I’m trying to get into a new blogging schedule rather than haphazardly posting articles whenever I am able to put together the time. Roughly, I’m looking at doing something like:
Monday – New Article
Tuesday – Off (catch up on some non-blogging stuff)
Wednesday – New Article
Thursday – Newsletter (You can sign of for it free here)
Friday – Lighter article or Improve the Site
Saturday/Sunday – A Round-up of articles like this one
I used to write nearly every day, but I’m starting to wonder if after ten years there’s really that much more and exciting to write about. I have something like a 100 articles drafted that just don’t seem good enough to post. Hopefully this focus improves the quality of the website.
You might be wondering why I’m not doing this round-up on Sunday. I’m already breaking the rules. I’m trying to get taxes done, and this is an easier article to write. I’m also procrastinating on said taxes by working on a new comment system. If you get a chance, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment here even if it’s tell me that you are testing it out. Of course if you could tell me what you think that would be great too. (Note: The comment system didn’t work and needs some more maintenance.)
March really came quick and I can’t believe the first week is over. Last year, I realized that July 4th is practically the halfway point of the year. That means that early March is the first trimester of the first half of year. That’s a contrived way of saying that it’s probably time to revisit your New Year’s Resolutions. I would be reviewing mine, but I didn’t make any formal ones. I really lived down to my moniker (Booo…)
I’m really looking to revamp the newsletter. You really might want subscribe (hint, hint) as I’ll be giving away $100 soon. There will be multiple readers getting money. Not bad, right?
FIRE article of the Week
My favorite FIRE “article” this week comes from Mrs. ONL of Our Next Life. It seems that my favorite article every week comes from her. This time my favorite article isn’t an article… it’s a podcast. Check out her interview with the Mad Fientist.
My favorite part of this podcast was the mention of moving from the city to the mountains and how it saves money on social life expenses. In the city, the norm for them was going to dinner at a $100 a pop. In the mountains, the norm is cheaper restaurants, but usually playing board games with friends.
We experienced a similar thing when we moved to from Boston to San Francisco… away from many of our friends. When we moved from SF to Rhode Island it was even more pronounced as we’ve focused more on our family as we became parents than our social life.
Also, I appreciate anyone self-aware enough to know he/she is crazy for keeping the temperature at 55 in their house.
Rest of the articles of the Week
- Shorting a Rainbow
This is the most complete article I’ve read on the Herbalife scam. It might be one of the best corporate finance stories of all time, which is why there is a movie about it (Betting on Zero, coming to theaters in a couple of days.)
- Why Everyone Should Freak Out about MLM
It seems like MLM is getting more attention each week than it got in the previous 10 years. That’s a very good thing, because it seems to be settled news that this financial fraud costs consumers more than 50 billion dollars a year. This article shows how the politicians are NOT likely to shut it down any time soon. This is after the chairwoman of the FTC made it clear that MLMs have big problems as she put forth many guidelines that legitimate MLMs must adhere to. I don’t know of a single MLM that does… except for maybe Vemma and Herbalife as a result of lawsuits/settlements.
- Calling Bullpoop!
This is a really college course. It’s one that every American should take. Here’s the introduction:
The world is awash in bull[poop]. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bull[poop] to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bull[poop] — and take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with bull[poop] of the second order. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bull[poop].
We’re sick of it.
- I might have mentioned this before, but I’m a huge fan of Jack Johnson’s music. I didn’t realize how good I got hooked on the Curious George movie from over ten years ago. These are the kinds of things that happen when you have a 3 and a 4 year old.
Johnson has partnered to create a short 30-minute documentary called Smog of the Sea. For a limited time you can stream it for free on the website. Yes, it’s a movie about the environment. If that’s not your thing, then you’ll hate it. I thought it was good and it should probably get more press than it has.
First of all (and a bit related to this article) I wanted to say that I think it’s great that someone is addressing MLM and what it really is. I was once, when I was younger and dumber, sucked in to the promise of a glorious MLM company. Looking back at it I can see that the entire system was designed so that the people working got as little pay as possible. But I didn’t see that then.
In my experience, and from what I’ve learned after my brief encounter with MLM is that there is a sort of cult mentality and rather subtle brainwashing. The company I tried even had a theme song that played at the start of each weekly meeting. Now, I’m generalizing a bit, but I think it’s true in many cases though.
Of course, I never made any money and it just took a few years before the company went belly-up.
The thing I could take away from my experience was that I learned about how you can set goals and learn to condition yourself to think positive thoughts, and how that effect your well-being overall.
I just have to ask, how did you have the energy to write articles every day? Did it come so easy, no writers block? :)
About if there are still subjects that are exciting to write about, perhaps revisiting and diving deeper into old ones could be a solution?
Thanks for a good blog!
Blogging used to be a lot easier. I didn’t add pictures very often (I still don’t). There weren’t 10 social media outlets that you had to focus on. A lot of the time an article could be just a deeper dive into an article that I read somewhere. I bet millions write similar things on their Facebook every day.
I am hoping to go back through the old posts. Some of them were so quickly written and really didn’t stand the test of time. With 10 years of more wisdom, I think it would possible to make those articles a lot better. Many bloggers are doing that.
First, I’d like to say I came to this article with the hopes of reading about how to retire early as the title, “The Best Financial Independence, Retire Early Article of the Week” made me think it was about. I’m apologize, but I must have missed something.
I read a lot about you, and what you’re doing, but I didn’t find anything that explained to me how to retire early. I suppose I could spend more of my time, reading other articles of yours, but I fear if they are written anything like this, it’ll be a waste of my time. But hey, what is time anyway right?
I can only assume by the name of this site, you may have “wasted” a day or two in the past being a lazy man. But that really isn’t for me to say, only you can make that statement.
Then a curious thought popped into my crazy mind, what do you define retirement as?
Anyway, looking forward to your answers. Also thought ya would want to know ya have a grammar mistake in the 3rd paragraph. Guessing you are asking for us to tell you what we think, but “tell” is missing. If you’re anything like me, I’m prefer to have my content with as little errors as possible.
Have a wonderful Monday! And hope the new article you’re writing turns out to be a masterpiece.
The idea of the series is to highlight the best FIRE articles of the week. However, I often share some other articles that I believe are important. The podcast I shared was the single article this week that I thought one should focus on. I guess you did miss it? I thought I had an appropriate title for it.
The vast majority of my articles aren’t written like this. As I wrote in the beginning, this type of article is expected to come on Saturday/Sunday and be viewed as a bonus as most blogs don’t produce any content on those days.
Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote an article What is Your Definition of Retirement and gave you mine in there. It’s not as easy to define as you might think.
Yes, I write this blog very quickly and I don’t have the patience for proofreading. Even when I try to proofread, my brain fills in what I was thinking as I was writing it. Obviously the fewer typos the better, but that’s why I chose to write in blog form 10 years ago. The expectation is that there will be typos and it won’t be professionally edited. That’s the trade-off of getting content out there quickly and easily.
And in this particular case, I made it clear that I was particularly rushing in an attempt to get my taxes done.
If you feel this site is a waste of your time, that’s your decision to make. I can’t stop you.
Well I really enjoyed reading it. This article procured by you is very helpful for good planning.