BiggerPockets Money Blog
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Stop Panic-Optimizing: When “Good Enough” Is the Best Financial Decision You Can Make
There’s a special kind of financial paralysis that only affects people who are actually doing the right things. It doesn’t happen to the person who has $47 in their checking account and…
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Chapter Eleven: Life After FIRE (Or: Now What?)
Reaching Financial Independence is a financial milestone. Living it well is a life design problem. For years, maybe decades, your identity has likely been tied in some way to your work. Your…
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The Market’s on Sale – So Why Do People Run Away?
There’s a peculiar phenomenon that happens in both real estate and the stock market, and it goes something like this: the moment something becomes a genuinely good deal, a large portion of…
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Chapter Ten: Accessing Your Money in Early Retirement (Or: How to Get Your Cash Without the IRS Freaking Out)
There is a moment in every FIRE journey where the math works, the portfolio is ready, and a new question shows up. How do I actually get my money out? This is…
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Trust But Verify: A Love Letter to Our Community (And a Warning)
The Financial Independence community is a wonderful, weird little corner of the internet and the world. We talk openly about our net worth. We share our savings rates like they’re baseball stats.…
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Your Credit Card Statement Isn’t Going to Review Itself
There’s a particular kind of financial embarrassment that has nothing to do with being broke. It’s the embarrassment of realizing, often at the worst possible moment, that you’ve been cheerfully ignoring something…
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Don’t Panic-Buy a Tesla Because Gas Went Up 40 Cents
Every time conflict rattles the Middle East and oil prices spike, car dealerships quietly uncork the champagne. Here’s why reacting to pump prices with a brand-new vehicle purchase is one of the…
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Chapter Nine: The Grind and Staying the Course (Or: The Part Nobody Warns You About)
There is a part of the FIRE journey that doesn’t get enough attention. It’s not the beginning, where everything feels new and exciting. You’ve just discovered FIRE, the math makes sense, and…
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Chapter Eight: The Decumulation Phase and Your Portfolio (Or: The Part Where You Actually Have to Spend the Money)
Up to this point, everything has been about building. Saving. Investing. Optimizing. Growing. Watching your net worth climb. Celebrating milestones. Doing mental math about how many more years until you hit your…
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International Diversification: How Much Is Enough and When Does It Hurt?
If you’ve spent the last decade watching your U.S. equity holdings crush every international benchmark while your “globally diversified” friends quietly questioned their life choices, you’ve felt the emotional weight of this…
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Post Traumatic Broke Syndrome: How Your Financial Past Is Running Your Financial Present
In yesterday’s episode, personal finance educator Tiffany Aliche, known to millions as The Budgetnista, put a name to something a lot of people have been quietly living with for years: Post Traumatic…
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Are You Underinsured? You Need to Review Your Homeowners Policy RIGHT NOW
It started as an ordinary evening walk. My husband and I were strolling through our neighborhood when we noticed smoke. Within minutes, a house down the street had flames pouring from the…
Mindy Jensen has been fanatical about personal finance her entire life. She truly believes that financial freedom is attainable for anyone, no matter when or where you’re starting from. She’s been a real estate investor for decades, is slowly moving her personal portfolio from individual stocks to index funds, and is excited to learn more about investing of all types (except crypto!) She wrote First-Time Home Buyer with Scott Trench, and when you can get her to stop talking about money and investing, she can be found on her road bike in the summer, snowboarding down the Colorado slopes in the winter, and spending time with her family.
Scott Trench is a perpetual student of personal finance, real estate investing, self-improvement, health, and well-being. He is the former CEO of BiggerPockets, where he oversaw the company’s growth from 100,000 members, to 3.1M real estate investors. He is a real estate investor + broker, stock market investor and authored Set for Life and First-Time Home Buyer (co-authored with Mindy Jensen). When not discussing personal finance, he can be found picking up heavy things (or craft beers) and then putting them back down again, running, cycling, or otherwise enjoying beautiful Colorado.