The Voluntary Life

Benjamin Constant  was a French classical liberal writer who lived through the French revolution and the reign of terror . Assessing what had gone wrong with the revolution, he came up with a distinction between two conflicting ideas of "liberty" that had influenced the people involved— an ancient concept of liberty and a modern one. His distinction is still useful today and can help make sense of...

Portfoliocharts.com  is a brilliant, free resource for passive investors. It provides a comparison of all the main passive investment portfolios using funky charts to visually explain the data. The site was created by Tyler, an early retiree with a background in mechanical engineering. Tyler created the site for fun as a personal project, but I think it is the best guide to passive investing portf...

This episode is part 2 of the interview with Justin from Root of Good . Justin talks about how the goal of early retirement differs from mainstream ideas of "success". He provides suggestions for those interested in pursing early retirement. Show Notes: Root of Good Jack Ma Interview  

There are many practical steps required to reach financial independence, but there are also some interesting psychological challenges to early retirement. Who would you  be  without your job? What would you do all day if you never had to work? Justin retired at the age of 33. He writes about financial independence at the Root of Good blog . In this interview, he gives his take on the psychological...

Many people find getting started as an individual investor daunting.  This episode is about how little I knew about investing when I got started. I describe what I came to expect from investing as I learned more about it. If you are starting out in investing, I think hearing my experience will be relevant for you. Show Notes Fail-Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes by Harry B...

It took me a long time to work out how to stay on top of my finances. After a lot of trial and error, I developed the habit of doing a monthly financial review. This is what enables me to confidently manage my finances without having to think about money all the time. In this episode, I explain how you can implement your own monthly financial review. Topics covered include: Habits to set up when i...

In previous episodes of this podcast, I've explored different ways to live a job-free lifestyle. I've interviewed extreme savers, unjobbers, lifestyle entrepreneurs, and startup entrepreneurs. Many listeners have raised an important question about these lifestyles: how do you choose between these different strategies for quitting the rat race? How do you decide which job-free lifestyle you want to...

This episode is a discussion with a special guest— my wife Hannah Braime , who is the host of Becoming Who You Are . We've just moved to Panama and we love it here already. In this episode we talk about all the preparations involved in our move, the start of our travel lifestyle, and our first impressions of life in Panama. Show Notes: Hannah Braime Previous TVL episodes on travel TVL episode 130:...

A listener shared these reflections with me: "I like to think I'm a moral person but many times in my career (and in the careers of friends), I've been forced to choose between unethical behavior and possibly losing my job.  I handled this on a case by case manner, where I had to weight the importance of the unethical behavior, the likelihood of me being punished, the odds of me successfully eleva...

"Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough."  Charles Warner Over the last three years, I've reduced my possessions to only those things that will fit inside one suitcase and one hand luggage bag. My wife and I decided to pursue extreme decluttering, in order to make a lifestyle of long-term travel more practical. Decluttering was easy at first, but got harder the more...

In this episode, special guest Hannah Braime talks about how to free yourself from a life of drama and move to a life of empowerment. Hannah is a coach, author, and host of Becoming Who You Are . We discuss some powerful concepts from the field of psychology that Hannah uses in her coaching. She explains how easy it is to get stuck playing a series of roles in your life— acting out a script writte...

Here is how you reach true conclusions about any question in life: start with undeniable premises and use valid logic.  Logic— used in reasoned argument— is the universal, impartial method that humans have for finding the truth together peacefully. Yet very few people use logic consistently. I discuss some reasons why it is so hard to be logically consistent. The most important reason is that it t...

In the last episode I suggested two key challenges to resolve if you want to think for yourself: How do you tell truth from falsehood?  How do you know what you can be certain of?  This episode is about how the scientific method can help address the first of these challenges: determining truth. I provide a summary of the philosophy of science and the rules for deciding whether a theory qualifies a...

You can't be free unless you can think for yourself. If someone else is doing your thinking for you, then it's not your life that you are living. When you know how to think of yourself, you cannot be controlled or manipulated. Your life is truly in your hands and is up to you what you do with it. This episode is part one of a new series on how to think for yourself. The episode introduces the two...

This episode is part two of an interview with Joshua Sheats, host of the Radical Personal Finance podcast. Joshua shares his insights on tax strategies for those pursuing financial freedom. In part one of the interview (last week's episode), we covered tax strategies for employees. In this episode, we discuss tax strategies for entrepreneurs. Joshua describes his own experience developing a lifest...

Tax is the biggest expense category for most people. It is crucial for everyone interested in financial freedom to understand tax and develop a tax strategy. Yet many of the leading books on financial independence hardly mention tax. In this interview, Joshua Sheats provides a wealth of insights on this topic. Joshua trained as a financial planner and now runs the Radical Personal Finance podcast....

If you want to quit your job to pursue a more freedom-oriented lifestyle (such as entrepreneurship), there are many challenges to overcome. Some challenges are practical, such as replacing the job income that you no longer have. This episode is about the psychological challenges. Even an unfulfilling job has a psychological "pull" that is easy to take for granted because it provides: A sense of pu...

If you are an entrepreneur, you might want to sell your business one day (or at least have that option). There are many issues to tackle in order to make selling a real possibility. For one thing, you need to identify a potential buyer. This podcast episode provides an overview of the two main groups of potential buyers: strategic and financial. I suggest some issues to consider when looking for e...

Are successful entrepreneurs just "lucky"? This episode is about the role of luck in business. Here are some of the ideas discussed: The main job of the entrepreneur is to minimise chance and uncertainty. "Luck" is not the basis of success, it is the enemy.  People confuse the success or failure of a business idea with the success or failure of an entrepreneur's career —they are not the same thing...

This episode is about the most powerful tool that I know for planning anything. A process map is a tool for visualising a workflow. It's also called a workflow map or a network diagram—there are many different names for this tool. It's a way of clarifying exactly what has to happen to in order for you to get all the way from where you are now, to your final goal. The map shows the dependencies bet...

This episode is about making sense of two important concepts: frugality and minimalism. Frugality means to be economical or sparing with regard to money, but this definition prompts the question: what are the criteria for deciding if a choice is economical?  Similarly, the definition of minimalism (to own the minimum amount of possessions) also prompts a question: what are the criteria for decidin...

In this interview, Sarah tells her early retirement story and talks about life after quitting the rat race. We discuss why she has chosen housesitting both as a lifestyle choice and as a great financial benefit. She discusses the pros and cons of housesitting and provides some advice for people thinking about making the jump to early retirement. Show Notes: Honoring My Compass

In order to gain self-knowledge, you have to reduce the gap between what you think about yourself and reality. Although this is often an uncomfortable process, the truth is always liberating.   In this episode, I share two theories from social psychology about why we sometimes lie to ourselves and fool ourselves, as well as suggestions for overcoming these tendencies. I describe some of my own app...

Jake shares his own tools and systems for independent learning. These are the hacks for proactive learning, rather than being an uncritical consumer of ideas. Topics covered include: Making objectives for your learning and capturing them in Evernote Coping with the information firehose Filtering your search for learning materials using reading lists and subject tagging in Pocket app. Capturing lea...

This episode is about using technology to automatically collect and analyse data about your life. I share some examples of my own automated tracking of health and productivity data. I'm using various apps to analyse the data in the background and compile all the results into an automated, objective journal. It's getting easier all the time to quantify your life with minimal effort.  Doing so can g...