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After twenty-four days on the road, I'm back home in Portland. It feels good.

In mid-August, Kim and I flew to Italy. For the first week, we visited Florence and Rome on our own. We rode trains, drank wine, toured museums, ate gelato, and explored ancient Roman ruins. We also got sunburned. And we sweated from dawn to dusk.

Next, we boarded a small (680 passenger) cruise ship for a ten-day tour of the eastern Mediterranean. We spent a day on Corfu, visited a Turkish resort town, and wandered the walled city core of Dubrovnik (where Game of Thrones' King's Landing was filmed). Mostly, though, we saw more of Italy.

After a final two nights in Venice, we flew from Italy to Washington, D.C. for FinCon, the annual conference about money and media.

Let’s face it. Most of us, at one point or another, have been faced with a financial emergency, or a plain, old-fashioned cash crunch. It’s definitely not a fun spot to be in. While there are steps we can take to avoid such situations (more on that later), that’s often the last thing on our minds when we need to come up with money — quick.

To assist, I’ve compiled the following list of money-making ideas. While some of the items included are more lucrative than others (you’ll never get rich taking surveys, for example), they all share a common theme: making money fast. Ready? Let’s dive in.

And before anyone mentions it, yes we're aware of the irony of publishing an article about making money fast at a website called Get Rich Slowly.

When I was a boy, we lived in the country. That is, we lived five miles from the nearest town (Canby) and 25 miles from the nearest city (Portland). We were surrounded by farmland. Life was quiet. Pastoral. Bucolic.

The road we lived on was especially quiet, with very little traffic. Even from a young age — five or six, I think — I was allowed to walk the quarter-mile to visit my grandparents. (My father's parents lived “next door” to us, but next door was across a large field.)

Visiting grandma and grandpa was fun. As quiet as life in the country was, life at their house was even quieter. There was a stillness in their place unlike anything I've experienced since. Their home seemed stuck in time.

Part of this stuckness stemmed from the things they owned.

J.D.'s Intro
Last December, I took a trip to Europe with my cousin Duane. Before I left, I received email from a GRS reader named Matthias. “If you come through Switzerland, let me know,” he said.

The stars aligned so that Matt was able to join us for several hours on a train across the Alps. He brought Swiss chocolate and a bottle of whisky. As we talked — and became pleasantly buzzed — he told me about how he and his wife tackle couple goals together via five-year plans for their future.

“I love this idea,” I told him. “Will you write about it for Get Rich Slowly?” He did. This is Matt's story about creating a shared vision as a couple. Enjoy!

In the spring of 2006, I'd been living and working in Taipei, Taiwan for two years and my contract was about to expire. Soon, I'd be returning home to Switzerland.