“Pay off credit card debt! Stop going out to lunch everyday and cook meals at home! Give up that $5 coffee! Set a budget! Cancel your TV streaming subscriptions! Deprive yourself of all joy and spontaneity! Save 3-6 months’ worth of expenses in a high-yield savings account! Invest 10-15% of your salary in a diversified portfolio of mostly stocks!”

All of this advice is well-intentioned and might even be helpful, but it tends to run together into a milquetoasty, uninspiring fog of blah. No wonder people struggle with financial literacy!

Instead, I want to offer a few money “hot takes” that I’ve learned and developed over the years from my work as a freelance finance writer.

1. Most financial advice is unrealistic.

Here’s the biggest problem with most financial advice: it doesn’t fit the reality of how most people live, earn, spend, and save. Different people have different problems. People with more money are able to benefit more from saving and investing.

If you make $300,000 per year, it’s easier to benefit from clever strategic year-end tax moves, and saving 10% of your income will put $30,000 per year into your retirement nest egg. Investing $30,000 per year and earning 7% average annual returns for 20 years will give you $1.23 million. That’s serious money!

But most people can’t comfortably afford to save $30,000. If you only make $30,000 per year and are barely able to afford the comforts of a “middle class” lifestyle, saving 10% of your income (while possible!) might feel too painful to contemplate.

And yes, giving up that $5 daily Starbucks run might help you save $1,825 per year -- but most people don’t live that way and aren’t going to live that way. Even if you stopped spending $5 per day on coffee, most people aren’t going to put that $5 into the bank or into their brokerage account. People need to have a little fun along the way. People need their little $5 treats. Is that so wrong?

2. Credit card debt isn’t always bad.

Yes, if you have credit card debt, you should make it a priority to pay it off as soon as possible. Credit card is terrible for your finances because it costs you higher interest than any investment is likely to pay. There’s usually nothing better to do with your extra cash than to pay off your credit card debt.

But that doesn’t mean credit card debt is always bad. Sometimes it’s a lifeline. Sometimes you need to rack up some credit card debt to repair your car, pay a bill, deal with a short-term lack of income, or just get through the ups and downs of life. Credit card debt doesn’t always have to last forever. Not everyone is flush with cash and has a six-month emergency fund. Sometimes people have to use their credit cards as an emergency fund, and that’s OK.

3. You don’t (always) need a budget.

Confession: I don’t have a budget. I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of my family’s typical monthly expenses, and then I try to earn at least that much every month. I also save money separately from this spreadsheet. I also put money into retirement savings. Am I “doing it wrong?” Possibly! But this works for me!

People are often resistant to starting a budget because it feels stressful and boring and self-depriving. “Budgets” sound like bureaucracy and deprivation. “Budgets” are something that boring guys in bad suits talk about on C-SPAN. “Budgets” are something that people in powerful positions are always cutting to deprive you and your loved ones of something good that you wanted and were counting on. (“Sorry, you don’t get a pay raise this year because there just isn’t room in the budget.”)

Yes, if you’re struggling with your money and are racking up credit card debt and don’t understand where your money is going, it can help to set a budget. There are great tools online now to help track your money automatically by syncing with your bank accounts. Years ago, I used the beloved free online spending tracker tool Mint (R.I.P.) before it got acquired and ruined by Intuit; now I use Quicken Simplifi.

But I don’t use a budget to “deprive” myself or my family of what we need; I just want to know where our money is going, what income numbers I need to hit, and how much flexibility we have from month to month.

(Huh, maybe I do have a budget after all? Maybe I’m not actually such a Budget Maverick?)

4. Earning beats saving.

Yes, it’s good to build up healthy saving habits. Figure out how to save 10% (or more) of your income. Make a habit of putting money into your retirement accounts every month, every payday.

But if you’re struggling to save money each month, if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, if you don’t love being frugal…it’s time to boost your earning power.

Ask for a pay raise. Look for ways to add more value at your job (or start looking for a new, better job.) Can’t switch jobs right now? Work overtime.

Don’t want a new full-time job? Get a side hustle. Start a business on your nights and weekends.

Want a longer-term career change? Learn new skills. Go back to school for another certificate or degree or license.

I don’t love being frugal. I’m not great at it. My family’s life is very expensive; we spend a lot on healthcare and food and insurance. My money spends itself, whether I like it or not! Thousands of dollars just go flying out of my bank account every month! And that’s OK. I love our expensive life and I’m willing to pay a lot for convenience, so I can save time, so I can spend my limited free time doing more of what I do best. I’d rather just go make an extra $100 than save $100 by canceling our Hulu TV subscription.

And I’m lucky, because: as a freelance writer, my income can actually go up every month! If I’m in-demand, if I have plenty of projects lined up, the harder I work, the more money I make. Sometimes business is slow and I’m not busy enough and I don’t make as much as I want to make for reasons beyond my control. But as a self-employed person, I constantly have the freedom to keep pushing myself in the direction of greater growth and opportunity. The more I work, the more I make.

“Making more money for doing more work” doesn’t always happen at most full-time jobs. Too many jobs expect people to work extra hours and make big sacrifices for no additional pay. Remember the “quiet quitting” fake media trend a few years ago, where employees were being criticized for being lazy slackers (a.k.a. “doing their jobs”? Fun times!

5. Only talk to fiduciary advisors, not salesmen.

There are a lot of people in this world who call themselves “financial advisors,” but not all of them have your best interests at heart. Some of them are just financial salesmen who want to sell you the product that pays them the highest commission. Before you act on any investment advice or buy any financial product or sign up for any financial service, make sure you’re talking to a fiduciary -- someone who is professionally and ethically obligated to put your financial interests first.

Too many people have ended up getting sold expensive, confusing financial products that aren’t the right fit for their goals -- or worse, scammed out of their money altogether -- by disreputable financial “advisors” who are actually just salesmen. And not all financial salesmen are “bad.” There are plenty of good people who get paid on commission; your insurance broker might also be able to answer other questions about your money and point you in the right direction for what to do.

But buyer beware. Too many so-called “financial advisors” have overcharged their customers and put people into the wrong investments with high fees and low returns that underperform the S&P 500. Fiduciary advice is worth paying for. Everyone else might just be reaching into your pocket.

6. CDs are the wrong choice for almost everyone.

I don’t understand why anyone buys certificates of deposit (CDs) anymore. There are better things to do with your cash. The best high-yield savings accounts, money market funds and cash sweep accounts will give you FDIC insurance (like a CD) and an APY on your savings that is almost as high as a CD.

CDs make you lock up your money and charge you penalties to get it out early. I don’t like that deal. Unless you have millions of dollars in cash and it’s worth earning an extra 0.25%-0.50% per year, steer clear of CDs.

7. Just a few hundred dollars a month can make you rich (enough) in retirement.

How much money is “enough” to save for retirement? What’s the smallest amount you can save that for retirement that’s worth bothering with, that really moves the needle and makes a difference?

Let’s say you’re 27 years old and you want to save for retirement for the first time. Can you afford to save $300 per month?

If you can save $300 per month for 40 years (until this hypothetical 27-year-old’s 67th birthday, when they reach Social Security eligibility), and you earn 7% average annual returns on those investments, you’ll have $718,686. If you withdraw 4% per year for retirement income, that will give you $28,747 per year (before taxes). And that’s on top of whatever income you get from Social Security.

What if you bump it up to $500 per month, starting at age 27? Assuming 7% average annual returns, you’d have $1.19 million to retire with at age 67. That nest egg would generate $47,600 in annual retirement income (assuming 4% withdrawals per year).

And it’s (almost) never too late to start. But the earlier you start saving for retirement, the more time you have for that money to grow with the magic of compounding.

8. Almost everyone can do something -- right now -- to improve your financial life.

I feel like a lot of Americans are despondent and living in learned helplessness about money. People are stressed out. Life is expensive. Paychecks don’t stretch as far as they used to. We are surrounded by modern marvels like pocket-sized supercomputers and the hype around AI, while also feeling distracted and pestered by digital noise and clutter, overworked and overextended and isolated.

Life in the 21st century feels nerve-wracking and vaguely disappointing most of the time. We were promised flying cars, but instead we got stupid political unrest and social media doomscrolling. The idea of dutifully investing 10% of our income each month feels daunting and maybe even pointless. Why deprive ourselves of a sunny vacation and happy memories while we’re young and vital, just so someday in the far-off and unimaginable future when we’re old, we can maybe afford a nicer room at the nursing home?

I believe that we have a moral obligation not to surrender to despair and financial nihilism. Everyone has choices. Everyone has power. You don’t have to cut yourself off from every weekend trip with friends or every happy little $5 coffee purchase. But I believe that (almost) everyone can make smart money moves to improve their finances.

