1 Out Of 3 Americans Don't Use A Budget: But 93% Say Everyone Needs a Budget!

A new survey found 93% of respondents believe everyone needs a budget, yet only two-thirds maintain a budget. Learn why Americans aren't budgeting

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Most Dangerous Jobs

Your job impacts your everyday life in a profound way. If you work in a dangerous field, your job impacts your life even more. 

When your job puts you at a heightened risk of serious injury or untimely death, it impacts your access to life insurance.

In this post, we’ll cover the most dangerous jobs that affect life insurance premiums and share advice for getting coverage with a high-risk job.

How Life Insurance Companies View High Risk Jobs

When you apply for life insurance, you’ll answer a lot of questions: questions about your health, age, family health history, hobbies, and career.

These questions about your genetics, lifestyle, and profession all share one agenda: assessing risk.

Life is fragile, so insurance companies automatically take on a risk when they offer coverage to applicants.

Whether you have a heart disease or like to get your heart racing with a high risk hobby, you can expect your life insurance company to take notice.

The Underwriting Process

Upon applying for life insurance coverage, you undergo what’s known as the underwriting process.

At this time, the life insurance company inquires about your risk factors, verifies the answers you provide them, and makes a decision about covering you.

Barring a denial of coverage, the life insurance company will place you in a rating class based on the amount of risk you pose to them. The rating class corresponds to the amount of money you’ll pay in premiums to keep your policy in place.

That means the healthier, younger, and safer you are, the better life insurance rates you’ll be eligible for.

When your job frequently puts you in peril, from hazardous circumstances to dangerous locations, your life insurance company will take notice.

With a high risk job, you may be denied coverage, given higher premiums, or get coverage with the provision of a waiver of exclusion.

Take a look at the jobs that concern life insurance companies and see how you can find the best coverage with a dangerous job.

Top 7 High Risk Jobs that Affect Life Insurance

Police Officers

Police officers lay their lives on the line every day to protect society, walking into perilous situations regularly.

Based on those factors and statistics, members of the police force poses a higher risk to life insurance companies than many other types of professionals.

How much your police work impacts life insurance is dependent on the nature of your job.

If you’re a standard municipal officer, for instance, you may see little to no effect. If, however, you are a state trooper or work for a sherrif’s office, you’re more likely to be rated high risk.

If you work on a bomb squad or other highly hazardous unit, you can expect to be considered high risk.

Firefighters

Firemen and women face blazing perils every day. Fortunately, firefighters are well-trained and approach burning buildings tactically, with safety gear and precautions in place.

For those reasons, municipal firefighters who fight standard fires in cities and rural communities are unlikely to be labeled high risk.

Those who work in perilous places, though, like oil rigs or mines, are considered to be high-risk applicants.

Extraction Workers

Firefighters aren’t the only ones on oil rigs who are considered to be high risk.

You may hear the term miscellaneous extraction worker floating around in the life insurance world.

This name encompasses workers on oil rigs, mines, platforms, construction demo cleanup, and other industries that involve extracting or cleaning up natural resources.

If you specialize in one of these fields and work around heavy duty hazardous equipment, finding life insurance will be challenging, but not impossible.

Loggers

Logging is often deemed the nation’s most dangerous job. The logging industry exposes workers to a number of safety hazards, like falling out of trees.

Logging is even more dangerous because many times, there isn’t a hospital in sight when loggers are injured, making a risky situation even worse.

Along those lines, in some regions deemed to be extra hazardous, ranchers and farmers are considered to be high-risk applicants.

Fishermen

Another profession in the great outdoors that sets off red flags for life insurance companies is offshore fishing. Turn on Deadliest Catch and you’ll see why.

If you’re an offshore commercial fisherman, your life insurance will be impacted, whether you’re on a small private boat or a potentially large commercial boat.

In some instances, individuals who work in fish farming or processing can be flagged as well.

An agent can help you determine whether or not your fishing job will be classified as high risk and what effects it will have on your policy options.

