I was going to write a post about a
fellow blogger, who has been writing on financial independence quite a long
time and claimed almost 1,300 posts on the subject. Year after year his ambitions grew and goal was
always several years away.
He was born and raised in China,
but went to the USA to get a better life and landed a job with Microsoft to
return back to China as an expat, selling the products back home. After accumulating about $ 1 million and
having no mortgage or a house owned, he returned to the USA from China. Decided
to buy a house and managed to get $ 1 million house in Seattle.
Obviously at this stage frugality
or financial independence are again couple of decades away, should he continue
his life style. Now he decided to side
track from personal finance and financial independence subjects and try his luck
in general finance topics to attract advertisement to his blog (last couple of
years he had very infrequent posts).
I was rather disappointed to see
this happening to begin with, as there is plenty of blogs targeting theme of
finance for advertising purposes. In my
“favorites” there is only handful of blogs, which I believe sincerely and
openly working to reach financial independence, while sharing the results.
There is growing gap between the
rich and the poor. In 2012 top 5% of
earners were responsible for 38% of domestic consumption, up from 28% in
1995. Since 2009, the year the recession
ended, inflation adjusted spending by top 5% is increased by 17%, while bottom 95% of the people increased
theirs only by 1%.
Among hotel the revenue is growing
much faster in the high-end category (Four Seasons, etc..) twice as than in the
midscale (Best Western, etc.). The rebound of the stock market only widen the
gas, as approximately 50% of Americans have no effective participation in the
surging stock market.
I do not consider myself a middle-class as temporarily I do earn
reasonably good money but for me middle-class is about what one owns, rather
earns. The salary is an uncertainty and risks but even it , I just started
accumulating the nest egg, in spite being 6 years to my financial independence.
I will keep on going, focusing on the personal financial moves and share
the learning, thoughts, ideas.
