This is the third and final post of “intriguing quotes” since the October 31st launch of…
It has been two years in the making and it is a book I have wanted to bring to you since 2016 after The Simple Path to Wealth was published.
Within months of that book’s release I began to receive incredible stories from people all over the world telling me how they had taken the approach laid out and applied it to their own unique lives, location and circumstances.
Since contracting with Harriman House to publish Pathfinders, we’ve collected more of these stories and in these pages present ~100 of the very best.
As the stories rolled in they mostly self organized into the nine sections…
(Freedom, Debt, Saving, Lifestyle Inflation, Investing, F-You Money, Staying the Course, Family, & Endgame)
…that make up the core of the book, along with my preface, introduction and commentary on each.
In the last two posts we looked at quotes from the sections on…
Freedom, Debt, Saving & Lifestyle Inflation
Investing, F-You Money & Staying the Course
Today I thought I’d share with you 41 more from the last two sections and the book’s very special conclusion…
Family, Endgame & The Little Girl Who Wouldn’t Listen
…that struck me along the way. Once again I have, rather immodestly, included a few of my own.
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Part 8: Family
“And, of course, kids. Sharing The Simple Path with them, traveling with them, walking The Path as a single parent. Yes, despite what the naysayers claim, you can FIRE with kids.”
“I too was a product of my upbringing. Watching my father’s health fail, and our financial life with it, was a scarring event. But those hard times taught me valuable lessons I have since used to my benefit. Lessons my parents never intended perhaps, but ones they taught me anyway.”
“They tanked, and I remember him saying ‘The stock market is rigged. It is nothing more than gambling.’ Since then, I have watched many others buy on hot tips, lose and come to the same conclusion. They, and he, are wrong of course. The stock market is an incredible wealth-building tool.”
“The moment he bought a new car, he started saving for the next one. Instead of making monthly loan and interest payments to the bank, he made those monthly payments to his savings account. The bank paid him interest.”
“I like to think I was a moderately cute five-year-old. It was just a nickel (56 cents in 2022). How do you say no to that? Evidently, easily. Ah, well, it was a great life lesson. You gotta knock on a lot of doors and hearing ‘No’ doesn’t hurt.”
“WE ALL HAVE OUR CROSS TO BEAR”
“The quote in the heading above was a favorite saying of my mother’s. She meant everyone, even those who seem most favored, has their challenges. Envy is pointless. And those who seem less favored, and whose challenges are more obvious, can turn them to their advantage. We all must play the cards we are dealt.
“To be sure, there are people whose cards are so bad that The Simple Path described here is not possible. But if you are able to read this book, that’s not you. You are perfectly capable of following this Path.
“Our challenges are what make us.”
“According to a recent survey, only 2% of today’s millionaires come from the upper class. Another 19% come from the upper middle class. 79% come from the middle class and below. This, of course, runs counter to the popular narrative that most wealth is inherited.
“Truth is, most wealth is earned by people like us.”
JL Collins
“Making good money is one thing. It doesn’t guarantee you independence. Choosing what to do with it is everything. And having a spouse with the same attitude to financial freedom is priceless.”
TEANNA KEITH
Bakersfield, California, USA
“When the market dropped, I kept investing serenely into stocks while they were ‘on sale.’
“Meanwhile, we rent our property, preferring being able to pick up and go as we please. This also makes geoarbitrage possible.”
“I’ve managed to increase my net worth by over 400% in five years. But FI is much more than numbers. The real gold on JL’s Simple Path is the life conversations. Pursuing FI pushes you to think about what you want to do with your life, and to define your values.”
FLORENCE POIREL
Thalwil, Switzerland www.linkedin.com/in/florencepoirel
“Although I’m married, I’m alone on The Path to FI for the moment: My wife, though pretty good at saving, doesn’t share my cost-cutting approach to increasing our savings rate and accelerating FI.”
PADDY TSIGANE
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
“You don’t need a flashy reason to be on JL’s Simple Path to Wealth and I am grateful for that.”
“I wanted to avoid the 37-year grind I saw my father go through with the same company. By the end of it, they were treating him like garbage—he held on, got his pension, watch, and a swift kick to the curb.
“I never forgot how tired he seemed during those later years. FI seemed to offer a way to avoid all of that. So I was hooked.”
“I gradually began to think of FI more as a way of living than a way to avoid earning one.”
“No warning from the higher ups, just a meeting to let us know that paychecks would not be coming. There was palpable panic in the room.”
“…life throws surprises at you. Money can solve a pretty hefty chunk of those problems, but not all of them. For the things that money can’t handle, you need money to not be a problem.”
CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
North Salt Lake, USA
“Thanks to walking The Simple Path already, I was armed to invest the funds that came from the sale of the company. Without FI principles, this would have been a painful exercise, with private bankers keen to convince me to invest with them. I would probably have been flattered to have ‘made it’ in life—finally a client of interest to private banking! Luckily we have been able to avoid that.”
“…it became clear to me that he considered himself (and my mother) as custodians of their portfolio—not owners.
“Now I am a custodian of this capital too. When the time is right, I intend to financially educate our children. I will consider my personal finance mission accomplished when they see themselves as custodians too.”
TIM DE PRIJCKER
Antwerp, Belgium
“Ultimately, money is something you can master. The sooner you understand this, the more control you have over your life.”
“Hard work produces income. Saving produces options. Spending doesn’t produce anything. But you have total control over your spending habits; never let anyone else tell you otherwise.”
ATA ATANASOV
North Bethesda, Maryland, USA acompactlife.com
“For a while, our travel dreams felt out of sight. Yet we knew we weren’t just working toward a big family goal. We were also providing a sort of living experiment for our kids. Our hypothesis? Ordinary people could work toward extraordinary goals.”
ANTHONY ST. CLAIR
USA
Part 9: Endgame
“So you are walking along The Simple Path to Wealth, dealing with obstacles as they come and otherwise enjoying the sunshine and the exercise of your ever stronger financial muscles. Then one fine morning you’ll rise from bed, stretch and greet the new day happy to be alive. You’ll shrug on your pack, take a few steps down The Path and suddenly realize you have come to the end. You have arrived at that mythical land of financial independence.”
“I sat back in my chair staring at these numbers a while. ‘Well, that’s remarkable,’ I remember thinking. Mind you, not remarkable enough to call my wife in and say, ‘Hey, look at this. Pretty remarkable, eh?’
“Not remarkable enough to take the next small mental leap to realize this meant my money now made enough money by itself to meet our needs. And, oh by the way, this means you never have to work again.
‘Nope. I folded my expense and investment papers up, put them away, and went about my day. Yep, I’m a little slow.
“I simply had no frame of reference for what had happened let alone what it meant.”
“Based on what I read in the FI community these days, this sudden freedom can be a source of considerable angst. It doesn’t have to be. Take a deep breath. Relax. You got this.”
JL Collins
“It’s hard to be mentally and emotionally ready. I am very much a creature of habit. I have very little tolerance for risk—I don’t even enjoy roller coasters. I like the security and comfort of a stable job and reliable income. The idea of not having a paycheck every two weeks was absolutely terrifying. It made me want to puke.”
“If something goes haywire, what is our worst-case scenario? Having to go back to work? Isn’t that everybody else’s everyday scenario?”
SCOTT and CINDY
Los Angeles, California, USA
“Most importantly, I get to work as much as I want, when I want. Financial freedom is truly as sweet as I imagined it would be.”
MICHAEL QUAN
San Diego, California, USA www.financiallyalert.com
“When I read about others who have achieved financial independence, many of them are now into making stuff, gardening, volunteer work. I admire this, and already do volunteer work, but they’re not things I’m desperate to focus on when I’ve finished a demanding career. I get kind of depressed at the idea they might be my only options.
“As a result, I don’t expect the RE—or retire early—part of the FIRE equation to ever kick in for me. I am looking forward to not having to work for money, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop working until I’m physically or mentally no longer able to.”
JEFF
Leidschendam, Netherlands
“I call myself a ‘Woke Retiree’ not in the political sense, but because I vividly remember the moment I finally woke up and realized I had achieved FI.
“A question suddenly occurred to me, and wouldn’t stop flashing in my mind: ‘Why do I still need my day job?’”
WOKE RETIREE
Singapore
“My dad owned a restaurant near Boston. Few customers could afford to eat out during the Great Depression (1929–1939). The restaurant closed. This resulted in my father, mother, brother and I moving into my grandparent’s Miami mansion in 1930 when I was six years old.”
“Subsequently, my grandfather became bankrupt and had a serious stroke. My immediate family was forced to move from the waterfront mansion to a three-story walk-up apartment.”
TAYLOR LARIMORE
USA
Founder of Bogleheads, a forum dedicated to the teachings of Jack Bogle
“This is the most important thing I learned. I always thought that when I reached FI, I would be enormously happy—and life would be wonderful. But now I can tell you: It is not. It is pretty much the same as before.
“Agreed, some problems dissolve into dust. You have a lot more freedom. But you are still the same person. If you were unhappy before reaching FI, you will also be unhappy afterwards; if you were happy before, you will be happy afterwards.”
“So do try as hard as you can to reach FI as soon as you can. It is not like entering paradise, but it is worth it.”
LEJERO
Bavaria, Germany
“I’m an artist in the videogame industry. Weirdly, my career has a similar shelf life to a professional footballer. In fact it is often shorter, and pays a thousand times less. But it has still been possible for me to reach financial independence.”