Construction Workers

Construction workers are often labeled as high-risk applicants for life insurance.

If you work on a construction site, you could fall, get injured working with equipment, and be exposed to a higher risk of fire or electrocution.

How much your job in the construction field impacts your life insurance will depend on a number of factors like:

• your daily job responsibilities
• the machines you work with
• the settings in which you operate
• the safety levels, which are assessed by training and precautional procedures instituted on job sites

Pilots

Flying planes and helicopters as a hobby or profession could land you in trouble with life insurance companies.

Whether privately or commercially, being a pilot places you in the high-risk category.

But that doesn’t mean all pilots are treated as equally risky.

Commercial pilots who work for airlines are unlikely to be expected to pay a flat extra fee.

How to Get Life Insurance with a High-Risk Job

The heightened risk associated with your job should be all the more motivation to seek protection. 

The life insurance company is taking on a risk by insuring you, but you take on a far greater risk by avoiding life insurance. 

Shop Around

Depending on the extent of the perils of your job, you may be declined automatically or quoted astronomically high premiums if you apply for a traditional life insurance policy. 

Another route is to pursue a no exam policy with minimal questions on the application. These policies tend to be more expensive that medically underwritten exams, but they may be the best solution with your high-risk job,

Get quotes on a number of policy options to decide which option you select.

Be Honest

It is imperative that you answer the questions in your application as truthfully as possible. If you don’t, and you pass away during the policy’s contestability period, your claim could be denied altogether,

Clearly stating the nature of your work will help to ensure you get the best insurance available.

Leaving out details about your position to save on premiums just won’t be worth it when your family is left without the financial security they need.

Bottom Line

Finding life insurance with a high-risk job might seem daunting if not impossible, but in most cases, you can find coverage.

The key is to be honest, shop for quotes, and carefully consider all of your options.

Whether you have a high risk hobby, career, or health condition, there are companies which offer high-risk life insurance, weighing the perils of your job differently.

If you work with an independent insurance broker, you should be able to find a policy to meet your family’s needs and budget.

Start by getting a quote today.

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Clearlane Auto Refinance Review

Clearlane, an online auto lending platform that’s powered by Ally Bank, offers auto loan refinancing and lease buyout options for borrowers with nearly any type of credit score. They do so by utilizing a nationwide finance network and offering fast and easy online quotes. They even let you get pre-qualified online and without a hard inquiry to your credit report.

If you’re curious about refinancing your car or buying a car you’re leasing, this online lender may be exactly what you need. Keep reading to find out how Clearlane works, where it falls short, and why you might want to consider it.

Clearlane Auto Refinancing: Key Takeaways

• Refinance your current auto loan or borrow through Clearlane to buy out your lease.
• Use your Clearlane loan to purchase a new or used car.
• You don’t have to share your Social Security number to get pre-qualified.
• Get loan quotes from multiple lenders in one place.
• Interest rates run from 3.64% to 21.9%.
• Borrow between $5,000 and $100,000.

Clearlane Auto Refinance Review: Solid Auto Loans for All Credit Types

If you currently have an auto loan with a less than stellar interest rate, you may want to consider refinancing your car loan with a company like Clearlane. According to stats from the lending platform, refinancing an auto loan saves the average consumer $107 per month and $1,687 in interest over the life of their loan.

Of course, those savings are predicated on qualifying for a lower interest rate with Clearlane. While the company does offer rates that start at 3.64%, keep in mind that the best rates and terms only go to consumers with excellent credit. If your credit is poor or just okay, it’s likely you’ll pay more than the lowest advertised rate. Then again, refinancing could still be a great deal, but only if you’re able to secure a lower rate than you’re paying now.

That’s why auto loan refinancing is usually best for consumers who have improved their credit substantially since they first took out their car loan. With a better credit score, Clearlane and other auto refinancing companies may be able to get you into a new loan with a lower monthly payment and better terms.