It doesn’t have to be huge and dramatic. Start small. Save $50 this month. Set up autopay for your credit cards and other bills. Choose one subscription to cancel and save $18-$20 per month. If you’re feeling underpaid and unappreciated at work, take one step to update your resume and start looking for a new job. Put 1% of your salary into your retirement savings.

Or even if you’re not ready to move money or invest, start researching your options and making a plan. Look at the best debt payoff apps for getting out of credit card debt. Read about how to open a Roth IRA. Make a list of people you know who you’d like to have coffee with to talk about networking for a new job, or learning a new skill, or getting advice on how to make a career change.

9. Warren Buffett is the only billionaire whose advice you should listen to.

Warren Buffett recently retired as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. During his long career as a legendary investor, he amassed a net worth of about $148 billion. But despite his vast riches, Buffett maintained a well-deserved reputation for being relatively down to Earth and humble in his outlook. He kept eating at Dairy Queen and drinking Coca-Cola and living in Omaha, Nebraska in the same house he bought when he was a much less-wealthy younger man.

Not every billionaire is worth listening to. Some of them become cranky and weird and out of touch with humanity; they start selling crappy altcoins and SPACs and dubious longevity hacks. Most billionaires’ advice isn’t relevant to most people, and what worked for them might not work for you. But Warren Buffett offered some good financial advice that lots of everyday people might benefit from.

Here are a few of my favorite Warren Buffett financial advice quotes:

“In my view, for most people, the best thing to do is own the S&P 500 index fund.”

Diversify. Warren Buffett was one of the best in the world at picking stocks. But most people aren’t that good, or that lucky. If you just buy and hold the entire S&P 500 -- the top 500 biggest publicly traded companies in America -- or another broad, diversified index fund, you can own the future profits of corporate America. You don’t have to pick stocks. Most people shouldn’t try.

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Invest for the long term. Warren Buffett was investing for more than 60 years. That’s a lot of time for investment returns to compound. He started with relatively small amounts of money and bought shares of stock in companies that he believed in, and (most of the time) he held onto the shares of companies for the long run. Warren Buffett was a long-term investor, not a day trader.

“The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.”

The stock market is powered by greed and fear, hype and FOMO (“fear of missing out”). But fear of missing out on getting rich, or jealousy or other people getting rich, or getting greedy and taking big risks because you’re chasing the big gains that other people are seeing, are all terrible reasons to invest.

I don’t really participate in any “communities” about investing. I don’t talk much about my investments with many other people. I don’t want groupthink and peer pressure. There are too many (mostly) young dudes on the Internet that are egging each other on to take big risks and make bad decisions. I like to follow the markets and I read lots of financial news, but I’m cautious about whose opinions I actually listen to and which commentators I follow.

When saving and investing, unless you’re a Wall Street hedge fund manager who’s under pressure to beat the market and keep your wealthy clients happy, you’re not actually in “competition” with anyone else. You have to run your own race.

10. Do what helps you sleep at night.

Should you pay off your car loan early or put that extra $400 per month into savings? Should you invest in 90% stocks and 10% bonds, or 80% stocks and 20% bonds? Should you change your investment asset allocation because the stock market is at an all-time high and you feel nervous that the market could crash?

There’s usually not one “right” answer to any financial question, but often the best answer is: whatever can help you sleep better at night. If you’re up late worrying about your budget, your savings account balance, or which debt to pay off first, just try to do whatever will give you the greatest sense of peace and the ability to rest. Go with your gut. Go in the direction of calm.

11. It’s better to be a spendthrift than a miser.

Back in the early 2000s when I was just recently out of college and earning “real job” money for the first time, I decided to get smarter about personal finances and investing. One of the first books I read about money was literally called The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Personal Finance. (Apparently I had some self-doubt and imposter syndrome about money in those days; otherwise I wouldn’t have chosen such an insultingly-titled book.)

But this book was actually a good start for learning about money! And I still remember the first bit of advice that I learned from that book whose author thought I was a Complete Idiot: “It’s better to be a spendthrift than a miser.”

If there are two extremes for how your financial life can turn out -- with one end of the spectrum being “you spend every dollar you ever make, and you die broke” and the other end being “you grasp tight to every dollar you ever make, and you never spend or splurge or enjoy money along the way, and you die with millions of dollars…” you should choose the first one.

It doesn’t happen often in America, but it is possible for people to go through life without spending much money. A few years ago, there was an old man named Dale Schroeder who died in Iowa who had worked his whole life as a carpenter. He never married, never had a family, and he lived a humble low-cost life, driving an old, used pickup truck. And over the years, even on a modest income, he was able to save and invest and build up a nest egg of $3 million.

Dale had no living relatives. So before he died, Dale went to a lawyer and wrote a will saying that after he died, he wanted his money to be used to help kids from small-town Iowa go to college. And the money in Dale’s estate helped 33 kids go to college! That’s a wonderful example of generosity. And also a great example of how a lot of Midwesterners (like Warren Buffett) aren’t very flashy with their wealth; I actually love that about the Midwest. People here aren’t trying to impress everyone all the time.

Dale Schroeder did a wonderful thing with his life savings. His money lived on as a beautiful legacy of helping 33 total strangers go to college and get launched in careers. Dale was not a “miser;” he wasn’t motivated by greed, he was just frugal and responsible, and generous. He used money as a means to an end, to help the next generation thrive.

But sometimes people who become misers end up fixating on money as an end in itself. They obsess about numbers in the bank, balances on spreadsheets, and miss the everyday beauty of life around them. Some people are so frightened of running out of money that it holds them back from enjoying money while they’re alive, from having the experiences and relationships and memories that money can help provide.

At its best, money is a tool to help us live a life of greater abundance, joy, love and generosity. That’s why it’s better to be more of a spendthrift instead of a miser. Go out to lunch on a sunny day. Sit by the windows of your favorite restaurant. Take your friends out for drinks. Pick up the tab. Go on vacation, go to the beach, see the world. Buy the plane ticket. Buy a better, safer, reliable car to drive your family around. Give generously to good causes that you care about. Try not to spend your one and only precious life pinching pennies and clipping coupons. Instead, let money be a source of joyful energy in your life. Let the money flow through you, let it elevate you, let it help you thrum with purpose.

FunMoneyDad.com content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or investment advice. Consider consulting with a professional advisor before making any investment decision.

A few months ago I was listening to a podcast on YouTube from a financial advisor who said that they only work with clients who have a minimum of $8 million of investable assets. And that’s a common thing in the investment industry; many financial advisors have asset minimums, because it’s just not worth it to them to take on clients with less money. They’re busy and talented and successful and in-demand, they only have so many hours to work, and they (understandably) go where the money is.

But I thought, “Eight million dollars?? If you have that much money, you don’t need a financial advisor! Just put that cash in a few FDIC-insured cash sweep accounts and money market funds and some stock and bond ETFs. If you earn only 4% APY; that’s an income of $320,000 a year! You’re set for life! Count your blessings and pay your taxes!”

Yes, I know that High Net Worth people have complex financial planning needs and can benefit from elaborate tax efficiency strategies, and it’s worth hiring professional help. People at all stages of life and all levels of wealth and income have different financial problems. But if financial advisors don’t even want to talk to you unless you have $8 million, what hope does the rest of America have? It’s hard for a lot of middle-class people to get good, fair, unbiased financial advice. It’s no wonder that so many lower-income people look at the stock market and the daily investing news and think “that’s not for me.”

Here’s the thing: over the years, I’ve had friends and colleagues from all walks of financial life. I’ve been friends with wealthy CEOs and ex-Wall Street guys and tech startup executives, and I’ve been friends with people who had to declare bankruptcy because of medical bills. I’ve had friends who got in over their heads with predatory credit cards that they were too young and inexperienced to understand. I’ve had friends who lost everything because of bad luck and bad timing and their own catastrophic decisions.

I believe that everyone deserves good financial advice, not just people with $8 million. Learning about money, learning about investing, figuring out how to make the most of your money and feel better about your money choices is one of the most worthwhile things we can do. Getting smarter about money is valid and valuable for EVERYONE at all walks of life. Whether you’re on the verge of bankruptcy or are celebrating a massive career breakthrough, whether you’ve got subprime credit or just won the lottery, we all can benefit from financial advice. We all can gain from investing in the stock market. It’s not just for the rich and privileged. The stock market on the whole is a good thing that is worth knowing about and worth participating in.

I have seen firsthand that it is possible to make dramatic improvements in your career, to make more money, to change your whole life for the better. Investing in the stock market and learning more about how money works has been a big part of my journey. Back when I was in my 20s, I never dreamed that I would be entrepreneurial. I never imagined that I would make a living by writing about investing, that I would want to think about becoming a Certified Financial Planner. None of that was on my radar.

Me at age 20: “I don’t care about the stock market; I just want to do meaningful, idealistic work that I believe in!”

Me at age 40+: “The stock market is one of the few things that I still believe in!”

