Minafi

Financial Independence Through Investing, Minimalism & Mindfulness

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How to Invest During a Bitcoin Bubble

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3 min read. Canonical, Blog, Investing, Financial Independence. 3 Comments

In the last month, the value of Bitcoin has doubled. Just last night when I went to sleep, Bitcoin had hit $4,400, but was down to $4,000 when I woke up. For every Bitcoin millionaire story out there, there are countless people who invested at the wrong time and lost money or lost it all during the Mt. Gox hack. How do you invest in digital currencies without falling into the trap of a bubble?

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Our 7 Rules of Travel Spending

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4 min read. Blog, Financial Independence. 17 Comments

Travel can be one of the largest easily controllable expenses that most people face — myself included. For 2017, travel is set to make up 12% my spending — the largest of any category outside of my home. Over the years as we have traveled more, my approach to how I spend money while traveling has changed a lot. Here’s the approach to travel that’s worked the best for me to get the most out our trips for the least expense.

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Use Savings Rate as a Lifestyle Inflation Canary

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2 min read. Blog, Canonical, Financial Independence. 21 Comments

This is a graph of my savings rate over time. By savings rate I mean the simple formula: total amount saved / total amount earned. This will always be a percentage between 0% and 100% if you’re saving money, or below 0% if you’re dipping into savings. In my case, I consider anything unspent at the end of the month to be savings, so it’s not specifically money that was invested.

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The Simple Three Fund Portfolio at Vanguard

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5 min read. Blog, Investing, Financial Independence. 21 Comments

Investing is easier than it looks. In this post, I’m going to give very simple steps you can take to start investing including where, how much and what to invest in. Investing in this way has returned around 7% a year over the last century using only a three fund portfolio.

This post is somewhat opinionated in the investing method mentioned here. It’s similar advice to what you’d read in books like The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing, or other diversification strategies, but the specific actions are listed here to give a framework for those new to investing.

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Comparison is the Thief of Joy, but How Do You Stop?

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2 min read. Blog, Mindfulness. 2 Comments

Years ago at my job, I was working extremely hard on something I was very passionate about. In this case, it was a programming course on Bootstrap that I was working on over at Code School. I was creating something that I could be extremely proud of (and now that it’s launched, I can say I am proud of it!), but at the time I let something I shouldn’t have get to me — comparison.

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