The Voluntary Life

This is part 2 of my review of Harry Browne's book Fail-Safe Investing . It contains a discussion of the rest of Harry Browne's rules for financial safety: Rule #11: Create a bulletproof portfolio for protection. Rule #12: Speculate only with money you can afford to lose. Rule #13: Keep some assets outside the country in which you live. Rule #14: Use tax reduction accounts. Rule #15: Enjoy yoursel...

This episode is the first in a two part review of my favourite investment book,  Fail-Safe Investing by Harry Browne. In this episode I discuss the background to this investing approach and provide an overview of Harry's top 10 rules of financial safety: Rule #1: Your career provides your wealth. Rule #2: Don't assume you can replace your wealth. Rule #3: Recognize the difference between investing...

There are many aspects of life that you can work to improve, in order to create the life you want. In this episode, I make the case for prioritising your personal finances, before focussing on other personal development goals.  

This episode is an interview with Jacki Rigoni, who blogs at Post-Consumer Life .  Jacki and her husband realised that their million dollar house was really just a million dollars of mortgage debt which they would have to work like crazy to pay off until the age of 75. So they decided to sell the house, get rid of the debt, buy a plot of land, build their own tiny home, and live off-grid. Listen t...

This episode is an interview with Bobby Casey, founder of Global Wealth Protection and many other internationalization businesses. Bobby talks about his own background as an entrepreneur, how he became interested in the internationalisation field, and his life as a perpetual traveler. He explains some of the key ideas of asset protection, such as the role of offshore trusts and companies. He also...

An episode about two inter-related questions that are crucial to your happiness in life: How will you achieve financial security and/or independence? How will you find fulfilment? It's your responsibility to find your own answers to these questions, repeatedly throughout your life. Nobody can answer them for you. This episode provides some suggestions about how to think about these questions, to h...

This episode is about the most powerful technique I know for overcoming deadlock in negotiations and resolving disputes, both in business and in personal relationships. The technique involves a very straightforward concept that everyone understands, but it is often ignored or usually only tried when it is already too late. Show Notes: Episode 144 Win-Win Negotiation Part 1: Communication Episode 1...

Joshua Sheats invited me onto the  Radical Personal Finance  podcast to discuss the Permanent Portfolio investment strategy for individual private investors. In this episode we talk about many aspects of the PP strategy including: my own reasons for choosing this investment strategy the design of the portfolio the philosophy behind the approach strengths and weaknesses of the PP Show Notes: Radica...

Justin retired at the age of 33. He writes about his journey to financial independence on his blog Root of Good . In this interview, he discusses his path to financial independence from intensive saving. Topics covered include: Saving all salary increases and avoiding lifestyle inflation Cost-effective housing, transport and food choices The importance of having agreement with your spouse towards...

Joshua from Radical Personal Finance Podcast invited me on his show to talk about entrepreneurship. We talked about learning entrepreneurial skills, voluntary versus compulsory education, the importance of selling in life, the ethical nature of business, and the positive power of entrepreneurship. Show Notes: Four Ways To Quit The Rat Race Presentation Radical Personal Finance Podcast Becoming an...

Mike and Lauren  have average-income jobs, no big inheritance or bonuses, and they plan to retire at the age of 30. They share all the facts about their journey to financial independence on their youtube channel . In this interview, they talk about the practicalities of intensive saving, the challenges of making unconventional life choices, and their dream to sail around the world. Show Notes: Mik...

Jeffrey Tucker interviews Jake Desyllas about his book Becoming an Entrepreneur . They discuss how to think like an entrepreneur and the amazing potential of entrepreneurship, both for personal growth and for a better world. Jeffrey is the founder and Chief Liberty Officer of Liberty.me , Distinguished Fellow of FEE , head of LFB.org , and founder of CryptoCurrencyCon.com . Show Notes: Liberty.me...

This episode is an interview with Jeremy and Winnie, authors of the blog Go Curry Cracker . In the interview, Jeremy and Winnie share their inspiring journey to financial independence through intensive saving. They describe the lifestyle choices that enabled them to retire early in their 30s and travel the world.

This episode is a review of the book Built to Sell by John Warrillow. The book is about how to sell a business, including how to transform your business to make it sellable. In this review, I discuss a central idea of the book: productising your services so that the business can work without you (the entrepreneur). I compare this with Michael Gerber's idea of creating a "franchise prototype" and t...

This episode is a conversation I had with Chris Stefanick on his podcast Choice Conversations . We planned to talk about financial freedom, but ended up covering many topics including childhood influences, entrepreneurship, different approaches to investment, and much more! Show Notes: Choice Conversations Podcast Four Ways To Quit The Rat Race Presentation

A podcast episode about the potential of life and society without politics. Show Notes: Franz Oppenheimer 's book The State Henry David Thoreau quote Gustave de Molinari 's book The Production of Security   Michael Huemer's book The Problem of Political Authority Photo Credit: danorbit. via Compfight cc

A podcast episode about how becoming an entrepreneur can be pretty embarrassing, and how that's ok. Show Notes Embarrassment Four Stages of Competence Photo Credit: Alex E. Proimos via Compfight cc  

This episode is the second part of a series on how to go paperless. It explains how to digitise your paper books using destructive book scanning. Show Notes: How To Go Paperless Part 1 Article: Destructive Scanning For Fun And Profit VoiceDream App  

This podcast episode presents a range of techniques to support your creative thinking.  Some of the techniques covered are outlined below: The focussed journalling technique called extraordinary time is great for thinking creatively about challenges in life.  Another productive method of focussed journalling is the use of regular  creative review questions for supporting ongoing creative thinking....

This week's podcast episode is a discussion of Burton Malkiel's famous investment book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". Malkiel's key point is that stock market prices are inherently unpredictable. He further argues that investment advisor techniques such as technical analysis and fundamental analysis cannot be used to reliably beat market averages. In light of this, he recommends the alternative...

This episode is about a technique for staying on top of all your commitments known as the weekly review. It helps you get a handle on all your commitments, decide what you want and don't want to do with your time and maintain all aspects of your life in working order. The idea for this technique comes from the Getting Things Done approach to personal productivity, but you can adapt it to your own...

Part three in a series on developing your own independent moral compass. Here is a summary of the ideas covered: Moral behaviour evolved as an evolutionary adaptation to gain the advantages of the division of labour that come from peaceful cooperation. The act of peaceful communication logically contains and implies the criteria for moral rules. There are four rules for avoiding conflict over scar...

Part two in a series on developing your own independent moral compass. Four criteria are outlined that can be used to assess whether any law or rule of behaviour is moral. The criteria discussed are: Enables conflict avoidance regarding scarce resources Universal Logically coherent Actions always speak louder than words (any rule can't involve a so-called  performative contradiction )

An episode about developing your own independent moral compass. Topics covered: The huge influence of morality and moral arguments. Examples of different approaches to morality. The real purpose of shared moral rules. The benefits of developing your own moral compass.

An episode about my new book Becoming an Entrepreneur: How to Find Freedom and Fulfillment as a Business Owner . Topics covered include: First reviews of the book from readers.  What the book is about and why I wrote it.  The process of writing and self-publishing, including my struggles along the way.  My experiment in crowdsourcing feedback with "beta-readers" from TVL listeners.  Future plans. ...