But I also don’t want to be a “rah rah” guy who’s a just a smiley happy cheerleader for entrepreneurship and capitalism and hustle culture, who tries to give a sense of false hope. Too many finance guys talk about investing like everything is fine and dandy, the economy is always getting better, and in the long run, all of us are gonna get rich.

But lots of people are left out of that happy story. Life is hard. Starting a business is hard. Finding an extra few hundred dollars a month in your budget is hard. Sticking with a disciplined plan of investing for the future instead of enjoying your money today is hard. Staying gainfully employed and financially solvent long enough to avoid raiding your retirement savings for emergency expenses is hard. Not everyone can do this.

And for a long time, earlier in my career, I didn’t entirely “believe” in capitalism. I just kept shoveling money into my retirement savings accounts each month, through one stock market downturn after another, just in case capitalism didn’t collapse. I’ve seen some things in my life: the dotcom bubble and bust, the Enron scandal, 9/11, the real estate bubble and bust, the Global Financial Crisis, the Great Recession, the pandemic, the high inflation that broke everyone’s brains. There have been so many moments throughout my working years where it seemed like the world was falling apart, like the system was rigged, like America’s most powerful institutions were run by the stupidest, most corrupt, most malevolent idiots on Earth.

And yet…ever since I graduated college, my life, my career, my own cozy little part of the world, has mostly kept getting better. And the stock market has mostly kept going up! Look:

Stocks go up and stocks go down. Some stocks plummet and can even go to zero. But most of the time, in the long run, the stock market (as defined by the S&P 500 index, the 500 largest publicly-traded companies in America) goes up!

If you invested $1,000 in the S&P 500 on the day I graduated from college in May 2001, today that investment would be worth $8,301.

Here’s how much money you’d have today if you each of these amounts invested in the S&P 500 index in May 2001 -- without doing anything crazy, without picking stocks, without saving another dime:

• $10,000 invested in May 2001 = $83,014 in Nov. 2025

• $50,000 invested in May 2001 = $415,074 in Nov. 2025

• $100,000 invested in May 2001 = $830,147 in Nov. 2025

That’s serious money. Those are numbers worth saving for, aiming for, striving to invest for. Those are numbers that can pay for college tuition and dream vacations, that can build a prosperous retirement, that can create generational wealth, that can take care of people you love for years to come. Those are numbers that are in reach for a lot of middle-class investors.

Capitalism isn’t very popular right now in America. A recent Gallup poll found that only 54% of Americans have a positive view of capitalism, down from 61% in 2010.

Lots of Americans feel left out and left behind by capitalism, like the cost of living just keeps getting more expensive, and they’re not seeing enough rewards for their hard work. I get it. I’ve been there. When I was a young working adult in the early-to-mid 2000s, the idea of “investing” felt totally abstract; the idea of retirement felt impossibly far away. Saving for retirement and investing in the stock market was just something that boring old guys in bad suits talked about on TV. “Well, okay fellas, whatever. I guess I’ll put my puny little savings into this thing called The Stock Market. Maybe it’s not all a scam like Enron or doomed like the dotcoms!”

But the years passed, and I kept working and trying, earning and learning, saving and investing. And today I’m grateful to have something to show for all years. That’s why we invest: to create a future, to create a place of safety. We send some money on a long journey to our future selves, in the hope that it will grow along the way, in the hope that one day it will sustain us. Saving money is saving yourself.

I haven’t always believed in capitalism, but I do believe in Math. The numbers don’t lie. The stock market isn’t just for rich people. 62% of Americans own stock. There’s a vast cohort of middle-class retirement investors who own stocks, who are seeing meaningful investment gains, who are (hopefully) going to stick with it for the long run and someday will be able to retire with a lot more money than they expected. If you’re able to set some cash aside each month, from every paycheck, and invest it in a broadly diversified, low-cost index fund that tracks the S&P 500 or the total U.S. stock market, in the long run, you’ll most likely make money. Let hundreds and thousands of America’s publicly traded companies go to work for you everyday, making you richer. I have. Even after all the disasters that happened throughout my working life, the numbers got a lot bigger. It worked! USA! USA! USA!

And I recognize that what worked for me might not work for everyone. I’m lucky. I’m privileged. We live in a viciously competitive, deeply unequal society. Lots of poor people and working class people and middle class people can’t reasonably afford to save and invest, and are just kinda “stuck” in America. It’s all too easy to fall into a trap where you’re barely making enough to pay the bills, where you’re buried in student loans and high-interest debt that you can never get out of. American consumer capitalism is built upon constantly tempting people with a slightly nicer lifestyle, some shiny new thing, some expensive new bauble that they can barely afford. Many Americans get stuck on the treadmill of “lifestyle creep,” where they just keep spending 98% of what they earn, where their house and cars and furniture and wardrobes keep getting more expensive while their investment accounts are underfunded.

And some Americans have bad luck that ruins their financial plans. American life is risky and expensive. Lots of people have to borrow a bunch of money to go to college. You typically have to borrow to buy a reliable (expensive) car to drive to work. You could get sick or injured and have to be hospitalized and owe thousands of dollars in medical bills (even with expensive health insurance). You could lose your job and not find another good one anytime soon. You could become disabled due to a car accident or health crisis. You could get laid off from the best job (and best health insurance) of your entire career at age 50+ and spend the rest of your life being age-discriminated against, never getting back on track, never regaining your peak earning power. All of this is true. Canceling a few unused TV subscriptions isn’t going to make a difference.

But I also believe that almost everyone can do something, can take some meaningful steps forward, to improve their financial situation. This might include:

Fixing your credit

If you’re in the subprime credit score range (with a FICO score of less than 670), you need to do whatever it takes to rebuild your credit. Make it your #1 priority, maybe even before saving up cash to build an emergency fund.

People with subprime credit are at a massive disadvantage in life. If you have less than fair credit, you’re in America’s financial underclass; the worst companies in the financial industry are basically legally allowed to prey upon you and cheat you and harvest your organs. Having a low credit score makes you a target for discrimination; you can get denied jobs and rental housing because of it. It’s a nightmare.

But there is hope! Figure out how to get better organized at paying bills on time and rebuilding positive credit history. Credit Sesame is a credit score education app that I’ve researched before; it has free tools to help you understand your credit score and see how taking specific actions could improve your score. You also might want to think about using a secured credit card to get back in the good graces of the credit bureaus. But don’t use “credit repair” companies; they are usually scams.

Saving $1,000 of emergency cash

According to the Empower 2025 “Safety Net” study, 32% of Americans have no emergency savings, and 29% said they wouldn’t be able to afford an emergency expense over $400. What if you could save $1,000 of cash? That’s only $83.33 per month for one year. Cancel your TV subscriptions for one year. Put that money in a high-yield savings account. Watch your safety net grow.

You don’t need three to six months of emergency expenses; that’s not realistic for a lot of people who are barely keeping their heads above water. Instead, try to save up a smaller cash cushion that can bail you out in case of a car repair, a medical bill, or some other short-term needs.

Investing just a little bit each month

Do you have a job with a 401(k) plan or other qualified retirement plan? Do you get 401(k) matching money from your employer? If so, use it. Don’t leave money on the table. Even if you can only afford $50 or $100 per month, it can make a difference over time. Or if you don’t have a 401(k) at work, use a traditional or Roth IRA account; if you qualify based on income, you can invest up to $7,500 for 2026.

Let’s say you invest $100 per month in your 401(k) and your employer matches 50% of that, for a total of $150 per month. After 30 years, you could have $170,000 (assuming 7% average annual returns). That’s not enough to retire on, but it’s a good start, and it’s worth doing.

Look!

Giving your investments a tune-up

If you are part of the 62% of Americans who own stocks and are saving for retirement, what next? Many Americans might have some money saved up in their 401(k), but aren’t sure how to maintain the momentum and stay on track.

Ask yourself these questions:

Do you have a retirement savings goal?

If you can save $1 million by retirement, that would generate $40,000 per year of income. $1 million sounds like a huge number, but you don’t have to save it all at once; most of your retirement nest egg will come from long-term compounding, not just the money you put in from your paychecks. Take a look at how much you’ve saved so far. Use the free compound interest calculator at Investor.gov to see how your savings could grow.

Do you understand what stocks, bonds, or other investment funds you own?

Investing in 401(k) plans can be complex, because the exact funds that you can choose from depend a lot on your employer. Different companies hire different 401(k) fund managers and HR platforms to provide their employees with investment options.

In general: you should try to own a diversified portfolio with lots of different stocks and some bonds. The best 401(k) plans might also offer you a target date retirement fund, where you can choose a target year based on when you’re going to reach retirement age. This can help you automatically get set up with an appropriate mix of stocks and bonds for your age and long-term goals.

Do you know how much you’re paying in investment fees?

Read the fine print on your 401(k) or any other investment account to see how much the investment funds cost. The best low-cost index funds are often available through companies like Vanguard and Fidelity, with low fees. For example, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Exchange Traded Fund (VTI) has an expense ratio of only 0.03%.

Index funds like the VTI tend to be cheaper, because they are “passively managed” funds; they just go out and buy an entire market index, like the S&P 500, with lots of small amounts of shares of thousands of companies at once, without trying to pick stocks or beat the market. But some higher-cost funds, such as actively managed funds that try to pick the right stocks for you, might charge fund fees of 0.60%-1.0% or more.

Fund fees have come down in recent years, but it’s still worth reading the finExpenses matter, because the more you pay for fund fees, the less money you get keep. And higher-cost actively managed funds don’t always deliver bigger ROI than low-cost passive index funds -- you might be paying for performance that you’re not actually getting.

Are you investing in a way that’s appropriate for your age, income, time horizon, retirement goals and risk tolerance?

“Risk tolerance” is a tough thing to measure. The idea is, you should invest in a way that lets you sleep at night. You shouldn’t take on too much risk by investing 100% of your money in stocks unless you’re confident that you can handle the short-term emotional roller coaster. But not everyone knows how they’re really going to feel about risk until the stock market crashes and they see their retirement savings go down by 20% or more.

Another risk factor is diversification: are you putting too many eggs in one basket by investing too much money in just a few stocks, or in one type of stock (like tech or AI or financials)? Some people have the opposite problem, and are too risk-averse: they might have too much money in cash or bonds. They might need to put a larger percentage of their retirement money into stocks, in hope of gaining bigger long-term growth.

In general: younger people can afford to take more investment risk by putting a higher percentage of their retirement savings into stocks. And most people who are close to retirement (or already retired) shouldn’t retire from the stock market. The Vanguard Target Retirement 2025 Fund -- an investment portfolio that Vanguard recommends for people who are retired right now -- includes a mix of about 50% stocks and 50% bonds.

It’s understandable that many Americans are gloomy about their personal finances. Saving for retirement 30+ years into some unimaginable future might feel daunting and pointless when you’re struggling to afford life today. But we’re not all completely trapped and helpless and incapable of having agency to make meaningful choices about our money. Maybe some people are trapped; I feel for them. If your life is a nonstop emergency, it’s hard to plan for the future or get motivated to make clever strategic money moves. People get worn down by the everyday grind of paying bills.

I wish America had a stronger social safety net. I wish we had universal health insurance and better-funded public pensions through Social Security. I wish no one had to worry about paying medical bills or affording their chemotherapy or fending off calls from debt collectors after losing a job. I wish so many Americans didn’t have to live a life of constant stress and peril and dread. I wish we didn’t have to work so hard, and more Americans could take a long vacation every year, and young parents could spend more time at home with their children. I wish everyone could be taken care of, and prosperous Business Dads like me could help pick up the tab by being a little more generous, by paying a little more taxes.

But you see: those things are not very popular with American voters. “Taking care of people” and “having affordable healthcare and well-funded public schools” and “creating a beloved community of widely shared prosperity with a spirit of solidarity” and “having well-maintained parks and public transit and public spaces where Americans can co-exist in harmony as relative equals” is just not a winning strategy in American politics. We can’t wait around for politics to save us.

So in the meantime: let’s get smarter at investing!

Here’s one of my favorite articles I wrote about retirement planning: You Don’t Have to Be a Millionaire to Retire. Here’s Why.

FunMoneyDad.com content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered to be financial advice or investment advice. Consult with your own professional advisors before making any investment decisions.

It was 2009. My wife and I had a 1-year-old baby at home, and another on the way. I was the sole breadwinner for our small-but-growing family. At the time, I was working at a full-time day job at a big bank, doing technical writing for regulatory compliance documentation.

Unfortunately, at a moment when families need stability, health insurance, and a steady paycheck more than ever, I had reached an uncomfortable, distressing breaking point in my career. The people at my job were kind and the corporate benefits were generous, but the cubicle lifestyle had worn out its welcome. I was bored. The work felt highly repetitive and mostly meaningless; my old job has probably been replaced by AI by now. Worse than that, I was feeling desperate and trapped in my cubicle. I was having panic attacks within the gray, windowless walls.

I wish I could say that 2009 was a simpler, more innocent time, but anyone who’s seen The Big Short knows that wasn’t true. This was the era of the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession. Millions of Americans were losing their jobs and homes and retirement savings. The stock market was plummeting, big-name banks were failing. It seemed like Capitalism itself was collapsing. But my problems at the time were smaller and more personal. I wasn’t focused on the GFC and the Great Recession; my job was never in jeopardy because of it, and the bank where I worked survived and prospered despite the GFC. Instead, I was worried about overdrawing our checking account and putting food on the table.

Ever since our baby was born and I became a sole breadwinner, my day job paycheck hadn’t stretched far enough to comfortably pay our bills. And the idea of a promotion or pay raise was out of the question (since, uh, the entire financial industry was collapsing). Even though I was a privileged white guy with a fancy college degree and some impressive-looking work experience on my resume, I still felt like a failure. I was 30 years old with three beloved mouths to feed, and I was burning out. I felt like I had no viable future ahead of me. Everywhere around me I saw nothing but dread and gloom and unaffordable expenses stretching to the far horizon.

I needed to find a new way to make more money. There had to be a better way. All I wanted was to be able to work from home and be with our children, and the corporate cubicle world of 2009 would never let me.

That’s when I found out about Elance (now Upwork). I randomly read in a Newsweek article about how hip young people in New York City were making money as freelancers and gig workers, and how Elance (Upwork) was a site where they found projects. This was what I needed! After work, I went home and set up an Elance (Upwork) profile and immediately started using my nights and weekends to bid on freelance writing projects.

It took a few weeks, but finally I got my first Elance client. It was a corporate consultant from Australia (the 15-hour time zone difference meant that she was online during “business hours” at the same time I was moonlighting). I got paid $200 to help ghostwrite corporate training materials about Diversity in the Workplace.

The project was fun, the client was grateful, and suddenly I had $180 (the project fee minus Elance’s commission and transaction costs) in my bank account.

This moment changed everything for me. It blew my mind that I had just gotten money from the Internet. And all by doing a fun project that didn’t even feel like “work,” that took me a few hours, that paid me more than I would’ve made from sitting for 8 hours in a gray windowless fabric-padded box.

A few more months went by and I got more freelance work on Elance (Upwork). It became my new fun hobby. I was grateful for every project, every paycheck. In December 2009, Elance announced that they were having a contest: $10,000 first prize for freelancers who could creatively show how Elance and the “New Way to Work” of online freelancing had changed their lives.

I was galvanized. I knew instantly what I had to do. The idea came to me like the clouds parting, like golden letters appearing in the sky. I sat down at my laptop and cranked out a blog post, called Cubicles are the Phone Booths of the Future, that was a passionate cry from the heart, a full-throated defense of remote work and working from home. All of my hours of my twenties that I spent confined in windowless rooms doing Office Stuff had led up to this.

And then? I won! I won the Grand Prize. $10,000. But then: my day job found out about my side hustle, and I almost got fired. But it all worked out in the end! I rallied under pressure, improved my day job performance and got back in my boss’s good graces, and eventually resigned from my corporate job on good terms. And today, after more than 15 years of working from home, making a living on the Internet as a freelance writer, I’m glad I did what I did. It couldn’t have happened any other way.

I want to share the original blog post from December 2009. This article took me about 45 minutes to write, and I got paid $10,000 for it. That’s a pretty good hourly billable rate!

Cubicles are the Phone Booths of the Future

December 1, 2009

Note: This post won the Grand Prize in the Elance “New Way to Work” contest.

I’ve hated almost every job I’ve ever had.

OK, “hate” is too strong of a word.

Let me put it this way: I have often felt deep frustrations and resentments toward every job I’ve ever had.

I haven’t hated the work itself or the people that I’ve worked with, or even the organizations that I’ve worked for. I’ve done really good work and had some great times with some really great people.

But what I’ve hated are the limitations and confinements and pointless restrictions of the “job” itself.

I don’t like having to work “standard hours.” I don’t like having to show up at 9 a.m. (or earlier) and work the same amount of time every day. I don’t like never getting to see daylight (my office has no windows). I don’t like the enforced idleness – I hate those days where even if there’s not enough work to do, you still have to sit there for three more hours, just to “put in your time” and keep up appearances. I don’t like having to get all my groceries and run all my errands at night and on weekends – what if I want to go to the store at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday? What if I want to play with my child in the park on Thursday at 3 p.m.? What if I want to go jogging on Wednesday at 1 p.m.? I can’t do any of that when I have a “job.”

Most of all, I hate having a cubicle.

Think about it. Do you know of anyone who truly likes their cubicle? Do you like your cubicle? If you had a choice, would you ever in a million years choose to work in a cubicle? Isn’t there something fundamentally pathetic about the way so many of us spend the majority of our waking hours, hunched inside these fabric-padded boxes, peering at computer screens, eating our sad little microwaved lunches off our desks?

This is America, right? “Land of the free, home of the brave” – but this “old” way of working in a cubicle – the isolation, the sensory deprivation, the bad lighting, the walling-off-of-oneself from the wider world – doesn’t feel very “free” to me, or very brave.

Fortunately, I believe that we are on the cusp of something better – much better – than life in a cubicle.

With Elance, I’ve discovered the start of a new way of work – and a better way of life.

Cubicles are the phone booths of the future.

Someday, people are going to look back at cubicles with the same sense of disbelief that today’s kids have when they look at phone booths.

When was the last time you used a phone booth? (When was the last time you even saw a phone booth?)

It sounds absurd, right? Who needs a phone booth in this day and age, when everyone carries phones in their pockets? Imagine, having to sit in one specific spot and use one specific phone just to make a call!

Well, someday – probably sooner than most of us expect – people will look at cubicles the same way.

(“Wow,” future visitors to the Cubicle Museum will say, “you had to sit in that thing all day, just to earn a living? You couldn’t go work at the park in the middle of the day, or sit with your laptop by a sunny window at the library, or work from your home office while your children are sleeping?”)

It’s true that there are some jobs where you need to be on-site and work set hours. If you’re a 911 dispatcher, you definitely need to be on call at set hours each day. If you’re an attorney or consultant who works on a billable hour basis, you need to put in a set amount of time to demonstrate your productivity (although the billable hour system is under pressure, as clients look to rein in costs). If you’re a retail store manager or a restaurateur, you need to be where your customers are. If you’re a waiter in a restaurant, serving food, or if you’re a nurse in a hospital helping patients, you need to be “there” in order to do your job.

But for most of us who sit in cubicles – those of us who are “knowledge workers,” who work with information and numbers and words and ideas – there is no “there” there anymore.

You’ve heard of this thing called the Internet, right? You’ve seen some of the smart phones that people are carrying around?

Questions for managers everywhere:

• Why is it so important to you to have your people sitting in their cubicles for an arbitrary length of time each day? Why is 8 hours so important? Why not 7.569 hours? Why not 3 hours? Who cares, as long as the work gets done?

• If the only way you have to measure your people’s productivity is the amount of hours they spend at work, shouldn’t you find some better metrics? (This is 2009 – we have the Internet – everything is measurable now. We are all effectively “on commission.”)

• If the only way you can be sure that your people are working is to force them to sit 10 feet away from you in a cubicle all day, why did you hire them in the first place? (If you’re hiring real professionals, they shouldn’t require such close supervision – don’t you trust your people? And if not, fire them and hire someone better – there’s plenty of great talent in the labor market right now.)

Now more than ever, it’s possible to be available – and highly productive, and totally engaged – while still having the freedom and flexibility to choose when and where and how we work.

With the New Way of Work on Elance, we can work for clients worldwide, and we can do the work from anywhere. Who needs a cubicle?

Elance has changed my life.

Ever since I started my freelance writing business on Elance, I’ve worked with clients in Australia, Tokyo, England, Canada and the Kingdom of Jordan. (As well as all corners of the U.S. – from Seattle to Cleveland to Orlando to Los Angeles.)

I hold conference calls via Skype – for free – with clients whose time zone is 15 hours ahead of mine.

I send draft documents to the client via e-mail before I go to bed at midnight, and I get feedback from the client when I wake up the next morning.

I make much more money (on an hourly basis) working for myself, from home, than I’ve ever made working in a cubicle for someone else. I can make more money in two or three hours than I make sitting in a cubicle for eight hours.

Best of all, I love the work. I should have started doing this five years ago. The work is fun, it’s creative, it’s full of variety and new challenges, and it’s for real customers who are grateful for the help.

Most big companies aren’t ready for the new way of work. (Best Buy is one exception – they’ve implemented a “Results Only Work Environment” at their corporate headquarters which allows employees to basically come and go as they please, as long as the work gets done.) But smaller companies, sole proprietors, and even some innovative larger organizations are going to realize some great benefits from hiring skilled professionals on a flexible, project-by-project basis.

It’s easier than ever before to use sites like Elance to find qualified, vetted, reliable professionals to help on almost any project. You can quickly and easily put a project out for bid and mobilize a talented team from all over the world – and it doesn’t matter that you aren’t all sitting in the same row of cubicles together.

Of course, not everyone wants to be self-employed. There are still going to be “cubicle jobs” for people who want the more traditional idea of job security, or who love working for a particular company. There are still going to be jobs that require a kind of group synergy that only results when everyone is on-site together, or that require a level of confidentiality that is hard to achieve via e-mail alone.

But for those of us with a certain kind of skills, energy and ambition – this is a new day, and the sky’s the limit. We can work for anyone, anywhere, all over the world. It doesn’t matter where you live – all that matters is your skills, your hustle, and your demonstrated reputation for delivering results.

Thank you, Elance for introducing me to the new way of work. I think we’re on to something big.

####

Looking back on this essay now, from 2025, in some places it sounds a little snarky and arrogant and over-confident. I don’t mean to sound that way. I was just young and excited and impatient. I had discovered a pot of gold on my kitchen table, and I wanted to share it with the world.

The past few years have seen the rise and fall of remote work and Work From Anywhere, as more corporate employers have required their people to go back to the office. I was probably naive to think that “everyone will work from home” in the future.

And yet? This article still encapsulates some of my best, most hopeful thinking about what work can be, how people can relate to their work at its best. Online freelancing has been a dream come true for me and my family. We’ve gotten to be part-time digital nomads, traveling the world: Tokyo, London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Glasgow, Montréal. I’ve gotten to spend lots and lots of time watching my kids grow up, picking them up after school, going to their soccer games, being around for lots of lazy weekday afternoons and precious everyday moments that I never would’ve seen if I’d been stuck in a cubicle. And I’ve been able to grow my income, and earn a much better living than I could’ve had in the corporate world, while still having fun and enjoying a flexible schedule.

Our dreams have come true. It all started with this one blog post. Everything changed for the better, because I sat down at my laptop and started talking to the Internet.

I still believe in the Internet. My career and my life wouldn’t be possible without the Internet. Everyone’s tired of social media spam and AI slop. We need the Internet to get back to basics — back to the authentic interpersonal connections and shared humanity that made the Internet feel so exciting in the first place. In my own small way, my career as a freelance writer has been dedicated to trying to make the Internet a little better, a little smarter, a little more fun.

That’s what I’m trying to do now, with my new website, FunMoneyDad.com. I want people to have more fun, make more money, feel better about their money and life. I believe talking about money can be fun AND responsible. We can be prudent about investing for the future AND have fun today. Over the years in my career, it hasn’t always happened in a straight upward line, but I’ve managed to make money AND have fun along the way. I wish the same for everyone.

Watch our podcast episode on YouTube here:

This opportunity came about because of my work as a freelance finance writer. I recently wrote an article for Business Insider about Why I’m Not Teaching My Kids How to Invest. The RIA Advisors team enjoyed my article and invited me to be a guest on their podcast.

A few of the key points that I made on the podcast (and in my article) include:

I don’t want my kids to worry about investing yet.

They’re still in school, they don’t have part-time jobs, they’re at a stage of life when they don’t even have income yet. Even though I learned priceless life lessons while working part-time jobs in high school, I’m fine with my kids focusing on their studies and extracurricular activities for now. Once my kids are ready to start their first jobs and open a Roth IRA or 401(k), I’ll be right there standing by, ready to help them choose the right index funds. But for now, investing isn’t relevant to my kids’ lives and it’s not a big priority compared to their education and their personal development.

I worry that today’s young investors are taking too many risks.

On the whole, I think it’s a good thing that more people are investing, that investing apps have gotten easier to access, that the stock market is more democratized for retail investors. But stocks don’t always go up. I’m concerned that too many young people are taking big risks that they can’t really afford. I worry that the long bull market and recent uncertainty in the job market have encouraged young people to adopt a get rich quick, “YOLO” approach to investing, and an impatient attitude toward careers and life. I don’t want my kids to lose a bunch of money on a day trading app, or believe that short-term gains from memestocks and altcoins are the best and only way to invest.

I want to teach financial values, not stock picking.

Yes, some people make a lot of money trading options, picking stocks, or making leveraged bets on speculative assets. But most people don’t — not in the long run. We often hear about the big winners on Wall Street, but we rarely hear the stories of people sharing the grim details of how much they lost while playing the markets. Most professional investors fail to beat the S&P 500 for long. Instead of getting my kids hyped up about investing, I want them to learn the sturdier, steadier, sustainable values of hard work, diligence, diversification, and a long-term approach to investing and building wealth — not by get rich quick schemes, but by the slow, steady “boring” accumulation of compounding returns over time.