“In the end, I did burn out in the industry. But I also FIRED, at age 37.”
MATT ALLAN
Helsinki, Finland zeromatters.com
CONCLUSION: The Little Girl Who Wouldn’t Listen
And so we near the end of the journey of this book. But in many ways, this is where the story began.
We started by inviting you into a kind of roadside tavern beside The Simple Path. Picture the same tavern now. Beside the fire, there are three chairs: JL, the host of this book, has been joined by two guests.
The first is the person without whom none of this would have been created: his daughter, Jess.
The second is the superstar finance writer and podcaster Christine Benz. They’re here to discuss the unique origins of The Simple Path, and JL’s and Jess’s reflections on their own journeys—just like the other story-
tellers in this book…
Here are a few excerpts from that conversation…
JL
People like me—and, frankly, like you Christine—we’re the odd ones out, the people who enjoy this stuff and like to talk about it all the time. Most normal people have better things to do with their time. They have bridges to build, factories to run, children to raise, and diseases to cure. And like Jess said, she knows that it’s important, and that’s the beauty of The Simple Path, that you don’t have to think about this stuff all the time.
Jess
I’ve learned to appreciate my dad’s advice. As you say, I don’t really have an interest in this—so I’ve never gone looking for anything else. And it’s worked, so I’ve never felt the desire to.
It’s always been a constant in my life—a kind of security blanket that I’ve kept adding to. It has allowed me to live a life that I find incredible, and which makes me happy.
Because I’ve had this constant security in my back pocket of knowing The Simple Path—and seeing it work—I have confidence in it and have been able to be adventurous with my career.
JL
Having financial independence was—and that simply means you can choose to do whatever you want. You can choose to stop working. I know people who have done that and traveled the world, and I know other people have reached it and said, “I kind of like working and I’m going to keep doing it.”
Jess
And now, not only do the Joneses have the car and the house to keep up with—but you see everything else they consume, too. People say, “Tik-Tok made me buy it” and “Instagram made me buy it and it made my life so much better.” You get inundated every day with these things, telling you that this is what you need for your life to be great, for your life to be better. Or you deserve this because look how hard you work, look at all the stress you’re under. Don’t you deserve whatever is the shiny thing that’s being pushed at you?
“Get this and be happier.” Whereas choosing to be very deliberate with your money, and really understand what you’re trying to get out of it, is more demanding but ultimately more rewarding. I think defining your “Why?” helps you understand if you’re making a purchase because it’s something that will serve you, or just because Instagram told you it’s what you need.
I’ve bounced around quite a bit in my adult life, and a lot of it is just curiosity—a sense of adventure. I have the energy to do it and I haven’t found a place I want to settle in for a long period of time yet. If I ever get to the point of settling down, I’d just want to make sure I’m clear on the why behind acquiring a property. It would have to be because I want to have a piece of land to call my own—not necessarily because I think it’s a better financial move.
JL
The origin of this book, Pathfinders, comes out of my amazement at how my book, The Simple Path to Wealth, has been embraced and adapted by so many different kinds of people. I wrote that book for one person, my daughter who is at the beginning of her journey and who is an American. And yet people from all over the world have taken the basic concepts in it, and adapted it to their countries and the investment options available to them. People of all different ages have taken it and adapted it to where they are in their lives. They’ve shared these stories with me over the years and I find that endlessly fascinating.
Christine
JL, you wrote in the intro to The Simple Path to Wealth, “My hope is that with it, her path will be smoother, her missteps fewer, and her own financial freedom will come sooner and with fewer tears.” Jess, I’m curious, has that panned out so far?
Jess: It sure has, yes. All of those boxes are checked. It’s definitely been a lot smoother, especially knowing the stories that my dad has from his life. One-hundred per cent.
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If someone choses to read Pathfinders, and the stories of success in it, often starting from very humble beginnings, they will never again be able to say “it can’t be done.”
Of course, anyone can say “I chose not to do it.” It is their money, their choice.
But at least they will know there is an option to buy Freedom and become FI, and it can work for anyone.
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The illustrations in this post are taken from Pathfinders and are the work of Nikolett Meresz.
Nikolett also did the wonderful illustrations for my second book:
How I Lost Money in Real Estate before it was Fashonable
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If you’ve read and enjoyed Pathfinders, please spread the word on your social media and blog, if you have one.
Here’s a review from Millennial Revolution.
Pathfinders has already been chosen as one of the ‘Best non-Fiction books of all time’ by Pan Macmillan:
If you have a podcast and would like to have me on to discuss Pathfinders, I’d be honored. Just let me know in the comments below.
Also, leaving a 5-star review on Amazon would be awesome.
Thanks!
