The Voluntary Life

There are many different routes to financial independence. In past episodes I've interviewed people who have achieved financial independence through extreme saving as a salaried employee. My own route was through entrepreneurship—growing and selling a business. Whichever route you take, you need a strategy to address common challenges. There are three core questions that your plan needs to address:

• How do you plan to make good money?
• How do you plan to save a huge amount of what you make?
• How do you plan to invest what you have saved?

In this episode I suggest important things to consider for each of these three components of your plan. As always with money topics, you will need to do your own research. I'm not a financial advisor. Show Notes:

• The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley
• How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne
• Image: Sylwia Bartyzel

Understanding your personal finances is crucial if you want to achieve financial independence and gain more freedom in your life. Most people don't learn anything useful about personal finances growing up and are not taught about it in school (I certainly wasn't). It took me a long time to work out what I really need to know about my personal finances. I hope that by sharing what I've learned, I can help you acquire financial literacy faster than I did. This podcast episode covers the three most important things that you need to get in place immediately:

• Tracking and categorising of all your expenditure and income
• Calculating and tracking your net worth
• Using a budget to stay on track with your financial goals

In the episode I provide an overview of these three topics and explain how you can use personal finance software to help automate the process of tracking them. As always, you are responsible for your money and you will need to do your own research. I am not a financial advisor. Show Notes:

• ibank for mac
• Mint
• The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley
• Image credit Tracy O via Compfight cc

We're selling our apartment, selling all our stuff, and leaving England behind to travel the world indefinitely. This means taking minimalism to the next level, since we'll only take with us those few possessions that will fit into two bags that we can fly with. To help with the task of getting rid of so much, I've created an inventory of everything that I own. This is a useful tool that I first heard about from the blog Man Vs Debt and read about in Your Money or Your Life. I'm convinced that making an inventory of all your stuff can benefit everyone, not just those who plan to sell it all as we do. In this podcast episode, I explain some of the advantages of making an inventory of your stuff. An inventory can help you-

• get an overview of what you own (most people have lost track of all the stuff they have accumulated)
• identify the value of your possessions, as part of calculating your net worth.
• develop a more conscious ownership of your stuff, so that you can get rid of all the clutter that you are not using.
• make money by selling what you don't need.

I used a dedicated application called Home Inventory to create my inventory. In the podcast I suggest some of the useful things you can do if you use a database or dedicated inventory app. Show Notes:

• Episode 133 Going Minimalist
• All Previous Episodes on Minimalism
• Pictures of Every Single Item We Own by Adam Baker (Man Vs Debt)
• Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicky Rubin
• Home Inventory App for Mac

Everyone knows that to succeed as an entrepreneur (and just to be productive) you have to learn to delegate. However, in this episode I make the case for why it's preferable to automate a task rather than delegate it, when possible. I provide some examples of how I use automation to help my own productivity, such as:

• Text expansion (automated reuse of blocks of standard text) using TextExpander
• File manipulation (automating your own procedures for naming, changing and filing documents using Hazel
• Dictation and transcription using Dragon Dictate and Siri
• Scripting using AppleScript, Automator and Keyboard maestro for mac.

I also provide links to some resources that I use for learning about automation:

• Mac Power Users podcast
• Screencasts Online (tutorials for mac software)

Show Notes:

• Episode 108: Three Ways To Delegate

This episode covers everything I've learned about upgrading my habits to improve my life. Here's a brief summary of the points covered:

• Habits are the most important demonstration of your character: you are what you do repetitively.
• By consciously upgrading your habits, you have an opportunity to implement your vision of who you want to be, in your day-to-day life.
• Habits are powerful because steady persistence always beats the mad dash.
• Habits dramatically reduce the amount of willpower and brainpower required to get things done. Once you have implemented a habit and can do it on autopilot, you conserve willpower and brainpower, helping you get more done.
• Habits are easiest to adopt when they are simple to understand, when you minimise any friction at the start of the action, when there are clear environmental triggers that tell your unconscious to start the habit, and when you have feedback (rewards) for completion.
• I recommend the use of a habit tracking app like lift.do. In the podcast, I provide some examples of habits that I am currently working on and describe how I use this app to help me implement them.
• The episode covers the best books to read more about habits (listed in the show notes below) and I talk about many of the tips that I've gathered from these resources.

Show Notes:

• Previous episodes on productivity
• Interview with Augusto Pinaud
• Lift Habit Tracking App
• Interview with Lift CEO Tony Stubblebine
• The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
• Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister
• Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind) edited by Jocelyn K. Glei
• Photo credit: Todd Quackenbush

Why is there a lot of resentment towards entrepreneurs among intellectuals, white collar workers, extended members of successful business families, and artists? This episode is Part 2 of a discussion of "The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality" by Ludwig Von Mises. In this episode, I explain Mises' own theories about resentment towards entrepreneurs from specific groups. Show Notes The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality by Ludwig Von Mises (free ebook) Becoming An Entrepreneur by Jake Desyllas

Why do some people hate entrepreneurs? This episode explores some answers to this question put forward by Ludwig Von Mises in "The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality". Show Notes:

• The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality by Ludwig Von Mises (free ebook)
• Becoming An Entrepreneur by Jake Desyllas

In this podcast episode, I outline the mindset that is most conducive to becoming a successful entrepreneur. This mindset is the culture of entrepreneurship. I provide a contrast with the culture of politics, to show what's special about the culture of entrepreneurship. Show Notes: Becoming an Entrepreneur: How to Find Freedom and Fulfillment as a Business Owner

This is part 2 of my review of Harry Browne's book Fail-Safe Investing. It contains a discussion of the rest of Harry Browne's rules for financial safety: Rule #11: Create a bulletproof portfolio for protection. Rule #12: Speculate only with money you can afford to lose. Rule #13: Keep some assets outside the country in which you live. Rule #14: Use tax reduction accounts. Rule #15: Enjoy yourself with a budget for pleasure. Rule #16: When in doubt, err on the side of safety. Show Notes:

• Fail-Safe Investing by Harry Browne
• Episode 173: Fail-Safe Investing Part 1
• Episode on Financial Preparedness (discussion of the different economic conditions)
• Permanent Portfolio Historical Returns
• As always, it's up to you what you do with your money. I'm not a financial advisor and you will need to do your own research.

This episode is the first in a two part review of my favourite investment book, Fail-Safe Investing by Harry Browne. In this episode I discuss the background to this investing approach and provide an overview of Harry's top 10 rules of financial safety: Rule #1: Your career provides your wealth. Rule #2: Don't assume you can replace your wealth. Rule #3: Recognize the difference between investing and speculating. Rule #4: No one can predict the future. Rule #5: No one can move you in and out of investments consistently with precise and profitable timing. Rule #6: No trading system will work as well in the future as it did in the past. Rule #7: Don't use leverage. Rule #8: Don't let anyone make your decisions. Rule #9: Don't ever do anything you don't understand. Rule #10: Don't depend on any one investment, institution, or person for your safety Show Notes:

• Fail-Safe Investing by Harry Browne
• As always, it's up to you what you do with your money. I'm not a financial advisor and you will need to do your own research.