy happiness are the ultra wealthy.
As long as you have yor health, close friends/girls you are all set of you have money.
Money can’t buy health or friends/relationships. So once you get rich you better have the other two in check, if you do, you’re going to be a happy person.
Have to disagree on that one guys. I’m in the health field. Money does buy you health. It buys you the best healthcare insurance, cash. It buys you the best medicine and treatment available only for the elite.It buys you the best doctors and gets you into the best hospitals. You haven’t heard of stem cells, tissue regeneration, life extension treatments, 3-d printing of internal organs, etc? Money gives you options to extend life and the quality of it. Had to throw my 2 cents.
Yes that is yet another reason to get rich.
If you get cancer or some disease/injury that cannot be cured with money then you’re out of luck and you should fight off the disease before bothering chasing $.
Could you expand on why it would be “foolish” to quite one’s job once financially independent (iterated not once but twice)?
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d want max freedom at that point. I mean, how are you going to set up a “second home base” abroad for 6 months out of the year in banking/consulting/sales/police/air traffic control, or the other careers championed previously on this blog?
When you reach independence you’re making $4-600K a year usually. It would be crazy to just quit out of the blue when you only have about a million. Smarter to redesign your lifestyle and still make $400 or so because most headaches can be eradicated without hurting your inclme too much.
Easy to set up a second home base you jump on a plane every weekend. You will have hundreds of thousands of miles and you can leave every single weekend for over a year
Also do not put words in our mouth. Wall Street, the valley and sales are the *only* careers. Everything else is a job. If it is a job it means you couldn’t getinto one of those three. Finally, as stated above you don’t work many weekends (usually next to none) in all three of those spaces when you’re senior.
Also high paying careers usually require travel. Over 10 years you’re going to have time to visit the city you like the most.
You guys should write an article on nutrition and how to eat to maintain healthy. A lot of people dont know what to eat despite all this information and misinformation on the web. Vegan this dont eat meat dont drink or eat dairy, etc. Thanks
Search Bar, diet
Just to put my two cents in, it’s not so bad to “only make $200k” per year at the age of 35. I would argue that it could be ideal if it means you own a business and pay yourself a “small” salary or you are living off capital gains. Making $400k per year in income means you’re paying an absurd amount of money in taxes. To me, financial independence means you have the freedom to schedule your time as you consider most optimal and to determine how to pay yourself and structure your investments in a way to minimize your taxes. If trading your time for money is your best investment, you’re not financially independent, in my opinion.
We can agree to disagree. $200K at 35 is absolutely nothing in any major city at that age.
Will 100% agree that any time for money exchange is terrible, practically no one will ever become financially independent trading their time for money unless they live an extremely frugal lifestyle (at the expense of fun, girls, friends and other important life items).
I tend to disagree, but I only disagree from a personality perspective. I know several people in their early thirties that are financially independent in a very frugal way. They earn practically everything they need to live from their passive income.
Now, they aren’t social butterflies, they hate travel, and couldn’t care less about most things people spend tons of money on (i.e. no cars, no children, and small homes). They’re also moderately successful with attractive women. They’re not pick up artists, but no one scoffs at their notches either.
And their income is significantly under $200k, but they don’t have the drive for anything more. They’re massively content.
I’d assume it’s a difference in kind rather than a difference in scale because otherwise they’d still be earning or using their free time elsewhere.
That being said, I don’t know why you’d be reading this blog if you were content to live on $50k the rest of your life, but again, I see the prevalence of that mentality.
That sounds incredibly boring.
If you are living on a couple thousand dollars a month hitting on a few girls a month then what else are you doing with the other 150 hours in a week that remain?
Why not maximize your potential instead. Doesn’t make sense.
I have money invested in vanguard. My portfolio includes money invested in four index funds the total stock market index fund, total bond index fund, total international stock index fund, the s & p 500 index fund. I throw money there every month. My goal is location independent income. Do you recommend that i take all the money and throw it in the voo ticker ? What do you think? Thank you for an awesome blog.
As long as the management fees are reasonable (under 20bps) you are fine . Focus on generating more income and ignore trading keep doing what you’re doing
what do u think about i-bonds and patriot bonds as a investment for monthly fixed income?
It is just a way to offset inflation when you are older. We have answered this many times in the ask us anything section. We are going to be nice and assume you haven’t visited that page yet.