At the turn of the 20th century, there wasn’t a more cosmopolitan city in the world than Vienna, Austria. The city seemed to be brimming with thought leaders in medicine, science, and art. Ideas spilled out from this Central European country like an ever melting ice pack streaming down the Alps and flooding other nations with its ideas. Vienna at that time was the capital of the Austrian Monarchy, then nearly a thousand years old. But then it stopped being…
Sometime during the last decade of the cold war, America’s unions began to die. Blue-collar work in America, while respected and looked upon with nostalgic eyes by nearly all economic classes as the backbone of this country, just isn’t something that America aspires to be. And in turn, many young people are passing up what may be a great career and the fastest lane to Financial Independence. Not to mention a high salary with college degree needed. With the preconceived…
In two months we were able to increase our savings rate from 25% of our net income to 50%. Since we gave ourselves a 7 year deadline to call it quits from the rat race, the importance of jacking up our savings rate in a timely manner was number one on our FI course correction list. Achieving a 50% savings rate in such a short amount of time is not impossible, as long as you don’t have a lot of…