The best way to make money and keep money is to invest, invest, invest. By investing early, slowly, patiently, and broadly (i.e. with a diversified portfolio including exchange traded funds), over time your money makes new money – in the form of dividends and increased value for each stock you buy. All you need to do is hold onto those investments and you get paid for doing so!
Of course, you can also make money at a day job or with a side hustle. When you make something or provide a service for someone who’s willing to pay for it (i.e. your employer or your customer), you can make money. It’s a great way to afford the cost of living and start to invest.
This is a pretty simplistic view of the world of work and investing. I think starting with the basics is helpful though, as it allows me to focus on an essential lesson that feels more important every year:
I can’t and don’t want to work forever.
I hope you don’t, either.
You may love what you currently do for work. Hopefully you have great colleagues, are paid well, and have flexible hours. At the same time, do you love it more than never working again? Surely you can think of more fun, flexible, and rewarding things to do with your day if you were making your own schedule!
I would love to be financially independent as early as possible while still being comfortable enough to not worry about expenses next month. So, based on my simplistic view outlined above, I decided to make money through working (as much and as quickly as possible), so that I can invest (as early and as often as possible), then take my foot off the gas and let my investments take care of me for the rest of my life.
I choose investing over working because it gives me more time to be with my friends, family, and community.
Planning and talking about investing is a Fancy Frugal Gay staple, because, over time, getting informed and making smart investing choices makes for an earlier and safer retirement. We are following the typical approach to work and retirement, just taking the former at speed and the latter at a lengthy and leisurely pace.
No matter your approach, and contrary to what your pension administrator and/or investment advisor says, you should be the one to decide when to stop working. The when is directly correlated with how much money you have saved and how much money you need to live on.
The sooner you start saving, the sooner you can invest, the sooner you can retire. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. We will explore this much more in future posts, but always with the goal of achieving financial independence as early as possible.
If investing and working are the two main ways to generate income, I choose investing. If saving is the best way to increase my investment pot and the income generated from it, then I will make frugality a virtue in the pursuit of a fancy lifestyle now and throughout retirement.
Given the choice, would you choose working for money or having your money work for you?
Fancy Frugal Gay 