The Voluntary Life

This episode is part 2 of the interview with Justin from Root of Good. Justin talks about how the goal of early retirement differs from mainstream ideas of "success". He provides suggestions for those interested in pursing early retirement. Show Notes: Root of Good Jack Ma Interview

There are many practical steps required to reach financial independence, but there are also some interesting psychological challenges to early retirement. Who would you be without your job? What would you do all day if you never had to work? Justin retired at the age of 33. He writes about financial independence at the Root of Good blog. In this interview, he gives his take on the psychological side of financial independence and describes his early-retirement lifestyle. Show Notes:

• Root of Good Blog
• The Early Retiree's Weekly Schedule

Many people find getting started as an individual investor daunting. This episode is about how little I knew about investing when I got started. I describe what I came to expect from investing as I learned more about it. If you are starting out in investing, I think hearing my experience will be relevant for you. Show Notes

• Fail-Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes by Harry Browne
• Where Are the Customers' Yachts by Fred Schwed
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle
• Previous TVL Episodes on financial independence
• I'm not a financial advisor and your money is your responsibility.

It took me a long time to work out how to stay on top of my finances. After a lot of trial and error, I developed the habit of doing a monthly financial review. This is what enables me to confidently manage my finances without having to think about money all the time. In this episode, I explain how you can implement your own monthly financial review. Topics covered include:

• Habits to set up when implementing a monthly review, including dedicating adequate time (about 4 hours per month) and making a detailed checklist or task list to use.
• Key questions to consider when designing your monthly financial review system, such as whether to use an online finance app or one that runs on your own computer.
• Stages of the monthly financial review to implement: downloading finance data, cleaning data, inputting data, reconciling, and analysis (budget, investments, and net worth calculation)

Show Notes:

• Some software options for your checklist: Evernote and Omnifocus
• Some finance apps: iBank, Mint, Personal Capital
• Software for automating renaming and moving of files: Hazel
• TVL Episode 181 on budgeting and net worth calculation

In previous episodes of this podcast, I've explored different ways to live a job-free lifestyle. I've interviewed extreme savers, unjobbers, lifestyle entrepreneurs, and startup entrepreneurs. Many listeners have raised an important question about these lifestyles: how do you choose between these different strategies for quitting the rat race? How do you decide which job-free lifestyle you want to pursue for yourself? This week's episode discusses this question and provides suggestions for how to choose a job-free lifestyle. Show Notes

• TVL Episode 124: Four Ways To Quit The Rat Race
• Video of Four Ways To Quit The Rat Race Presentation
• Becoming an Entrepreneur: How to Find Freedom and Fulfillment as a Business Owner

This episode is a discussion with a special guest— my wife Hannah Braime, who is the host of Becoming Who You Are. We've just moved to Panama and we love it here already. In this episode we talk about all the preparations involved in our move, the start of our travel lifestyle, and our first impressions of life in Panama. Show Notes:

• Hannah Braime
• Previous TVL episodes on travel
• TVL episode 130: Interview with Pete Sisco

A listener shared these reflections with me: "I like to think I'm a moral person but many times in my career (and in the careers of friends), I've been forced to choose between unethical behavior and possibly losing my job. I handled this on a case by case manner, where I had to weight the importance of the unethical behavior, the likelihood of me being punished, the odds of me successfully elevating the issue to a superior, how much the unethical behavior would actually hurt the injured party, etc. In other words, my response was ambiguous and led to a lot of sleepless nights." The listener went on to explain that achieving financial independence strengthened his or her moral backbone and make it easier to say no to bad people at work. This is a brilliant insight and highlights one of the great benefits of financial independence. In this episode I share some suggestions about how you can use entrepreneurship, extreme saving and unjobbing to make it easier for you to do the right thing.

"Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough." Charles Warner Over the last three years, I've reduced my possessions to only those things that will fit inside one suitcase and one hand luggage bag. My wife and I decided to pursue extreme decluttering, in order to make a lifestyle of long-term travel more practical. Decluttering was easy at first, but got harder the more extreme I took it. My possessions were not just serving practical needs, but emotional ones too. I had to work out how to address those needs before I could get rid of my stuff. Decluttering also forced me to acknowledge mistakes I had made in the past— mistakes I preferred to avoid thinking about. Overall, extreme decluttering has been a fantastic learning process. I feel much freer because of it. I think that you can benefit in a similar way by decluttering, even if you don't want to reduce your stuff in such an extreme way as I did. Show Notes:

• Previous episodes on Minimalism
• Going Paperless part 1 and part 2
• Episode on Inventory
• Home Inventory app
• GoodReads
• If This Then That
• Evernote
• Apple Photos

In this episode, special guest Hannah Braime talks about how to free yourself from a life of drama and move to a life of empowerment. Hannah is a coach, author, and host of Becoming Who You Are. We discuss some powerful concepts from the field of psychology that Hannah uses in her coaching. She explains how easy it is to get stuck playing a series of roles in your life— acting out a script written by someone else. These roles are all too familiar: "the victim", "the persecutor" and "the rescuer". Hannah explains how to empower yourself to leave such roles behind and live life according to your own plans. I really enjoyed the discussion and I think you will find it both interesting and helpful. Show Notes:

• Becoming Who You Are
• Videos about The Drama Triangle
• Joseph Campbell
• Transactional Analysis
• Games People Play by Eric Berne
• Karpman Drama Triangle
• The Power of TED by David Emerald

Here is how you reach true conclusions about any question in life: start with undeniable premises and use valid logic. Logic— used in reasoned argument— is the universal, impartial method that humans have for finding the truth together peacefully. Yet very few people use logic consistently. I discuss some reasons why it is so hard to be logically consistent. The most important reason is that it takes courage to follow an argument to its logical conclusion, especially if the conclusion is not accepted by the majority of people around you. If you want to think for yourself, you need more than just valid logic— you also have to have the courage to follow it. Show Notes:

• Ad Populum Fallacy
• If A, Then B: How the World Discovered Logic by Michael Shenefelt & Heidi White
• The Right To Ignore The State by Herbert Spencer
• Why I Don't Vote by George Carlin
• Murray Rothbard
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe