Money Tips Network

One common rule of thumb for investors is to move away from stocks into more conservative investments as you get older.

This guest post from Cody is part of the “money stories” feature at Get Rich Slowly. Some stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success — or failure. These stories feature folks from all stages of financial maturity.

In January, I attended Camp FI in Florida. While most of the attendees were thirty- or forty-somethings pursuing early retirement, one young man stood out. We were all amazed at the presence of Cody Berman, a 21-year-old hustler who defies the Millennial stereotype. Cody works hard, saves tons, and has a vision for his future. I asked if he’d be willing to share his story with GRS readers. Here it is.

When spring break rolls around, our children often head out to the grandparents, leaving Sarah and I with a several day “stay-cation” of sorts. While I’m usually still working, I often plan ahead to take a day or two off during that week, and Sarah, as a schoolteacher, usually has much of the week off, too (though she’s usually setting up a ton of things for the rest of the school year).

So, there’s usually four or so days during mid March where Sarah and I spend time at home taking care of things, and one of the big things we work on is preparing our garden.

We have a nice garden in our backyard. It’s roughly 200 square feet and has grown over the years from the 25 or so square feet that we first started with. We now even have a second garden on the other side of our house that’s about 50 square feet itself. These aren’t giant gardens, of course, but they do provide us with a surprising amount of food in the late summer and early fall.

Here’s a new thing for me: Yesterday, I met with a friend to give her financial advice. Believe it or not, in the twelve years since I started Get Rich Slowly, nobody has ever asked me to sit down with them and review their budget and investments. Pamela is the first. (And because I forgot to ask her permission to share this info, for this article I am totally changing anything that might identify Pamela.)

I’ve known Pamela for almost six years. She cuts Kim’s hair, and sometimes she cuts mine. She knows I write about money, but I don’t think she’s ever read anything I’ve written.

When I was four years old, Xavier Roberts took the toy world by storm by launching the Cabbage Patch Kids. These dolls seemed to be everywhere, except on store shelves. This was back in 1983, when shopping meant showing up at a brick-and-mortar store.

Life happens. Whatever the reason, you've fallen behind on your monthly payments, missing due dates on your credit cards, mortgage, car loan, or medical bills.

The sad truth is that many Americans are vastly underprepared when it comes to retirement savings. A 2016 GoBankingRates survey revealed that 33 percent of Americans have nothing saved for retirement at all.

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As a fairly frugal person, I struggle with the fact that two of my favorite hobbies are closely tied with the idea of collecting things.

I love books. I love to curl up with a good book for many hours and get lost in them. Unfortunately, that does mean that I do sometimes buy books and over time I can wind up with a fairly big collection, which is in reality just a big sunk cost.

Similarly, I love big, long, strategic board games. I love to gather a few friends around a table for a few hours and dive deep into strategy, or even to pull out a solitaire game on a rainy afternoon and fill up a table with wooden bits and puzzles to solve. As with books, it does mean that sometimes I buy games and over time I’ve built up a rather large collection of tabletop games.

I’ve had other hobbies in the past that tended to involve buying new things regularly – golf comes to mind, most definitely, but there were other hobbies such as video games as well.