In addition to auto loan refinancing, Clearlane also lets you use their loan to buy out your lease. And with either option, you can get pre-qualified online without a hard inquiry to your credit report.

Clearlane also offers auto loans for new or used vehicles, although cars must be less than 10 years old. Their loans also come with no application fee or hidden fees.

What to Watch Out For

Clearlane does offer some low starting rates on their auto refinancing and lease buyout loans — but keep in mind that these loans aren’t for a new car purchase. Clearlane does offer auto loans for consumers who want to purchase a vehicle, but you can’t apply for them on the Clearlane website.

Another downside of Clearlane is the fact that they don’t originate any loans themselves. Instead, they work as a loan marketplace that connects users with a nationwide network of banks and lenders. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you’ll need to do some research on any lenders you might end up connecting with once you get pre-qualified.

Another thing to consider: Any time you refinance a loan to get a lower payment, you could be extending your repayment timeline in the process. If you choose to refinance your auto loan with Clearlane or any other company, make sure to keep that in mind. You may want to score a lower monthly payment, but perhaps not at the cost of paying on your car loan for several more years.

As a final downside, Clearlane doesn’t offer any specific eligibility requirements for their loans. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to know if you’ll qualify, although they do let you get pre-qualified without a hard inquiry on your credit report.

Who Clearlane Auto Loans Are Best for:

• Consumers who have auto loans with high interest rates but may be able to qualify for a new loan with better terms.
• Anyone in a lease who wants to purchase their vehicle.
• Consumers with good credit who can qualify for Clearlane loans as low as 3.64% APR.

How We Rate Clearlane Auto Loans

At The Simple Dollar, we aim to provide a general overview of a lender’s products and services through a standard rating process. After a thorough research and discovery period, here’s how Clearlane stacks up:

Clearlane at a Glance
Overall Rating	Affordability (interest rates, fees, and terms)
	Availability (credit requirements, geographic reach)
	Ease of Use
	Transparency

How to Apply for Auto Refinancing with Clearlane

Clearlane makes it easy to apply for auto refinancing or a lease buyout through their website, and they even let you get pre-qualified by offering only your auto details, loan payoff amount, your name, your birthday, your email, address, and your annual gross income.

Once you get pre-qualified, you can look at a selection of loan offers tailored to your unique borrowing needs. If you don’t like your options, that’s perfectly okay. But if you do, you can move forward with the full loan application by including more details such as your Social Security number, housing payment amount, and employment information.

If you’re approved, you may receive your loan funds or have them applied to your old auto loan within a few business days.

The Bottom Line

Refinancing an auto loan can make sense if your current loan isn’t that great. It’s possible your credit score and financial standing have improved enough that you could qualify for a better deal, so why not give it a try?

Still, there are a lot of lenders that offer auto refinancing and lease buy-outs, and you should definitely consider more than one. Make sure to see how auto lenders stack up in terms of the interest rate you can qualify for and any fees they charge before you move forward.

Related:

• The Best Auto Loans
• Should You Refinance Your Car Loan?
• The Best Used Cars for Simply Getting Around

The post Clearlane Auto Refinance Review appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar http://bit.ly/30AaSZV

High Risk Activities

Most people are aware that your profession can impact your access to affordable life insurance, but not everyone knows that hobbies can do the same.

If you’re a stamp collector or painter, chances are you’re safe.

On the other hand, if your hobbies take you to the edges of cliffs, the depths of the sea, or the open skies, your life insurance will likely be affected.

Read on to understand how high-risk hobbies play into your life insurance and which adrenaline-pumping extracurriculars have the biggest effect.

How High Risk Activities Influence Life Insurance Rates

Life insurance companies have one concern when it comes to insuring you: risk.

As a life insurance company decides whether or not to grant you coverage and at what cost, they’re assessing the risk of having to pay out your policy.

This process, known as underwriting, involves the life insurance company taking an in-depth look at factors such as:

• age
• health
• weight
• family health history
• career
• hobbies

They then use that information to place you in a rating class which determines the price you pay in premiums.

When you participate in hobbies that make you more susceptible to the dangerous forces of nature, your odds of dying by unnatural causes increase.

Without further ado, let’s dive into some of the most dangerous hobbies that impact life insurance.

Riskiest Activities for Life Insurance

Skydiving

Aviation sports like paragliding, base jumping, and skydiving rank pretty highly among hobbies life insurance companies dislike.

When you jump out of a plane, you run the risk of an airplane malfunction, parachute failure, collisions, and botched landings.

The rates and coverage available to you will depend on several factors:

• experience level
• how often you make jumps
• whether or not you skydive professionally
• the areas where you make jumps
• the safety level of your jumps

Aviation

Jumping out of planes isn’t the only airborne hobby life insurance companies are generally concerned about. Professional pilots are at risk of higher life insurance rates, but also pilots who fly for fun.

The good news is that not all pilots are treated equally by underwriters.

When you apply for life insurance, you’ll complete an avocation questionnaire, which will ask questions about:

• the type of aircraft you fly
• the conditions of your flights
• your certification

You may also have a hard time finding coverage if you hang glide or frequent the skies in a hot air balloon. Basically, if your hobby takes you to the open skies, you can expect it to be considered high-risk by the insurance company.

Scuba Diving

While scuba diving may seem less deadly than skydiving, it still comes with its own set of risks.

Equipment malfunctions, drowning, and decompression sickness all contribute to heightening the risk of this hobby.

Another factor that increases risks is frequency.

Whereas more frequent dives imply that pilots or skydivers are more experienced, they make you a riskier client with scuba diving.

So if you decide to do a dive as an excursion on your family’s vacation cruise, you can relax.

If, however, you do deep sea diving frequently, you go alone, or you haven’t attended proper lessons, you could pay higher rates or get denied altogether.

Water Sports

If you love the following water sports, your life insurance provider probably won’t cover you due to these hazardous activities:

• racing boats
• extreme white water rafting trips
• surfing
• These activities increase the likelihood of drowning.

The more frequently you engage in these activities and the more dangerous the circumstances, the likelier they are to impact your access to premium life insurance.

Mountain Climbing

If your enthusiasm for rock climbing takes you to your local indoor climbing wall, your life insurance is unlikely to be affected.

When your climbing hobby takes you to rough terrains and puts you at an increased risk of falling off the side of a mountain, insurers get concerned.

Much like the other hobbies in this list, you’ll be asked a series of questions to gauge just how risky your climbing is:

• your experience level
• frequency of climbing
• safety measures
• the areas in which you climb
• your YDS grade
• the length of rope you use

Back Country Skiing

Much like scuba diving, taking a family vacation to a ski resort or hitting the slopes on a marked trail with your friends won’t hurt your access to life insurance.

Back country and heli-skiing will, though.

If you participate in these particularly dangerous forms of skiing more than 7 days out the year, you can expect to pay more for life insurance.

Life insurance companies also take precautions into account. If you go with a trained professional, you’re far more likely to be accepted for coverage.

Racing

Racing is another high-risk hobby which life insurance companies frown upon. 

While racing cars may not be the most dangerous hobby on the list with ever-increasing safety measures, it can still pose a threat to your safety. Even more dangerous is motorcycle racing. 

Companies will look at several different factors including:

• your age
• level of experience
• frequency of racing
• driving record
• the car’s top speed
• the car’s structure
• the engine capacity

If you participate in an activity like stock car racing from time to time, you may not even see an effect on your rates.

If you actively participate in any of the high-risk hobbies above, read on for a few tips on getting coverage.

Tips for Life Insurance with High Risk Hobbies

• Be honest: Tell the truth about your hobbies in your application. If you fail to disclose your hobby and die doing that activity, the life insurance company likely will not pay out on your policy.
• Get quotes: Each company favors your hobbies and other risk factors differently. Just because one company quotes you high premiums or denies coverage doesn’t mean every company will. Shopping for multiple quotes is the best way to ensure you get the best rates.
• Understand the numbers: The life insurance company’s quote consists of two parts: the base premium and the flat extra premium. The base premium is strictly the amount that corresponds to your rating class. The flat extra is a fee, usually per thousand dollars of coverage, added to your base.
• Weigh the cost: If your hobby seriously limits your access to affordable life insurance, you might want to consider whether or not it’s worth it. If you’re ready to hang up your snorkel and retire your rock climbing gear, you may be able to eliminate the flat extra fee from your policy after a certain amount of time.
• Look for high-risk coverage: A number of life insurance companies specialize in offering policies to high-risk applicants. If you work with an independent agent, you can find companies who are more likely to offer you an affordable life insurance policy.

Bottom Line

Life insurance is a critical component of protecting your family financially. While you may be fond of taking risks in your hobbies, you shouldn’t risk leaving your family in financial distress after you pass away.

By shopping for life insurance quotes from multiple companies, being honest on your application, and reevaluating the safety precautions you take when you engage in your hobbies, you have the best chance of getting the life insurance you need.

Don’t assume you won’t qualify for life insurance just because you participate in one of the hobbies in the list. Start shopping for life insurance today.

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The Seven Factors

In the book The Millionaire Next Door, the authors Thomas Stanley and William Danko surveyed more than a thousand households that had accumulated more than a million dollars in net worth, looking for traits among them that were decidedly different than the mainstream population. What did people who had accumulated wealth do that others do not, and vice versa?

The entire book discusses the results of that study, but very early in the book the authors efficiently boil down the differences in financial behavior between those who are able to accumulate wealth and those who do not down to seven key factors. These seven factors are the key things that people who are effective at building enough wealth to be financially independent do that are different than most people.

While rereading the book, I thought these seven factors were interesting enough to discuss on their own, so let’s walk through them.

Factor #1 – They live well below their means.

Spend less than you earn and do something worthwhile with the difference. It’s at the core of pretty much every personal finance strategy out there – every one that actually works with any level of reliability, anyway. Yet many Americans struggle deeply with this strategy. The average American saves somewhere around 5% of their income (depending on the exact moment in time and the exact survey), and that includes the prodigious savers that put away large portions of their income. To average out at 5%, for every person that saves 50% of their income, there are nine more who are saving nothing.

People who accumulate wealth at a high rate simply save money at a high rate. They choose not to spend a sizable portion of their income and instead invest it for their future, and they achieve that by simply spending a lot less than they earn and not letting their spending keep expanding to gobble up their entire income.

Let’s say a person brings home $100,000 a year. The average American would spend about $95,000 of that and putting aside perhaps $5,000 of it. Someone who is on track to become wealthy is likely spending something more like $60,000 of that and putting aside $40,000 of it. One of those two people is treading water financially, while the other is heading toward building wealth.

How do you do this? Well, it’s the main topic of The Simple Dollar (if there is one), so if you’ve been here for a while, you’re probably familiar with many of the best strategies. Here’s a quick refresher.

Understand your needs versus your wants. There are some things in life that you need – basic food, basic shelter, basic hygiene products, basic clothing, transportation to and from work. Almost everything else is a want – it’s stuff that’s not necessary to continue to enjoy life. That includes better versions of those basic items. Understand what is a want and what is a need.

Be selective about fulfilling wants. People who end up spending everything they earn are often in a cycle of drowning themselves in want fulfillment. They fulfill countless impulses, big and small, and never really say “no” to themselves. The thing is, most impulsive desires are really a waste of money. They fade very quickly if you don’t fulfill them right away. Even if you do fulfill them, they bring only an instant burst of pleasure which immediately fades. Learn how to be selective with your wants.

Look at the big expenses first. The big expenses for most people are things like housing, a car, and insurance, along with any other monthly bills that top the $100 mark (this might include things like a cell phone, a cable or satellite service, and so on). What can you do to cut that cost? You can cut housing costs by living in a smaller place or in a different location. You can cut transportation costs by using mass transit or a bicycle or your own feet to get places. You can cut your insurance costs by thinking about each policy and shopping around for them. You can cut your cell phone costs by shopping around and moving to a plan that matches your use. You can cut your cable and satellite costs by simply ditching cable. Cutting a big expense can make a difference of hundreds of dollars a month.

Try out some basic frugal strategies. I suggest trying frugal strategies as a thirty day challenge and then deciding for yourself whether they work out after thirty days of commitment. Here are a few ideas: buy all of your food and household staples in store brand form; prepare all meals at home without eating out; take leftovers to work every day; don’t spend any money on hobbies and instead enjoy and use the hobby materials you have; and avoid the coffee shop and make your own; don’t watch television and see if you really need cable.

Factor #2 – They allocate their time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways conducive to building wealth.

In other words, people who are efficient at accumulating wealth tend to use their already-available resources in ways that accumulate wealth rather than devour it.

They tend to indulge in hobbies that don’t have much upkeep cost compared to their level of income. They put their money to work by investing it in things that will grow in value or produce more income.

More importantly, they tend to avoid spending their time, money, and energy on things that are going to consistently drain money from their accounts.

This doesn’t mean that they sit around Scrooge-like using their money to count their coins. Rather, it just means that the way they spend their time and energy doesn’t work in strong opposition to their financial progress.

Here are some practical ways to do this.

Get interested in your own financial state and financial planning. Make it your goal to know your budget inside and out and how to stick to it. Also, make an effort to understand where your money is invested, why it’s invested there, and whether it’s making a good return. Make this into a minor hobby – it doesn’t need to be an obsession, but it does take some time to read some books on investing and understand what you’re doing with your money.

Choose hobbies that require active mental or physical involvement and don’t require much financial upkeep and practice those hobbies. There are infinite free or very low cost hobbies out there. Reading is one, as long as it centers around reading and not just buying books to put on your shelf. Hiking or just going on walks is one. Golfing, on the other hand, isn’t one, nor is shopping. Which of your hobbies require active mental and/or physical involvement and don’t require much financial upkeep? Those are the ones to target. I generally aim for hobbies that require less than $1 in expenses per hour of participation.

Avoid media sources and people who mostly just encourage you to buy stuff. A surprising amount of media – television and magazines and social media in particular – is oriented around making you aware of and making you desire the latest stuff and the latest premium (read: expensive) experiences. Dump all of it. Cut your news reading down drastically – breaking news is often inaccurate, so read the news once every few days and stick to well-reported sources. Skip social media unless you’re actively looking to contact someone. You’ll be better off for it.

Factor #3 – They believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status.

Often, the millionaires in your community dress pretty casually and drive reliable and non-flashy cars. They aren’t dressed to the nines most of the time. They aren’t driving a new Maserati. Those are things that people who are up to their eyeballs in debt often do.

Why wouldn’t they enjoy the “good things”? They are enjoying the good things. The good things are things that don’t break down along the side of the road. The good things are things that aren’t a target for theft. The good things are things that put a smile on your face without taking money from your wallet. The good things are things that you do to lift yourself up, not to attract or impress others. The good things are deep relationships with good people, not “impressing” people who drive by or who see you on the sidewalk. Not having to go to work each day? That’s a good thing. Being in control of your own destiny? That’s a good thing, too. Independence. Freedom. Not worrying about what others think. Low stress. All good things.

People who accumulate wealth have decided that those good things are more important than things like dressing up or driving nice cars or constantly eating at fancy restaurants or having huge wine cellars or having an Architectural Digest home to impress others.

Here are some strategies to move toward that mindset.

Question your thinking, especially when you’re about to buy something. Why are you buying this? Are you thinking of impressing other people with the item you’re purchasing? This is more and more important as the purchase gets bigger and more expensive and should really matter when it comes to things like cars and homes.

