For years and years we’ve all been told that the the standard operating procedure in this great American life is to be born, go to school, get a job, have kids and retire. The formula is painfully routine and in many ways it imprisons us.
When we started our trek to true financial independence, the end goal was to be able to go where we wanted without having to worry about money. We didn’t want to be tied down to a location or to a single job solely because we were afraid of losing an income.
Originally we didn’t have a desire to be famously wealthy. We didn’t need sports cars, or huge houses. We just wanted some type of independence. This conflicts with the American formula, and maybe for good reason. If everyone lived our dream of independence, odds are this country wouldn’t be what it is. There needs to be worker bees; they are critical to our society.
Being a worker bee is ok… but not forever
How long we are worker bees for is really what we had a problem with. Additionally, being a worker bee tends to force you to specialize in something. It’s not really a bad thing but it has some unintended consequences. Maybe it’s a method of control that “the man” has implemented to keep us in check. But this kind of specialization provides us with that sense of security… until it doesn’t!
Losing a job can be terrifying, especially if you truly rely on it for you and your family’s livelihood. If you’re the standard American specialist, it’s even more scary, since your ability to branch out becomes very limited.
Being dynamic and versatile is the most important thing
In our search to become financially independent, we did a lot of research so as to make ourselves as marketable and versatile as possible. We hoped that we’d be able to weather any economic storm or downturn by having a wide and varied skill set.
The great thing about this is that in the process of trying to become dynamic human beings, we actually increased our enjoyment of life. The thrill of discovery, learning and mastery had long disappeared from our lives. Suddenly, seeking ways to earn extra money, though, we had rekindled our love of learning and exploring ourselves.
A few new skills we took on in attempt to make some profit from were:
- Long term investing
- Options trading
- Real estate investing
- Retail arbitrage
- Art, storytelling and drawing
- Computer aided design
- Gardening and landscape design
- Computer programming
Long Term Investing
We’d had some investments from the beginning, thanks to a few funds left to us from grandparents. It was nothing huge, but it was a nice foundation should our other efforts fall short. Enough to bail us out in an emergency, otherwise. And it left us free to explore a few other ways of creating our own wealth.
One of those ways was long term investing, or value investing as I call it. I spent hours learning about how to read stock charts, learn about earnings, profit margins and business fundamentals. In the process I discovered new things about taxes and financial planning and management.
I discovered the power of compound interest and the long term hold. This was the first time in my life that I really had dollar signs in my eyes. It was the long term stock investment strategy that got us truly on the path to financial independence and personal wealth.
Investing is a straightforward process. Open an account with a brokerage (in many cases your bank will offer this service as well, for a fee) and start researching companies. There is no secret, it’s just basic economics. With long term investing, you make money by buying things with value — especially by buying them for cheaper than they are valued.
Finding stocks that have value can be challenging, but rewarding. It’s one of the most surefire ways of building extreme wealth over the long term.
Find a Commission Free Trading Platform
One of the best decisions we made with our long term investment portfolio was opening an account with Robinhood. A big barrier to making profitable investment decisions is navigating all of the fees involved with trading. Most brokers will charge at least $7.00 per trade. If you’re a small scale investor only investing $50 to $100 at a time, this is a huge percentage of your investment lost to fees.
Robinhood is an online brokerage that provides zero-fee trades. We switched all of our stock holdings over to their platform, and since doing so have saved over $1,300 in fees!! That’s $1,300 in fees over a period of several years that would been lost; instead they have been smartly invested in cheap, profitable companies and returned well over 30% in the same time.
Fees will kill you if you don’t manage them correctly. If you’re not interested in Robinhood, then my advice is you pool your money until you have a sizable enough trade to minimize the percentage of your funds lost to commissions.
Options Trading
This is something new that we have just recently gotten into. Now that we are less fiscally restrained and have considerably more wealth and independence, we’ve begun to dabble in methods to earn higher return at greater risk. One of these methods is trading options.
Options are essentially derivatives of stocks. They allow you to control large portions of stocks without directly owning the shares. An option is a two-way contract that dictates the sale or purchase of a certain number of shares.
They are inherently more risky than owning a value stock, but have the potential to create greater returns due to the power of leverage. In the same way you control a $200,000 house with a $40,000 downpayment, you can control 100 shares of stock with a considerably smaller investment.
There are many strategies for trading options, and they will be the subject of another post. Suffice it to say, I do not recommend it for people who are not already financially stable.
Real Estate Investing
Investing in real estate is very similar to investing in long term stock holdings. Ultimately you want to buy value — in other words, buy when the market is cheap, and sell when it is expensive. The tricky thing about housing is that everyone (including you) needs a place to live. So, market-dependent, sometimes we may be forced to live in, and pay for, a place that is worth less than we’re paying for it. This sucks, but it happens.
In learning to be financially independent, my wife and I learned the ins and outs of the real estate business. We gained an understanding of peaks and valleys in the market, the home purchasing process, how to manage a rental, and a slew of tax-related easter eggs.
Learning about real estate investing is a valuable skill to have. As long as there are people, they will need houses. To some degree realtors, or people otherwise knowledgeable of such things, will always be in demand.
