Saturday, March 8, 2008

The secret

I get this a lot: you seem to spend half of your life on the road -- how can you afford this? Here's the secret. Save. Save hard. The general rule of thumb is that if you're saving 10% of your income, you're doing pretty well. Rubbish. If you're saving only 10% of your income, that means if you lose your job after 10 years, you have one year to find an equivalent job before you're on the street. Hmm. When I'm in the US I save about 70% of my income. Have since I graduated. And invest almost all of that. For the long-term, Benjamin Graham / Warren Buffett style. Last time I took a year off, interest alone paid for half the trip. This time, I'm hoping interest will pay for the whole thing, plus some left over. Save hard. Invest for the long term. Travel on the cheap. That's all there is to it. That's the secret.

2 comments:

Jean said...

I save too...but I've lost a lot of money on the damn market this year.
When are you leaving?

Dax said...

Yeah, no kidding. It's really the most ridiculous time to leave on an extended vacation. Crappy exchange rates, stocks way down, perhaps no jobs when I get back.... Any intelligent person would be sticking around and earning money to invest while everything is cheap. Oh well, worse things have happened....