Cultivate friendships with people who appear to be like who you really are inside, rather than the image you want to portray. If you put in the time to build a social circle around you consisting of people who truly share the values you hold inside, you’re going to be much more able to simply not worry about what others think regarding your personal choices. If you’re constantly worrying about what your friends will think of you, reboot your social circle. If you have interests you’d love to explore except you’re worried about what your friends think, reboot your social circle. Don’t live your life based on what your friends might think.

Stop trying to be perfect. This is especially true if you invest significant time trying to create a “perfect” picture of your life to show others on social media. Perfection can never be attained and the journey to try to get there is self-destructive. Rather, just try to be a better person than you were yesterday in the areas you care most about.

Factor #4 – Their parents did not provide economic outpatient care.

In other words, people who tend to accumulate wealth typically did not receive money from their parents once they reached adulthood and had a job. Their parents didn’t slip them money to help them maintain a higher level of affluence beyond what they could afford with their own earnings.

If you’re in a situation where this is currently happening, your parents are financing an unsustainable lifestyle, one that makes you beholden to them. If you’re in a situation where this used to occur, you know quite well how difficult the transition can be when the spigot is turned off.

What can you do if this is your situation?

Spend less than YOU earn. You absolutely must learn to live on less than what you are earning. This does not include what your parents are handing you. You have to learn to live on less than your paycheck, because that extra income is not a reliable one and it leaves you dependent on your parents.

Remember that the money is theirs, not yours. Many people who receive additional money from their parents in adulthood move into the mindset that such gifted money is a right of theirs and not a gift from their parents. A sense of entitlement to that money often appears and it adds a great deal of strain to the situation. You have to completely accept that such money is not yours and that your parents have an independent life of their own and may choose, at any time, to stop giving money. That’s not only their right, it’s probably what they should do for their own financial health, which they are sacrificing so that you can have a few extra bucks in your pocket. This is a gift and should be deeply appreciated. It’s not a right to be demanded.

Use the money that’s being given to you to eliminate debt and supercharge savings. You should be making minimum payments on your debt from your own earnings (and still spending less than you earn overall), but the money from your parents should go to making extra debt payments so that you get out of debt quickly. If you don’t have any debts, this money should go into savings and investment so that you can rapidly move toward financial independence.

Factor #5 – Their adult children are economically self-sufficient.

This is the flip side of the above situation – people who accumulate wealth with ease do everything they can to raise children who are financially and emotionally independent from them and then do not hand them additional money to artificially inflate their lifestyle.

The reason is clear: giving your children money to inflate their lifestyle not only damages your own financial state, it causes the child to be dependent on that financial assistance, which, as noted above, means it’s less likely that your child will be financially successful on their own. Giving your child money means they’re less likely to find independent success.

Following this step is pretty straightforward.

If you have younger children, make it clear as they grow older that you expect them to be fully independent as early as possible. This doesn’t mean that you’ll consign them to homelessness as soon as they’re eighteen. What it does mean is that you expect them to be preparing for a career, actively finding work, or working in a career path as soon as they graduate, and that they should plan to choose a career path that can sustain the lifestyle they want.

If you have children who already have a full time job after school, start weaning them off of any financial assistance you’re providing them. Sit them down, make it clear that you want them to be fully independent of you and have their own life under their own control and destiny, and then start peeling back that money. Don’t make it abrupt, as that can cause financial hardship, but start moving gently in that direction by slowly turning off the spigot.

If you have a child on the verge of independence, don’t start financial support. Even if it appears that the change will be difficult for them, this is a moment where you must let the young bird spread their wings and fly on their own. If you’ve given them any indication that you will continue to give them money once they’ve made the leap, correct that indication right away.

Factor #6 – They are proficient in targeting market opportunities.

What this means is that they frequently look for opportunities to make money with relative ease, usually through investing money they’ve put aside just for this purpose. They look for opportunities to leverage their own knowledge and the money they’ve been able to accumulate to either save a ton on future expenses or to make a very nice return.