It’s a very useful skill and something definitely worth adding to your toolbox.
Retail Arbitrage
Online arbitrage is something we got into recently as well. It’s not something I recommend for someone just starting out because it requires some speculative startup capital. Too many people see retail arbitrage as a get rich quick scheme, thinking that if they find a great deal for something on clearance, that they’ll be able to turn it around for an instant profit.
But it’s not so simple. Successful arbitrage depends on a LOT of factors, including how hot an item is, the competition, listing and selling fees, and many, many other things.
Nevertheless, this was a skill we would not have developed had it not been for our search for financial independence. We learned all about eBay listings, the Fulfilled by Amazing (FBA) service, and other online sales platforms. We developed skills in product marketing as well, which can be applied in many areas.
This is a skill that has a lot of intangible benefits. Being good at sales is highly desirable, and even though the sales environment can change rapidly (i.e. from door-to-door to Facebook Ads Campaigns), the fundamentals are still very similar over time.
Art and Storytelling
One thing we haven’t developed yet, but which has been the most fun to get started on, has been art and storytelling. Ever since our daughter was born, we had a desire to write and market a children’s book. At first it was an idea we had for fun, but we realized how profitable a simple, cheap eBook actually could be and became more serious about it.
Selling an eBook employs a lot of the other skills from sales and marketing that we had already worked on during our online arbitrage adventures and renting out one of our homes.
Writing and illustrating a book is another story! In this process we have learned about shape and scene fundamentals. We’ve also invested in some computer software and hardware to aid in our artistic development.
As we progress in our abilities, we will most likely post some progress pictures and samples of how we’re doing. Suffice it to say that right now we are drawing like we are 3rd graders again!
This has been a very fun project. It’s amazing how much of our inherent creativity we lose while we grow up, and how much fun it is to rediscover it.
Even if you don’t plan to make money off of it, I strongly recommend getting into drawing or some form of artistic development. It will have profound psychological benefits for you.
Computer Aided Design
We have a project we are currently working on, but which we haven’t yet announced. It’s a simple, marketable product that we are designing for retail, catering to children and schools. We hope to learn a lot about business development, product design and manufacture in the process.
Some of the skills we’ve acquired up to now have been in 3D, computer aided design, as we’ve pieced together a few digital prototypes. As great as 3D design is, it’s not a replacement for effective 2D artistry. In the coming months we hope to finalize our 3D and 2D prototypes, create a physical 3D prototype using a 3D printer, and pitch our product to potential mass manufacturers.
This has been a ton of fun, and is loaded with marketable skills!
Gardening & Landscape Design
Gardening was never part of our “get rich quick” scheme. At one point, we realized how much money we were spending at the grocery store every week on fresh product, shipped in from God knows where. We set out to grow as much food of our own as we could. Knowing what goes into our food and how it was grown created a lot of peace of mind, and also provided an opportunity to expand our horizons.
We learned about planting seasons, starting seeds indoors, fundamentals of transplanting, fertilization and organic gardening.
In doing so, we built a beautiful raised bed garden, which involved considerable excavation and construction. Sure, we could have just thrown some seeds on the ground and hoped for the best, but why not learn something new in the process?
The skills we developed could help us land jobs in contracting work and landscape design. We now know how to lay pavers, excavate, level and construct foundations, and run sophisticated irrigation systems. Although I’ve always enjoyed manual labor, I wouldn’t want to do it for a living, and see this more as a means of relaxing and knowing more.
The process of building the garden, learning and planting the seeds was expensive in and of itself. It will be several season of harvesting before we recoup our expenses. But the peace of mind of having healthy, sustainable and homegrown food is worth it. Additionally, we’ve created a fun, family-building project to take on with our kids as they grow older.
Computer Programming
I developed this skill going to college but lost most of my knowledge as I fell into the rat race and progressed in the Marine Corps. In pursuit of wealth and financial independence, I rekindled my love of programming, as I built web sites for projects and programmed several applications for potential money-making projects that I had hoped to sell.
For many people, technology and programming as progressed so far that the depth of information required to enter the trade seems prohibitive in and of itself. For this reason I’m glad I already had a foundation.
I’ve now become more experienced in C++, Arduino, HTML, PHP, MySQL programming and design, among a few other languages. These are all useful, versatile skills to have, which can be applied to a far reaching array of fields and industries.
The Takeaway
This post is about how we’ve developed ourselves as people all because of a pursuit of something greater. Wealth has a lot of interpretations. While we would like to maintain and continue our pursuit of financial wealth, we’ve also discovered incredible value in creating personal developmental wealth.
We’ve also ensured that should our plans and situation change, we will be versatile and adaptable enough in our skill sets to adapt and change with it. This creates security in and of itself and allows is to be more flexible with our money-making investments and pursuits.
I don’t believe in being an expert anymore. In fact, once I have a basic understanding of something, I tend to move on to something else. I’ve found this to be very valuable and calming to my frame of mind. I’d prefer to be great at many things than perfect at any one.
What do you think about personal and financial versatility? What are some of the skills you’ve learned as unintentional side effects of pursuing financial wealth?