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Mindful FIRE Resources, Free Annual Credit Report, Fear Wasting Your Life

Brad
Posted by Brad Barrett

Mindful FIRE Resources

This week's guest (ChooseFI Episode 420), Adam Coelho was kind enough to create a free guide specifically for the Choose FI community. This guide builds on Adam's experience teaching mindfulness, meditation and envisioning to over 2500 of his fellow Google colleagues around the world. The free guide includes:

  • The top takeaways from this week's episode about Mindful FIRE
  • A short guided meditation to help you get started with meditation
  • Adam's Envisioning Guide to help you get clear on your vision for your post-FI life

Free Annual Credit Report

Cody Garrett from Measure Twice Money published a helpful post on Twitter that I wanted to pass along:

"Time to check the annual credit reports from Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax!

Review your contact information, payment history, account numbers, responsible debtors, opening and closing dates, credit limits, and highest balances.

Free at AnnualCreditReport .com"

I want to reiterate that this is entirely free and this is different from just checking your credit score.  Each of the 3 main credit bureaus have a file on you and you really need to periodically check this for accuracy.

Since they are required to offer us this free service annually, you may as well take advantage and give it a quick glance at the beginning of each year.

Fear Wasting Your Life

I listened to Bill Perkins, author of Die With Zero, on recent episodes of All The Hacks with Chris Hutchins and The Drive with Dr. Peter Attia and I’ve been blown away by his message.

I’d highly recommend listening to those episodes, and really internalize his message about maximizing life fulfillment while also being financially responsible.

Here’s a quote that especially jumped out to me, and it’s a solid operating principal for those of us with ‘one more year syndrome’ or who have long since reached FI but can’t seem to stop worrying about every dollar:

"You should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money."

ChooseFI Community Taking Action This Week

  • Dallin said, "My 1% better this week is a literal 1% better. I opened up a Robinhood brokerage account and ROTH IRA so I could start getting their 1% contribution match in their ROTY IRA. I only added $50, but purchased $50.50 of VTI."
  • Garrett said, "My 1% better was using Chase Ultimate Rewards and United points to book a 3 week trip to Europe with my girlfriend! I was first introduced to the concept on the show and I am so grateful. A flight from NC to Paris and then another flight home from Naples to OH only cost $172!! Thanks ChooseFI!"
  • Suzanne said, "My 1% was over the last several years researching college costs and financial aid through reading online articles, college Facebook forums, reading books (I recommend "The Price You Pay for College" by Ron Lieber), experimenting with college net price calculators, and corresponding directly with the school financial aid office. Through this, I was able to gain the confidence in what the cost would be for my daughter to apply early decision to her dream school (a highly selective East Coast private college). Applying early decision is in many cases a binding agreement which would require extraordinary circumstances to get out of, and it leaves the family with little leverage to negotiate with the financial aid office. But she got in and received very significant need-based financial aid, enough so that we can cashflow our contribution to her tuition and no one will need to go into debt. And we the parents will have the option of retiring her senior year. The amount we will owe is roughly what all my research was pointing to, so we all have something big to celebrate this holiday season."
  • Amy said, "My 1% better in starting the new year off is changing my 401k contribution from 4% to 10% AND changing it from a traditional 401k to a Roth401k since I just found out the company offers those options. I am still new (almost 4 months in)."
  • Miguel said, "My 1% better this week was opening my first Roth IRA at 18 years old. I've set up auto contributions and hope to max it out this year."
  • Maddie said, "My 1% better is finally switching back to the sector I love to work in (international development) and getting a 30% pay increase!"
  • Casimir said, "Maxed my IRA and I-bond contributions for the year. Started relearning programming both as a personal talent stack interest and as a "backup plan for my backup plan" career-wise."
  • Sam said, "My 1% better, is when I received my end of year bonus, I realized I have a net worth of $100k before the age of 21, actually just a week after I turned 20, I can't tell many people so I'd like to share with someone who understands how much work goes into something like this."

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