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This article is by editor Linda Vergon.

In honor of Independence Day, I thought it would be fun to see if we could come up with 1,776 ways to get rich slowly. After all, reaching “financial independence” these days does require some of the spirit our founding fathers had when they stood up to a tyrannical king and announced to the world that they were going to create a new nation.

Freedom is worth the struggle.

It may be difficult to properly understand the oppression that existed in colonial America in 1776, but a lot of us know what it’s like to live under the tyranny of debt; and in some measure, when we commit ourselves to tackling it, it’s like making our own declaration of “financial” independence. To free ourselves of debt requires sacrifice and struggle, but freedom is worth the struggle. Coming together to offer our own ways to get rich slowly could help someone else in their struggle for freedom.

This article is by staff writer Holly Johnson.

In late 2008, Lance Cothern reunited with his high school girlfriend Tori after several years apart. Lance was almost ready to earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting, and Tori was a sophomore studying nursing at a four-year public university at the time.

After a few years of dating, the conversations turned serious and they started planning a future together. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to either of them, Tori had a problem that was much bigger than she had ever realized – a lot of student loan debt.

This article is by staff writer Lisa Aberle.

When I finally and completely quit my once-full-time job in May, something changed: Neither my husband nor I have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan. With a significant drop in income, we’re looking at maximizing our now small retirement account contributions. So, how can we get the biggest bang for our buck?

Before we talk about that, let me fill you in on my retirement contribution history. I did some things right and some things wrong. When I turned 21, I was allowed to start contributing to my employer-sponsored retirement plan. While I wasn’t completely finance-savvy, I had heard that I should contribute enough to get the maximum employer match, so I did. Six percent of my paycheck went into my 401(k) and another 3 percent came from my employer.

This article is by staff writer Kristin Wong.

(This is a two-part series. Part I is “Our brains on scarcity: The trap of not having enough.”)

For my last post, I wrote about the book “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.” To recap, researchers Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir conducted a series of experiments and found that scarcity — whether it’s a lack of time, money or food — drastically changes our behavior. Here’s how:

• It lowers our cognitive capacity. (We perform worse on intelligence tests.)

• It makes us less polite.