DISQUS

Tadas,

I always enjoy reading your link reviews. In fact, its one of the first things I do when I log onto the internet. Keep up the good work!

Best Regards,

Dividend Growth Investor

Now that sounds like the perfect get rich quick scheme there. The main problem of course is finding 640,000 subscribers..

Of course if you added re-invested dividends you'd find that stock market investing was pretty profitable over that 70 year period you are talking about. Most investors focus solely on capital gains and seem to forget that dividends are the soundest fundamental indicator of a business' ability to generate cash flow..

Thanks a lot for the link!

Dividend Growth Investor

A mind is a terrible thing to waste..

Nicely put Brip Blap!
I agree with Bubelah that Rental properties could be a passive income if you buy a REIT or hire a property manager to do the work.

Great point Jim. The CNN article headline is written in a way to attract readers. I am always amazed that newspapers and media consider US people stupid.
When you read the whole article you'll see that they use revenues and net income interchangeably which is not correct.
If I made $100 from work I have an income of $100; however if I bought bicycles and I bought a bike for $200 and sold it for $100 I did have revenues but also a huge loss. I don't think I should be paying taxes on it,should i?
In addition to that corporations are taxed twice- at the corporate level as well as at the ownership level. Whenever shareholders get dividends, they give a certain percentage bvack to Uncle Sam in the form of taxes.
Corporations pay so much in taxes at the end of the day, that sometimes I wonder if its better to work than form a corporation.
Another popular news story that makes me angry is whenever XOM earns 11-12 billion per quarter. Everyone claims that XOM is a greedy corporation. The truth is that in 2007 XOM paid 30 billion in income taxes and had a profit of 40 billion.

Four Pillars,

Brip Blap has a thick russian accent with his "R"s :-) kiddin

It's pretty cool that the ideas of personal finance form the little guy for the little guy are gaining popularity.. Hopefully people will learn and not make a lot of PF mistakes..

Well congrats on simplifying your life Steve. Even though I propagade dividend growth investing to masses, I do agree that index funds work for most investors who don't want to get involved in stock picking and selection and I respect that.

By the way I listened to you on the radio. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/...

Congrats on being a celebrity! :-)

geez now that you put it this way..I try to be a morning guy.. But its a never ending ying and yang battle :-)

This is definitely a tough one. One wouldn't really know unless (god forbid) they were actually told so..
The thing is that with so many people in US in debt now maxed out on their credit cards, they have already lived life to the fullest..
And then what happens if the doctor was wrong and you live on for 70 more years?
I read a biography of the first Rockeffeller, the founder of Standard Oil. When he was in his 20's, a doctor told him that he won't live very long.
At the time of his death close to the age of 100, he actually outlived his 38th doctor ...

Happy Birthday! :-)

Brip Blap,

A 10 year period is "noise" in my opinion. Actually being more passive when it comes to investing can actually increase your results, because you get better tax treatment, you spend less on commisiions and trading software. Last but not least, you get more free time. Over the 10 years that I have been investing i have seen a lot of people who think that they could actively trade the market and outperform it by picking the "next microsoft". They seldom do well.

I think that index funds are perfect for 95% of the people out there. If you have more than 500K, and you are willing to manage your money and you are able to return at least 10%/year every year,then by all means go for it. But unless you can prove that you can do this consistently then I would stick to index funds.

When I was an active trader I was able to beat the index almost every year for several years.. But since I had a smaller amount to start with my time in actively managing my money was not paid well. At the end of the day I was doing only a little bit better than an index fund. But I paid much higher expenses than an index fund..

Wow Steve, for a moment after reading the four steps and looking at the picture below I thought that I was done reading this post, thinking what a simple yet brilliant post.
But then it got even better. As long as people fail to understand that making more money and not spending all of their incomes is important in their wealth building, they won't accumulate a lot of assets in their lifetime..

Steve, I wasn't sure if that was true when you first wrote your goals, or whether this is really your daily income from blogging:

"Actionable - I’m already started on this goal - this blog is earning nearly $0.03 per day, "

I have always thought that the main reason why kids go to kindergarten/school is for them to gain some "people" skills. Math, science and all the other stuff kids are taught could be learned anywhere; but teamwork has to be experienced.

Brip Blap,

I never though about traveling the way you described it. I would love it if you could post more thought provoking articles like that in the future.
I myself this that I want to be location independent. I think that the whole idea of passive/alternative income really meshes up perfectly with the idea of location independency. For example, you could travel accross the globe and still be able to write articles for your blog while earning money from your advertisers.
Fascinating!

Actually USA is indeed the largest debtor in the world. But the standard of living has indeed risen very much over the past 100 years. Even poor people today in the US drive cars with A/C, could live at least 70+ years and could afford to eat well. 100 years ago rich people did have cars, but no A/C. They did have medical help, but a virus could have spread and killed them just as easily as the next guy on the street..
And as for happyness, how can you really measure it?

I have been both poor and rich. I prefer to be rich, because happyness is something that is eternal in every one of us. If you are a happy person, you'll be one no matter what. If you are an unhappy one, then even if you have 100 billion dollars, you wouldn't be happy. But not having to worry too much aout money, will definitely be good..

Curmudgeon,

Sometimes it is tough to be bold and leave when there are not too many choices in front of you. If that guy has to pay a mortgage and college tuition for 1-2 kids, I bet he'd do anything just to keep working some job and make some decent salary. Otherwise he might not have a lot of options..

I love Donny's show. I don't really have too much time to watch it however..

I have never heard about this movie. I searched for it on IMDB, yet I received multiple results. My guess is that it probably is on pay per view so I mightrecord it then..

Brip Blap,

I do know that networking is a powerful tool for landing a job. Unfortunately though, I am pretty bad at networking.
I have been able to help "friends" in finding a job, but after a while, when I really needed help in myself getting a job these same friends would not scratch my back. What should I do :-)

As far as being a pro-blogger with small kids, I think that what you experienced over the past couple of weeks is something similar to people who have their own business at home. Basically, in order to be productive, you should have a designated office room in your house, where you shouldn't be disturbed during your normal "work" hours- let's say 9 - 5. Even though you are working on your own pro-blogging business, you should still treat it seriously as if it were your job. Otherwise, you won;'t succeed problogging. Just ask many of the stay at home day-traders why they failed. This is one of the reasons why, not the market timing issues.

Brip Blap,

I am glad that I was the biggest talker on the block. Isn't MultiMesc in Russian?