Want to read more? My Business Insider article also appeared on MSN.com and AOL.com.

If you prefer to listen to your podcasts without video, my episode of the Real Investment Show is also on Apple Podcasts.

Many thanks to Lance Roberts and the team at RIA Advisors! They have an impressive professional media operation; it’s like a real radio studio that’s also an investment advisory firm. Doing this podcast really inspired me to get more serious about my online presence — it made me want to have a place where I could encourage people to go follow me. I’ve published a lot of freelance writing articles over the years, but often I lurk behind the scenes; I haven’t built much of an audience or a platform that’s all my own. I hope to do more podcast appearances like this in the future.

The desire to get out of America was especially strong among women ages 15-44: 40% of this younger female demographic wanted to move away from America in 2025, down slightly from 44% in 2024. This is pretty remarkable: young American women are four times more likely to want to move out of the country than they were in 2014.

What’s driving this new American Dream of leaving America? At the risk of “getting political” in a blog that’s supposed to be about making money and having fun, it appears that the answer is: politics. Young women are more than twice as likely as young men to want to leave America. This gender gap is a sign that younger women feel like America’s political climate is becoming more hostile to them.

Gallup’s research says:2

Rising interest in leaving the U.S. is shaped not only by age and gender but also by political attitudes. In 2025, there is a 25-point gap in the desire to migrate between Americans who approve and those who disapprove of the country’s leadership…

Younger women’s much stronger orientation to the Democratic Party than other age and gender groups exhibit helps explain some of the differences in desire to move abroad. So far in 2025, 59% of women aged 18 to 44 identify as or lean Democratic, compared with 39% of younger men, 53% of older women and 37% of older men.

Gallup also found that American women and girls ages 15-44 have lost the most confidence and trust in America’s institutions during the past 10 years. American women don’t trust “the system” anymore. The biggest increases in young American women’s desire to leave America seem to have happened because of the election of President Donald Trump in 2017, his re-election in 2024, and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022 which ended Roe v. Wade and took away Americans’ nationwide right to legal abortion.

And it’s not just politics. Everyone in America is stressed and upset about the cost of living these days, but women are feeling it even worse. That’s because American women tend to get paid less money than men: American women earn an average of 85% of men’s income.3 Given their lower incomes, it’s no wonder that women are also more likely to feel anxiety about money. A recent GOBankingRates survey found that 34% of women feel extreme financial stress, compared to only 24% of men.4

Other age and demographic groups like older men (ages 45+) seem to think that everything is hunky-dory in America. That’s understandable, because older guys like me tend to make more money and own more investments than the average American. And the civil rights and reproductive freedoms of American men are never up for debate or at risk of going away because of one flukey election result. (Oops! Not to get political!) If your lifestyle is free and prosperous, if you’ve got money in the bank and can afford to own a house and have a booming investment portfolio, if you feel like “the system” works for you, you don’t need to leave America!

But even if America is successfully creating a hospitable climate for older white guys, it’s clear that lots of younger women are fed up with this place. Can you blame them? If you feel like your own country is run by people who hate you, if you feel like the government is taking away your human rights, and you’re struggling to pay your bills because the cost of living just keeps going up, and the car that is your only way to get to work keeps breaking down, and the copays and deductibles on your health insurance keep skyrocketing, and you feel underpaid at your job and undervalued in the workplace, and you’ve lost trust in your nation’s government and institutions, then…why not leave America and move to another country?

Huh. Young women seem to want to leave America for the same reasons people have always emigrated away from unstable countries: political extremism, government and cultural oppression, and lack of economic opportunities. Apparently young women aren’t into all of this American “masculine energy,”5 fellas!

The point is, no matter your gender, and no matter what your reasons are for wanting to leave America, it can be done. I know because I’ve done it myself. My first job out of college was teaching English in Japan, and over the years I’ve been a part-time digital nomad in Europe. Even though I’m an old, crotchety man now, and the American system is mostly “working for me” on a financial level, I sympathize with people who want to leave America. It’s very tempting! My international travels are some of my happiest memories and favorite learning experiences. Traveling in other countries makes me feel like I’m really doing something with my life. I’ve never felt more free and prosperous than when I’m not in America.

The life of an American living abroad can be pretty sweet. In many ways, being an American in another country feels more exciting and inspiring than everyday life in America, where life often feels stressful and money-obsessed and mundane, like the American way of life is all about paying bills and barely scraping by and worrying about health insurance. (Ugh. This is supposed to be a fun money blog! Fun!!)

Anyway, here are 4 ideas for how to move away from America that I have personally tried (or would consider if I was young and single):

1. Teach English in Japan (or Korea, or China, or Czechia…)

If you’re an American native English speaker, especially if you have a college degree and/or some other formal certification, you can get jobs in other countries as an English teacher. I did this. For my first job out of college in 2001, I taught English in Japan as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program.

Being an American English teacher in Japan was a marvelous adventure. It was the absolute best thing that I could’ve done with that first year out of college. I made lifelong friends, I ate delicious sushi and ramen, and drank many tasty Japanese beers and bottles of sake. And living in Japan was a 24-hour-a-day immersive learning experience: new language, new culture, new perspectives, new ways of being. I lived in a tiny apartment that cost less than $300 a month (at the time). I slept on the floor on a futon. I didn’t need a car and I commuted to my job at school by bicycle and bus, I rode the fast, efficient trains into Tokyo on weekends to hang out with my friends in the neon futuristic nightworlds of Shinjuku and Shibuya, where the city looks like Blade Runner, where the lights are so bright at night that you can see your shadow on the sidewalks.

And despite some of the usual young-person-in-their-20s malaise and anxiety about Careers and Relationships and The Future, I was happy! It was an amazing experience! I got to explore the world’s largest city and meet fascinating people from all over the world! And my cost of living was shockingly affordable! I never worried about money when I lived in Japan, I saved a weirdly large amount of money that year, without even trying too hard! In many ways, teaching English in Japan might have been the best job I ever had.

And it’s not just Japan that offers these opportunities. I have friends in America whose son taught English in South Korea for several years, and he loved every minute of it. China is another country that hires lots of American English teachers. I have a good friend who lives in Prague, Czech Republic, who’s been teaching English there for more than 10 years. He lives in one of the most beautiful cities on Earth, and he’s one of the happiest, most fulfilled people I’ve ever met.

Teaching English abroad isn’t the perfect long-term career for everyone, but it might be the easiest way for many Americans to get a job in another country. It can at least help you get a work visa and get established. And you might even earn better take-home pay as an English teacher in other countries versus the cost of living, not having to worry about car insurance or medical bills, than you made at your old terrible job in America.

Here’s an article I wrote about this: I moved back to the US after 1 year abroad in Japan. My American career is more lucrative, but life is better in Japan.

2. Sign Up for Expat Relocation Coaching

I actually did this too. I almost moved away from America (again) in 2017. In 2017, my family went on a beautiful, life-changing vacation that is permanently engrained in my memory as one of the happiest times of my life: we spent a month in Europe, traveling and visiting friends in Germany, Prague, London and Glasgow. (I’m blessed to have many awesome friends in other countries, as well as America.) Our kids were ages 9 and 7 that summer, the perfect ages for an international family trip; they were old enough to be independent and curious about the wider world, but not yet teenagers who mostly want to hang out in their rooms or go out with friends. They still were at an age where they wanted to travel with Mom and Dad, they still needed us in those precious little ways, and it was all perfect.

That was a golden summer of life, the sweetest of days. I’ve never felt closer to my family or more grateful for my international friends than I did that summer. We stayed in gorgeous apartments with hardwood floors and high ceilings and big windows, we sat at peaceful sidewalk cafes, we walked everywhere, we took trains, we shopped for groceries at German Aldi, we ate at British fish and chip shops and Indian restaurants in London and French-style brasseries and Japanese ramen shops in Dusseldorf, we visited castles and museums and hiked in forests. My kids quickly learned a surprising amount of German and played pickup soccer in parks and ate shocking amounts of gelato.

Traveling in Europe as a family was paradise on Earth. And I was surprised to discover that, as a digital nomad freelance writer, I was just as productive (or more) working from a laptop on AirBnB couches in other countries as I was from my home office in Des Moines.

So we were completely smitten with the European lifestyle. Why not do this all the time? I needed more information and reassurance, trying to see how to move to Europe as an American freelance writer. I signed up for coaching from a company that offers expat relocation coaching to help people emigrate to Germany. We did a coaching call via Skype and it was very tempting!

My Germany expat relocation coach was an American who was originally from Indiana, another Midwestern state. She and her husband were raising their kids in Berlin and they loved it, and had no plans to move back to America. And my expat coach said to me, “Compared to America, our life in Berlin just feels more active, more connected to the world. The winters are milder here, so we spend more time walking outside all year round. Back in Indiana, it feels like most people just sit on the couch all winter.”

