Our Financial Education Project --
Secrets of Our Success
We started out with the modest goal of getting together to share some ideas on how to retire early. Over the course of the past seven years, our community grew to something a whole bunch bigger.
We worked together to develop an exciting new way to save. We worked together to develop an exciting new way to invest. We generated scores of budgeting insights. We generated scores of career growth insights.
We must be doing something right, eh?
This article lists and briefly describes the 16 personality traits that distinguish the best participants in the Financial Education Project at the Financial Freedom Community discussion boards.
The article is intended in part as a valentine to our best participants and in part as a mini-instructional manual for newcomers to the community on how to achieve the greatest possible impact in the shortest amount of time.
Financial Education Trait #1 -- We are kind.
It’s only a small percentage of those who visit discussion boards who post their thoughts. Why do so few get involved? Most "Normals" are aware of the nastiness that the small percentage of the inhabitants of Planet Internet known as "Berzerkos" bring to the table at places they are permitted to post, and aim to steer clear of it.
Most Financial Freedom Community members have seen the nastiness that mars many discussion boards and most of us want no part of it. I can’t say kindness is in evidence at out boards at all times. There’s been a lot of nastiness at our boards in recent years. We've always tried to make clear our distate for it. Most of us feel strongly that there is no place for that sort of thing in our fair community.
I want to see us get back to the place where the first thing that impressed newcomers about our boards was their kind spirit. Mean-spirited comments drive away the best posters.
Board communities that permit ugly posting are like fast-food restaurants at which the management does not take care to see that the restrooms are kept clean. People don’t care how good the food is at a place that doesn’t meet their standards of cleanliness. People don’t care how exciting the subject matter of our boards is when we fail to address the problem of abusive posting.
We’ve done our best work when the spirit that prevailed at our boards was a kind spirit. Let’s do like the Beatles advised and get back to where we once belonged re this one.
Financial Education Trait #2 -- We like the idea of learning together.
Some of us post a lot, some of us post a little. But there can never be any one person or any one small group of people who “owns” our boards. Our boards are “Learning Together” boards. Those who post only on rare occasions play an important role. Those who only lurk play an important role.
Each of us comes to learn. None of us learns by hearing his or her own thoughts reflected back at him or her. Each of us depends on the work effort of many others to make the Learning Together project fly.
Financial Education Trait #3 -- We enjoy hearing a diversity of viewpoints.
Most people find it hard to accumulate enough wealth to be able to retire at age 65. We aim to win our financial freedom a whole bunch sooner than that. We’re struggling with cutting-edge stuff.
None of us knows all the answers. Our boards must be open to a variety of viewpoints to succeed. No one loses when new ideas are brought to the table. We all win when that happens.
Our boards are not just for men or just for women. Our boards are not just for the young or just for the old. Our boards are not just for those who seek complete retirement or just for those who want to continue to work at work they truly love after winning enough financial freedom to do so. Our boards are not just for stock investors or just for real estate investors or just for TIPS investors.
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. The swing that brings our boards to life comes from the interaction of many different takes on the Retire Early question. There's a good reason why we adopted the wise words from the old Sly and the Family Stone song as our community motto --
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scoobie doobie doobie.
Makes sense, no?
Financial Education Trait #4 -- We are serious about the right things
We explore money questions. We always need to remember that there are people listening to what we say and that overly dogmatic statements can get those people in trouble.
We possess all sorts of levels of expertise, and even those who have studied the Retire Early question in depth only understand in depth a topic that is not yet understood all that well by anyone. Humility is called for. A light touch is called for.
We need to take our topic seriously. We need to take ourselves not so seriously.
Financial Education Trait #5 -- We are open to taking calculated risks.
Even in the best of circumstances, early retirement is risky. We can’t accomplish the work we have set out to do if we become a highly risk-averse community.
