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Your workplace might offer benefits – like a free or discounted transit pass – that you don’t even know about. Photo: Kevin Utting

For the first two years of my previous career, I was largely unaware of many of the employee benefits I was eligible for. Sure, I knew about the health insurance and Social Security and the optional retirement plan, but I was never really made aware of how good some of those options were, and I certainly never knew about some of the other benefits. It was only during the last year or two of my active employment in that career path that I actually began to tap into some of these benefits.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Investing for financial independence
2. Refrigerators and stoves for life
3. Frugal negativity and economy
4. Maximizing benefits at low-income job
5. Investing as charity?
6. Double savings tactic
7. Roth 401(k)?
8. Best “lazy” investment?
9. Microliving

Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life.

1. Friedrich Nietzsche on stupidity

“The most basic form of human stupidity is forgetting what we are trying to accomplish.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

The greatest challenge I have as a person is to keep an eye on the larger things I want to accomplish in life while struggling through the flood of small things that life constantly tosses my way.

There are always little urgent things that need to be dealt with. There are always little distractions. There are always little problems. There are always little pleasures.

Alex writes in:

I am 26 years old. I have paid off all of my student loans and am looking forward to the future. I have some big plans and dreams for my future. I want to eventually start up my own consultancy and have a plan for doing it.

Here’s the problem. I know exactly how to financially and professionally prepare for that goal, but it’s way off in the future. A lot of things can happen between then and now. Even the best laid plans get sidetracked.

I’m trying to figure out how to balance things. How do I balance the uncertainty of the future with the need to build up to something?

This is a challenge that all of us face. Anyone who takes on the challenge of planning for a great financial and professional future is facing down the prospect of real uncertainty, whether they acknowledge it or not.