Financial Panther

Financial Independence, Side Hustling, and Ebikes

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Be Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable

Last Updated on 22 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

One of the things that I think holds a lot of people back financially is this total aversion to even a moment of discomfort.  Sure, being successful with money requires an ability to handle money well – that’s probably a prerequisite.  But I think there’s more to it than that.  When it comes to success with money, you’ve got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

The price of comfort is pretty high.  Living in a luxury apartment, getting food delivered to you, or running that air conditioner throughout the summer is going to cost you.  If you opt for 24/7 comfort, you’re basically doing two things that are bad for you financially:

June 2017 Side Hustle Report – $1,071.14

Last Updated on 11 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

Welcome to this month’s side hustle report!  It’s been a busy summer for me, and unfortunately, it’s led to me not posting as often as I’d like.  My bad.  But, there are some big changes going on with my professional life that I’m hoping will help me get back on track.  Can’t wait to share it with you when I get the chance!  For now, though, let’s get right to it with this month’s side hustle report.

For those of you that are new to this, each month, I document exactly what I made side hustling using the sharing economy.  The nice thing about sharing economy side hustles is that they’re low risk and easy to do.  You can start making money immediately and most of the time, you don’t even have to spend any money upfront in order to get started.  You can’t say that with pretty much any other business.

How Your Thoughts Affect Your Investments

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This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

Hey everyone!  Hope everyone’s having a great summer.  It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the Panther household.  Today, I’ve got a guest post for you from Anum Yoon who blogs over at Current on Currency.  In her post, she talks a bit about the psychology that goes into investing.  While I don’t recommend investing in individual stocks, her overall message works well for us index investors as well.  Enjoy!

What Financial Health Means To Me

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This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

I like to think that I’m pretty financially healthy.  At 30 years old, I’m in a fairly unique position.  I’m currently debt free after paying off nearly six figures worth of student loans in just a few years.  I’ve got a sizable emergency fund that should cover me in the event of a disaster. And my net worth continues to grow each year as I continue to push myself to save as much of my income as I possibly can.

We have a plan of attack for my wife’s student loans as well.  If all goes as planned, we’ll have her debt paid off within a year or two. A dentist/lawyer couple in their early 30s paying off all of their student loans in just a few years isn’t just a unique proposition. It’s pretty much unheard of.

Why I Decided to Start Investing Before I’m Debt-Free

Last Updated on 6 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

Today, we’ve got a guest post from Kayla, who writes for Listen Money Matters. It’s sometimes tough to figure out whether to focus on investing or focus on paying off debt first. When I was in my debt pay off phase, I opted to do a minimal amount of investing compared to the salary I was making. I invested around $5,500 in my first year of debt payoff, around $13,000 in my second year, and then invested around $30,000 in my final year of debt repayment. Now that I’m personally debt free, it’s nice that I can aggressively invest and still have the satisfaction of already having a decently sized investment account. In her post, Kayla shares with us some of the reasons she opted to invest, even as she’s paying off her debt.

WiseBanyan Review: A Low-Cost Roboadvisor (Now Called Axos Invest)

Last Updated on 14 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

I’m always on the lookout for tools that I think can make investing easier for people.  While we personal finance writers think of investing as really straightforward, the truth is, the logistics of investing really isn’t as simple as we make it out to be.  It’s easy for us because we’ve spent hundreds of hours reading and learning about money and investing.  Tell me to put my money in a total market fund with Vanguard and I can do that pretty easily.  But tell your average person to do the same and I guarantee they won’t understand how to do that.

In an ideal world, investing would be as easy as opening up a bank account.  Your average person could just go online, open up an investment account, and then walk away without having to make any decision other than deciding how much money to put into their account.

May 2017 Side Hustle Report – $1,625.11

Last Updated on 27 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

Welcome to another edition of the side hustle report! As a quick background, for about a year now, I’ve been tracking all of the side hustle income I make from sharing economy apps and posting those numbers in these posts.

We live in a pretty amazing time where anyone can make extra money just by using the stuff they already have or doing the things that they’re already doing. Even just a few years ago, making money like this wasn’t really possible. My hope is that people reading these posts can see exactly what’s possible out there. There’s money to be made if you know where to look. And it can be pretty fun too.

$500,000 Worth Of Student Loans – Could You Pay It Off In Just A Few Years?

Last Updated on 23 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

When you’re married to a dentist, you tend to learn a lot about the world of dentistry. Turns out dentists love to talk about teeth and when you hear them talk about it all the time, you end up picking up a few pieces of information here and there.

In addition to learning about teeth, I’ve also been learning about the crazy amount of student loans that most new dentists graduate with these days. I’m definitely no stranger to student loans. Law school is notoriously expensive and in the legal world, student loans are pretty much a given. When it comes to student loans though, lawyers don’t even compare to the type of debt that dentists can graduate with.

Chase 5/24 Rule – Maximize Your Travel Hacking

Last Updated on 37 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

I’ve been getting really into the world of credit cards and travel hacking over the past few months. For people like me, opening up new cards is an easy way to optimize my spending and snag some free flights in the process. If you’ve got a good handle on your finances, adding even just a little bit of travel hacking into the equation is a nice way to get a little bit of return on your spend. Once you get into this world, it’s easy to see why so many people write about this stuff. It’s stupidly addictive!

For years, I’ve resisted travel hacking because I was too scared to do it. At first, I just thought it was just too good to be true. I’m definitely not skeptical by nature, but the logistics of traveling around the world for free by opening up new cards didn’t make much sense to me. It seemed like there must be a catch. Even when I figured out that travel hacking was a legit thing, I was still too scared to do it. The entire process was overwhelming and I had no idea where to start. There’s definitely a lot of information out there for anyone who wants to start travel hacking. It’s just often hard to synthesize everything you’ve read into useful and coherent information, especially when you’re a newbie.

You Don’t Have To Keep Up With The Joneses When It Comes To Investing

Last Updated on 19 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

My brother has a knack for making and saving money. At just 28 years old, he’s managed to build up a sizable net worth – far higher than mine or many other young financial bloggers. If he was involved in the financial blogosphere community, he’d be one of the success stories out there. At his current rate, he could probably be financially independent by his mid-30s (although he isn’t familiar with the concept of financial independence).

What makes his net worth growth really astounding is that it pretty much happened by accident. While he’s always been good at making and saving money, my brother has never been so good at actually knowing what to do with that money. For a long time, he just parked his savings in a regular savings account. When he finally did start investing, he pretty much just walked into a random bank, gave his money to some banker, and asked him to invest it for him. Naturally, that money ended up in expensive, actively traded mutual funds. After all, the banker needed to justify his fees and how could he do that if all he was doing was just putting that money into boring, old, index funds?

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