This takes a lot of forms, but it boils down to two ingredients: knowledge in a certain area and money on hand. People who accumulate wealth use those things to generate more wealth as often as possible, keeping their eyes constantly open for opportunities.

There are many ways to do this. Here are a few.

Watch Craigslist, estate sales, and yard sales for enormous bargains on items you know you can easily flip. This takes advantage of some particular domain knowledge that you have and uses cash you’ve accumulated from spending less than you earn to turn a quick profit. For example, I do this with older trading cards, old video games, and other such hobby items – I have an idea of what things are worth and will often buy items just to flip them. I go to yard sales and thrift stores and estate sales looking for those kinds of items.

Cultivate a hobby in which you make things that you can use (at a lower cost than buying them), sell, or inexpensively gift. For example, I love home brewing and making fermented foods, and I have given both away as gifts in the recent past, often as items to bring to the host when invited to a party, but sometimes as holiday gifts as well. I make my own sauerkraut (my favorite condiment, where I can make a quart for about $0.30 which is a tiny fraction of the store cost) and my own kombucha (which costs about 10% of the price of buying it in the store). I’ve made many, many other things over the years, too. The key is that I get personal enjoyment and value out of the process of making it, and it just so happens to produce something that I can use or that can serve as an inexpensive gift.

Invest in something that can become your hobby that you can eventually turn around for a profit. I have a close friend that does this with old homes. He’ll buy one, move in for a few years, spend those years renovating it as an evening activity, and then sell the house at a tidy profit and move elsewhere, buying a old house with some of the proceeds. I have a few family members that do this with junk cars – they’ll buy an old junker, renovate it and completely rework the body, then sell it for a tidy profit and buy a junk car with some of the proceeds. In both cases, they’re using their passion to make a little money, but it’s more about their passion on their own terms than making money. It’s a hobby that happens to line their pockets a little.

Factor #7 – They chose the right occupation.

This doesn’t merely mean an occupation that pays well. Rather, it means that they chose an occupation that pays well that also aligns with their natural skills and is something they don’t mind doing. It doesn’t have to be a burning passion, but it needs to not be something they intensely dislike, so that they don’t wind up hating the work.

Finding this career path and finding it early in life seems to be the key for many people in terms of finding financial success. Having a job they don’t hate that earns a reasonably good income and offers opportunity because it happens to match their skills tends to lead to a very solid lifetime of income, and that makes it much easier to follow the other factors on this list.

Here are some strategies for this, even if you’re already on a career path.

Gain some awareness of what your skills and strengths actually are. There are many ways to do this. Some involve tests, while others involve procedures of self-reflection. One element I’ve always found important is to trust the opinions of others who know you well in a professional or academic context, as they often know what you’re good at and not good at in comparison to others on the team. Consider what classes came easy for you when you were in school. These are the things you want to lean into when choosing a career (or rebooting one).

Look for jobs you can reasonably enjoy that match up with those skills and strengths (and, ideally, pay well, too). Once you have a good idea of where your strengths lie, start looking for jobs that utilize those strengths. Filter those jobs through a lens of what you might reasonably enjoy doing – you don’t have to love it, but at the same time, you probably shouldn’t turn your hobby into a job, either. If you’re still finding a lot of things, start filtering those prospects by income level and choose one that pays well.

Always look for career situations that let you lean in to your strengths. If you know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, it’s a good idea to find positions that really line up well with what you’re good at. It’s never bad to try to work on your shortcomings, but you’ll generally be most highly rewarded when your skills line up with your job, because you’ll be a top performer in that specific field.

Final Thoughts

These seven factors often don’t line up with how the average person makes choices in their life, but at the same time, the average person struggles to build a good financial foundation. Remember, almost four in five Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Those that do not are doing something different with their lives, and the data in The Millionaire Next Door points strongly at these seven factors. It’s very likely that you’ll find it worthwhile to integrate these factors into your life.

Good luck!

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