Our sense of responsibility requires of us that we make what efforts we can to mitigate risks, however. We are a community directed toward the calculation of risk. We don’t tell our fellow community members to avoid risk. We try to identify ways by which they can become better aware of the risks they are taking and take on only those risks that they are confident they can handle.
Financial Education Trait #6 -- We are generous.
We don’t get paid for our contributions. The best of the material we have generated is some of the best money management advice available anywhere on Planet Earth. It was all generated by people giving of their time for free.
That’s pretty darn cool. We are a generous people.
Financial Education Trait #7 -- We possess a healthy work ethic.
Some argue that because we seek early retirement we must be anti-work. I have seen sloppy work justified on the grounds that “after all, I am retired early!”
Yucko!
And Double Yucko!
No one is required to engage in the work involved in crafting an informed and effective post. All contributions to our discussions are voluntary. We all should at least be trying to get things right in the contributions we put forward, however.
Those who don’t care enough about the topic of early retirement to go to the trouble to try to get things right have no business posting at our boards. Our love for our fellow community members should reveal itself in our work product. Being in favor of financial freedom does not mean being opposed to doing effective work in regard to which we can feel the good feelings that come with the completion of a job well-executed.
Financial Education Trait #8 -- We are creative.
The Retire Early idea is a new idea. We are all about discovering new ways of looking at things and new ways of doing things. We can hardly avoid being a creative group of people.
Financial Education Trait #9 - We are optimistic
We are blessed to be living at a time when middle-class people earn enough to be able to have realistic dreams of acquiring financial freedom early in life. We are an up movement, a life-affirming movement.
We aren’t seeking early retirement to prepare for an early death. We are seeking early retirement to begin a sort of life that few of those who came before us were able to live. We are a forward-looking and optimistic people.
Financial Education Trait #10 -- We are bold
We are ambitious. We are bold.
Some of us have attained high levels of financial freedom in our early 40s or are seeking to do so. We elected not to take the easy, comfortable, conventional path.
Financial Education Trait #11 -- We are informed
There are few experts who know more about the topic of early retirement than do our best-informed community members. Early retirement is not a topic that most personal finance experts have studied in depth. We must study it in depth to be able to pull it off for ourselves.
We are the experts in this field.
Financial Education Trait #12 -- We appreciate the value of numbers-oriented arguments enough to be skeptical of numbers-oriented arguments that lack a common-sense grounding.
There is a lot of numbers talk in our community. Good.
There is a lot of skepticism about numbers in our community. Good.
Financial Education Trait #13 -- We are humbled by our understanding of how much we still have to learn.
There’s so much to know in this field. It is not possible for any of us to know it all.
Seeing how much our fellow community members know about so many different aspects of the Retire Early question humbles us all on a daily basis.
Financial Education Education #14 -- We have remained involved in the outside world.
People who do nothing but post to discussion boards are bores. We are able to generate wonderful thread after wonderful thread in our community because generating wonderful threads is not the only thing we do.
We work at our jobs. We go to dinner with our wives and husbands. We raise kids. We read books. We do it all. And then we take all that good stuff and put it to work giving power to the discussions we have on our boards.
Financial Education Trait #15 -- We are story-tellers
We like stories.
Putting together a Retire Early plan is not a pure numbers exercise. A big reason why we visit the boards is to hear the stories of people like us. There aren’t many of them in The Big Bad Outside World. So we get excited to hear how the stories of our fellow community members compare to our own.
Financial Education Traits #16 -- We are Dylan Fans
We are all big fans of Bob Dylan’s music. There are few things we more prefer to do than to spend countless hours coming up with fresh interpretations of his more obscure lyrics.
That’s a joke. Community members are permitted to like other types of music.
So long as they like Dylan as well.
And no disco!
There have to be reasonable limits to all that “appreciating a diversity of viewpoints” jizz-jazz, you know!
I haven't studied Futures Trading. If you're looking to learn something about it, you might want to check out the site
Futures Trading How To.
It's authored by Daniel Salas, a friend of the Passion Saving Community.
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