That line really stuck with me. In my everyday American life, I also spend way too much time indoors and sitting on couches and in cars. One of my favorite things about living in Europe would be not having a car, being able to take well-funded, on-time, efficient public transit everywhere. The climate is milder there compared to the American Midwest, where we get All the Worst Weather in the World. The cities in Europe are built for walking, the public spaces are made for lingering. You can be a person there, instead of just a “car occupant.” In the American Midwest, you can drive for 10 hours and still basically be in the same place. In Europe, the trains can take you to vastly different countries and cultures in a few hours. The whole world feels within reach. The overall lifestyle and built environment in Europe is probably, in most important ways, better than America. Could there be a greater gift to your children than to help them grow up multilingual, with a multicultural perspective, with an extra passport in their pocket?

But my wife and I decided not to go through with moving away from America. Ultimately, I just couldn’t quite commit to taking that big plunge. I love our little city and our kids’ schools and our life in Des Moines. I wasn’t 100% sure if my kids’ life would be better growing up as non-native German-speaking immigrants than growing up in their own country, close to family, where we speak the language and we know how the schools and the systems work.

And on a selfish level: I worried that my career opportunities would take a hit if we left America. I’m a freelancer and I can be a digital nomad and work from anywhere, but some clients prefer to hire American writers who are based in America. And I’m not multilingual enough. As an international freelance writer, I’m a one-trick pony: I’m only fluent in English. Despite visiting Germany more than a dozen times, I can only speak enough German to order ice cream (“Zwei kugelen, bitte” -- “two scoops, please”). Despite living in Japan for a year, I’m not fluent in Japanese; but I was able to speak enough Japanese to give a toast at my friends’ wedding. And I’m far from business fluent in Spanish, despite studying Spanish for approximately 6,000 years in high school and college.

The point is: language matters a lot to me. I’m in awe of people who are fluently multilingual. I know how hard it is to get up that steep learning curve of living in another country where you’re trying to learn the language, where you’re constantly forgetting things and tripping over things and making mistakes and slowing down the checkout line at the grocery store. Getting to work in my own native language, where I can type and write and create fluently, fluidly, at the speed of my own thoughts, without the little delays and mental snags and switching costs of trying to speak another language, is a huge privilege. Americans are very lucky that our native English has become the world’s second language and the language of international business. I get to make a living in the language that the rest of the world is making great efforts, at great expense, to learn. I don’t take it for granted.

In the end, my family has had a wonderful life in Des Moines, Iowa where we love our schools and our community and our friendly neighbors, and I’ve been grateful that my kids got to spend lots of time living near their grandparents. I love and appreciate the unique cultural nuances of this little place on the planet. These are my roots, this is my home base. I don’t regret staying in America instead of moving to Germany. (But it was close! We almost did it! I hope I made the right choice!)

Learn more: If you’d like to get expat coaching and find out how to move to Germany as an American and get set up as a freelancer (or possibly find a job), check out this company: Start Relocation. The company that I used for Germany expat coaching in 2018 is no longer in business, but my contact there recommended Start Relocation. Companies like these can help you understand the process, fill out paperwork, and deal with the steps required to get a visa and be “legal” to work and live in Germany.

3. Find the Best Countries for Digital Nomad Visas

What if you’re not sure if you want to move to another country as a permanent immigrant, but you want to try living in another country on a temporary basis as a digital nomad? Many countries now offer digital nomad visas. If you can qualify, this gives you the ability to legally live and work in those countries for longer than you can stay as a typical American tourist.

For example, Americans are allowed to visit most European countries for up to 90 days at a time for business or personal travel without a visa. But if you want to stay longer, you’ll need a digital nomad visa. Getting a digital nomad visa is not the same as getting a work visa from an employer in the other country; it’s more flexible and short-term. This can make it a good choice for entrepreneurs and freelancers who work remotely.

And the good news is, some of the best-ranked countries for quality of life are also making it easier to get set up with a digital nomad visa! I recently wrote an article about this based on the Global Digital Nomad report from Global Citizens Solutions. According to this group’s research, some of the best countries for digital nomad visas include:

• Spain: This is a marvelous country to visit! So much good food and wine, pretty beaches, and Madrid’s art museums alone are worth spending a week there. God, I miss Spain.

• The Netherlands: I recently visited Amsterdam for the first time and I loved it! I ate mind-blowingly delicious Indonesian food and sweet Dutch stroopwaffels and generally spent most of the time stumbling around giggling with a big smile on my face. The Dutch are some of the happiest people on Earth for a reason.

• Canada: If you want to leave America but stay in the same time zone, Canada could be your ticket out of here. I’ve only visited Canada once, so far. But we visited the cosmopolitan, fascinating, English-French bilingual city of Montréal -- and I want to go back! Montréal was fantastic. Lots of good food and unique culture and international flavor. And attending a Montréal Canadiens hockey game was one of the greatest live sports experiences I’ve ever seen.

Want to learn more? Read my article: Want to Start a Business as a Digital Nomad? Here Are the 10 Best Countries to Move To

4. Marry a Foreigner

I’ve never tried this. But if I was young and single and depressed by the dating apps and frustrated with America’s stressful, overpriced, hyper-competitive, socially atomized, excessively commercialized way of life, I would think about it. Sometimes the easiest way to leave America forever is to marry a citizen of another country.

Seriously. Go on vacation in another country where you’d like to live, and go on the dating apps. Go to bars, go to coffee shops and beer gardens, talk to people! Live life! Be open to possibilities! Flirt a little, in a culturally appropriate way!

I’m not saying “you should marry someone just for a visa.” You should only marry for love, or for health insurance. But getting dual citizenship and another passport in your pocket could be a nice fringe benefit! And as for you Americans reading this who are already currently married to a fellow American: I’m not saying “you should divorce your American spouse and marry a foreigner to escape from America,” but…how much has your American spouse done for you lately? Are you feeling well-loved and appreciated? Are they helping out around the house? Are you feeling good about being a one-passport household? Huh??

Beware: The Downsides of Leaving America

In all seriousness: moving to another country and learning a new language and adapting to a new culture is not easy, and it’s not for everyone. Sometimes people move to another country and discover that the reality of everyday life there is less beautiful than it looked in the vacation photos. You still need to pay taxes and pay bills and have income of some kind. Language barriers are real. Culture shock can be tough, especially in the workplace. Your job in another country can still be frustrating, your American professional credentials might not be accepted, your paycheck can still feel too meager, your apartment can still feel shabby.

You might feel lonely and misunderstood, like you’re in a club where you’ll never fully understand the unwritten rules and secret handshakes. Foreign school systems and government bureaucracies can be mysterious and baffling and arbitrary, especially if you’re not a native speaker of the local language. There might be little things you miss about America more than you expected, like college football and fast food drive-thru milkshakes. There will be communication disconnects and little moments of cross-cultural friction in your new country that might feel more painful than they’re worth. Being a long-term expat often requires an open-hearted spirit of extraversion and patience that not everyone can sustain.

And if you’re trying to escape from some deep dissatisfaction with your relationships, your personal life, or yourself, moving to another country ultimately won’t solve those issues. That was another lesson I’ve learned from my international adventures: “wherever you go in the world, there you are.” I lived in Japan, in a culture and country that were radically different from my upbringing in a small town in the Midwest, and I learned massive lessons and life-changing perspectives that have stayed with me all these years; I think about those memories and life lessons everyday. And yet, I feel like living in another country didn’t fundamentally change me. I remained the same person, for good and bad. Maybe no one “changes,” maybe we just become more like ourselves. (Maybe I should have stayed away from America longer…)

I also don’t want to sound too negative about America. This country has big problems and complexities and exasperating political and social divisions just like every country. America is not alone in going through political upheaval during the past few years. Most democratic countries right now are going through the same kinds of pressures for the same reasons: people all over what we used to call the “free world” are feeling furious at corrupt elites and disaffected by “mainstream” politics that has failed to deliver for them. People are exhausted by inflation and struggling to maintain their standard of living. Every country is trying to afford to keep paying for its social safety net and healthcare system and future retirement benefits, while dealing with stagnant economies and aging populations. America’s political problems have a uniquely American flavor, but they’re not unique. Even after everything that America has been through in the past 10 years, I’m not sure that I want to trade problems with any other country on Earth.

And at the risk of sounding like an out-of-touch bougie old guy: I’m grateful for the good things about America. There are a lot of important things I value and appreciate about my American life and my family’s life, and the education I got here, and the career I’ve been able to build here. Living in another country and traveling the world has taught me just how stubbornly, culturally “American” I am, and mostly not in a bad way! And America has powerful strengths: diversity, creativity, entrepreneurship, economic dynamism that not every other “rich” country on Earth can match.

