Financial Freedom Resources

My husband and I were completely financially free by age forty – including a mortgage-free home – and two years away from being able to retire from the rat race. We want you to join the Financial Freedom Club!

The first resource to check out is my e-book where I explain the principles my husband and I followed to get where we are today, Financial Freedom By Forty.

There are two main paths to financial freedom:

Develop multiple streams of income, and
Live frugally and work hard until you can save/invest enough to live off the interest.

For that reason, the resources listed here are diverse. Scroll down to see a list of recommended resources for:

frugal living
getting out of debt
investing
internet marketing
network marketing

(Please note that most of the links are affiliate links.)

Recommended resources on frugal living

1. Your Money or Your Life is a must-read for anyone needing inspiration and direction on living more frugally.

2. Cheap Tricks: 100S of Ways You Can Save 1000s of Dollars! I must say that I vehemently disagree with Dappen’s views on nutrition, and that if you follow his advice on eating, you will never find optimum health. However, the rest of the book is treasure of ideas, big and small, on how to reduce the cost of living in your household.

4. This website has lots of ideas to help families save money in every day life. Also, check out PennyPinching-Grandma.com.

5. A great frugal living blog is TheFrugalGirl.com.

5. Don’t want your kids in public school, but can’t afford private? Homeschooling on a Shoestring is the book for you.

6. Living a more sustainable lifestyle automatically cuts back on expenses. Extreme Simplicity: Homesteading in the City provides great inspiration on how you can live sustainably, even in the middle of a large city.

Recommended resources to help you get out of debt

Financially Free By Forty provides a practical, step-by-step blueprint that enables you to ditch your debt and develop financial freedom.

The Finance Freedom Cashflow and Budgeting Software can help you keep track of where every dollar goes.

Investing

1. In Multiple Streams of Income: How to Generate a Lifetime of Unlimited Wealth!, Robert Allen teaches specific, no-brainer ways to invest in hot stocks without losing your shirt. (Disclaimer: no, we’ve never tried any of them. We are busy enough without taking the time to analyze the Dow Jones. So I personally can’t tell you how well his methods try, but based on his reputation, I would say they’re worth a shot if you want to try.)

This book also talks about other ways to create income streams, such as via real estate, network marketing, and authoring books. So it’s a good general resource for anyone looking for financial freedom.

2. Go to daveramsey.com, click on the “Endorsed Local Provider” link, and get the free report Dave offers that shares how he invests. You can also fill in your info to be contacted by an investing specialist “with the heart of a teacher instead of a heart of a salesman.”

3. In Financially Free By Forty, I give basic investing advice.

Recommended resources for Internet Marketing

Want to join the increasing number of people making part-time to full-time incomes on line? Here are some resources that will help you get going:

1. First, if you’re going to build a website or start blogging, you need a web host. I recommend my web host, Green Geeks, above all. Click on the banner below and find out what makes them the eco-friendliest web host around.

Green Geeks’ cost is low, and with the purchase of domain hosting you receive one free domain name and the ability to build as many other sites as you want–all for that one low price. They also have outstanding customer support for non-techies like me.

2. If you want to blog but have no prior blogging experience, make sure you spend some time at wordpress.org. Not only do they provide tutorials, demos and information about all the WP features, but they also have a forum where you can go ask for help.

3.You need to select a WordPress theme for your blog. Yes, you can get free themes, but they are very inflexible and tend to be on the boring side.

I use and highly recommend the Thesis theme. You can add color, change fonts and font sizes, upload your own headers, etc., etc. Considering how much it costs to have someone design your blog for you–between$600 and $1200–the Thesis theme is cheap. As I have plans for multiple websites, I bought the developer’s version, which is less than the cost of two separate Thesis purchases. Furthermore, there is a DIYThemes forum where you can get all your Thesis questions answered in a reasonable time.

5. Article marketing is an important (and free!) way to get people to visit your site. Ezinearticles.com is the best, but pickiest (which is a good thing) article directly. Articlesbase.com and goarticles.com are not as finicky. Put a link to your blog in every article, and some of the people who view the articles will visit your blog.

6. If you are completely new to the world of Internet Marketing, I highly recommend the Internet Marketing Success Secrets video course, which takes you step by step on getting an online business up and running and profitable.

7. If you’re serious about doing affiliate marketing, I highly recommend The Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner.

Rosalind is now up to 7 figures per year in income. Do you think she might have something to say to help you make money? She tells you about using pay-per-click ads, datafeeds and even topics to consider for your blog. She also lists a bunch of affiliate network sites, and another bunch of article directories where you can submit articles to promote your site.

8. Yanik Silver is another online millionaire. His 33 Days To Online Profits provides several ideas on how to make money with PPC advertising, affiliate marketing, and article marketing. To help you market your infoproducts, he also has “Instant Sales Letters” software so you don’t have to write your own salesletters, as well as “Million Dollar Emails” to teach you how to write emails that sell.

9. Multiple Streams of Internet Income by Robert Allen is a great print book to get you started on your journey toward online wealth.

10. Into podcasts? Jack Spirko’s “Five Minutes With Jack” podcast provides great strategies for online entrepreneurs.

Recommended resources for network marketing/MLM

Network marketing has gotten a bad rap thanks to money-grubbing greed mongerers who have no morals whatsoever. But it’s a perfectly legitimate business model, and a good way to develop an extra stream of income if you’re willing to put in the time to learn the skills and put them into practice.

1. Sign up at this website for a free seven day course on attraction marketing. The point of the course is to get you to buy Mike Dillard’s e-book Magnetic Sponsoring. The concepts Mike teaches are must-have for anyone new to MLM or anyone who has struggled with an MLM business.

2. If you’re a network marketer wanting to promote health products, but have been disappointed by all the run-of-the-mill nutritional MLM companies whose products don’t produce results, check out this page. It is all about my company, whose products have dramatically changed my life. Another thing I love is that it is product-oriented, so you don’t get caught up in all the financial hype that most MLM companies spew at you. Sure, the compensation plan is unbeatable, but you won’t hear the corporate office training BS manipulation skills in the name of “selling” or “business-building.”