Stefan Shirley > Recent Status Updates

Personal care products: cut your own hair, purchase less stuff for your skin, stop with the gym membership

Child rearing cost a lot of money but not as much as one might think.

Cut utility costs.

Housing is a large portion of where individuals can find savings. Find opportunities: is it better to rent vs buy?, can I house hack?, can I move to a lower cost of living area?, etc.

The enormous cost of your car and how to bring it down to practically zero.

Ways to cut the entertainment budget without taking away the fun factor.

Find cost savings in the easy three: phone, cable, and internet.

Get a handle on your grocery shopping by having a routine and stop eating out.

Chapter 1: The big cost of little things.

Money is a precious tool rather than a disposable resource and we need to take care of our tools.

A budget is a reflection of your discipline and should provide an awareness as to how much various aspects of your life cost.

He highlights the future cost of gift giving and eating out ... spend with a purpose.

Five steps to making this work:
1. Why are you any of this?
2. What is your FI number?
3. Determine your wealth stage (survival, stability, saver, growth, withdrawal).
4. Pick your real estate wealth building or retirement income plan.
5. Get started.

You have to have a backup plan to cut your retirement expenses or increase your retirement income.

Retirement account optimization strategies. While many are great ideas, the best that applies to me is the Roth conversion (when I retire from the military).

The role of retirement accounts varies depending on when you want to retire and the balance of your portfolio.

Build an income floor — which is really about making sure you have income for when you actually retire.

The Withdrawal Plan: Using the 4% rule as a guide.

Choosing the right wealth based plan. This is a summary of all the plans discussed throughout part 5. There are no excuses to building wealth through one of these methods.

The Trade-Up Plan (using a 1031)

The Buy and Hold Plan (long and/or short term). This may be one of the best chapters of the book due to the details and examples provided. I didn’t quite think about all the different ways to add value to my buy and hold Plan; especially with the buy 3, sell 2, and keep 1 idea.

The Rental Debt Snowball Plan and its cousin, the All-Cash Rental Plan

The Live-In-Flip Plan; The BRRRR Plan

The House-hacking Plan; The Live-In-Then-Flip Plan

The five wealth stages: survival, stability, saver, growth, withdrawal.

Increase your income by becoming an expert, improving your communication skills, becoming invaluable through profound service, and developing real estate side hustles.