At its best, America has an exceptional spirit of optimism, open-mindedness to new ideas, a capacity for reinvention, a drive to shape the future. There are many reasons why so many ambitious, talented, hard-working and hopeful people from all over the world still want to come to America to study and work and start businesses, no matter who’s in the White House. And the American Midwest where I live, to me, represents some of America at its best. This was the place that nurtured and shaped me, with a spirit of community, generosity, humility, egalitarianism, earnestness, and a world-class work ethic. I can’t run away from my home country and my Midwestern roots, even when America is disappointing, even when it feels tempting.

So instead of leaving America, I’m going to stay here and try to make it better for everyone. I’m going to try to be a more welcoming host to people who come here from other countries. I’m going to try to be more generous to the people who rightfully feel like America’s system is not working for them. And I don’t want to sound dismissive of marginalized people’s concerns about American politics and America’s bitter sociocultural divides. If America really feels that bad to you, and the future of America feels so bleak that it’s time to pack a bag, I’m not telling you that you’re wrong. But on a big picture level, I feel like most Americans just don’t have the option -- or the real desire -- to leave America forever. People might blow off steam while responding to Gallup surveys, but most Americans will stay here. We have no choice -- it’s too hard for most Americans to get a work visa in other countries. Leaving America as an expat or digital nomad often requires money, education, and privilege that not everyone has.

And more than that: as Americans, we’re all in this together. We’re mostly just going to have to muddle through, learn from mistakes, repair damage, protect our communities, and try to create a more hopeful future, just like always. If America really is becoming such an irreparably terrible place to live, such an impoverished and corrupt and oppressive and backward place, that millions of young Americans decide that they’re better off fleeing the country…well, in that world, we’re all gonna be in big trouble. Europe and Canada and Japan don’t want millions of American refugees. They love our pop culture and our tourist dollars, but they don’t actually want “us.”

But if you do want to leave America forever, or just for a year, I understand. And I wish you good luck and Godspeed! Moving to another country is possible, and there’s not just one right way to do it. Living life in another country can be a grand adventure that reshapes your world. Leaving America won’t solve all your problems, but it could solve your biggest problem. And maybe that’s enough.

Want to hire Ben Gran for your next freelance writing project? Send me an email (benjamin.gran@gmail.com) or check out my freelance writer website at BenjaminGran.com.

I’m also an executive ghostwriter, working behind the scenes to help CEOs and business thought leaders share their expertise in publications like Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and TechCrunch. And I recently finished my first book ghostwriting project, about the future of AI, advanced technology and human spirituality. I wrote 73,000 words in 3 months.

So, I write pretty good. I’m a wordsmith. I read fast, I research fast, I write fast. My brain processes words faster than most people. This is my core professional skill, the thing I’m best at in all the world, the only thing I know how to do anymore. I’m not a handy guy around the house (every time I have to do a minor home improvement project, it ruins my ENTIRE LIFE), I don’t know how to fix cars, I don’t cook much, I don’t have a lot of hobbies, I don’t have “work-life balance” or a “healthy exercise routine,” but by God, I know how to do the writin’ and the talkin’.

But last month, I made an alarming realization: despite writing millions of words as a freelance writer over the years, I have no real professional “online presence” or “brand” or “platform” of my own. In October, I was a guest expert on a fun investing podcast, and I realized that I had nowhere to tell people to follow me. This website, FunMoneyDad.com, is intended to correct this error.

All these years, I’ve been creating content for other people. And I’m good at what I do! I don’t care about being an “influencer” or a big shot or a bestselling author; all I’ve wanted is to stay fully booked and happily, slightly too busy as a freelance writer. I’m a ghostwriter, at heart; I don’t care if I’m invisible as long as I get paid.

But all this time while I’ve been helping other people build their reputations and drive traffic to their websites, I’ve too often neglected to figure out how to build up a consistent presence and platform and voice of my own. “The cobbler’s children are barefoot,” as the old saying goes. I need something that I can truly “own,” an email list and audience that wants to keep hearing from me. I need a new way to get found by freelance writing clients (some of the best freelance writing gigs find me; why not make it easier to get found?). I actually set up this Substack back in 2020, but I never got around to doing anything with it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to blog about, or why. But now I know!

And also: earlier in 2025, I wrote my first book. I haven’t published it yet. This was not a ghostwriting project, it’s my very own CEO memoir about the lessons I’ve learned from 15+ years of being a solopreneur on the Internet. I intend to self-publish this book. I don’t care about selling lots of copies, I just want to use it as a portfolio piece to help get other book ghostwriting projects. And I want my kids to have something on the shelf someday to remember their Dad by. But if I can build up an audience on here, I might ask you to help me out by buying my book and giving it a 5-star rating on Amazon.

So that’s the elaborate backstory to why I started this website! But what am I hoping to accomplish with FunMoneyDad.com, what is FunMoneyDad.com about, and why should you subscribe??

Here are a few key goals for why I’m doing this, and why I intend to stick with it:

Make Money More Fun

I want to offer personal finance and investing content that is empowering, informative, and fun! There’s a lot of money advice and money articles and personal finance and investing content on the Internet, but too much of it is boring and technical and hard to understand. Or it’s coming from loud-mouthed aggro Money Influencer dudes who sound like jerks. That’s not how I want to be.

I believe that writing about money and learning about money and managing money can be fun! It doesn’t have to be a miserable bean-counting experience. I get annoyed by personal finance gurus who try to shame people for borrowing money to buy a car, or who hassle people about their $5 a day coffee habit. I want people to feel GOOD about their money. I want people to feel PEACE about their money. We’re all going to die someday, and the point of being alive is not to amass the largest retirement savings portfolio. We’ve got to have some fun along the way. We can make prudent investments for the future AND have fun with our money today.

Read more: You Don’t Have to Be a Millionaire to Retire.

Help People Make Money in a Fun Way

I want to offer hard-earned lessons and insights on how to be a freelance writer, how to start a business working on the Internet, and what it really means to make money online. Starting my own little creative solopreneur business as an online freelance writer back in 2010 completely changed my life. It’s been so, so great, you guys. I’ve been doing this for 15+ years and I’ve loved almost every minute, even during the hard times when there’s not enough work, even when clients ghost on me and don’t pay their bills. (Usually that doesn’t happen! 98% of the time, clients actually pay me! Thank you, good clients!)

And I don’t want to sell false hope about starting a business. It’s hard. It’s flexible and fun, but it can also be stressful and all-consuming. I’m very lucky. I’m exceptionally good at my weird little niche skillset. This is the best way for me to make a living, based on the unique and sometimes exasperating ways that my mind works. Not everyone can do what I do, exactly how I do it.

But I do believe that almost everyone can be entrepreneurial in their own way, on their own level, in whatever way is meaningful to them. Start a side hustle. Get creative with your job. Add more value for your employer. Make some extra cash on the side. There are so many ways to boost your income and it feels fantastic. I still believe in the Internet as a way to connect with lucrative, life-changing opportunities. I’m going to write about that here on FunMoneyDad.com.

Read more: My Side Hustle Almost Got Me Fired. Here’s Why It Was Worth It.

Be a Responsible “Money Dad”

I’ve always been passionate about saving money and investing for the future. The kind of pleasurable brain chemicals that most people get from spending money are what I get from saving money. (“Ahhh, yes. Another generous contribution to my SEP IRA! I can feel the prudence flowing!”)

But I also try not to go too far and be stingy and impractical. My children have never wanted for anything important, fun, or frivolous in life because I was being stern and frugal and saying “no you can’t have an ice cream cone; we have to save for retirement instead!”

The point is: it’s not always easy, but I love being a breadwinner and a responsible parent who provides for my children. I want every parent, whether you’re a Mom or Dad, to enjoy this same feeling of abundance and peace about money.

Read more: I Was the Sole Breadwinner in My Family for 10 Years. I’ve Learned Money Can Sometimes Buy Happiness.

Share My Best Work and Favorite Money Writers

There are so many amazing writers, podcasters and YouTubers who talk about personal finance and investing. I want to share my favorites on here. I also want to use this space to share my latest published work, podcast appearances, travel writing, and more.

I think this is gonna be fun! I’ve been needing this for a long time — a new way to talk to the Internet, away from all the depressing sludge of social media, away from all the spam and trolls and AI slop. The Internet changed my life. I still remember how exciting it felt, growing up in a small town in the 1990s, to hear that friendly chirp and whir of the modem connecting, knowing that we could connect to a wider world, find like-minded people, build community. The Internet made it possible for me to have my dream career and travel with my family around the world. We need the Internet to be about people again. I think a lot of people are yearning to get away from the algorithms and the tech monopolies and the deranged AI bots, and just get back to having real conversations and human connections.

Thanks for being part of my journey! More to come.

Want to hire Ben Gran for your next freelance writing project? Send me an email (benjamin.gran@gmail.com) or check out my freelance writer website at BenjaminGran.com.