How to Create, Build and Maintain an Emergency Fund
How to Create, Build and Maintain an Emergency Fund An Emergency Fund is one of the most foundational tactics to build a life-proof financial plan. The simplest way to think about an emergency fund is an amount of cash that is set aside from other checking and savings accounts and only used in case of […]
Paying off High Interest Consumer Debt
Paying off High Interest Consumer Debt Paying off high interest consumer debt is important to building a strong foundation in your personal financial plan. You cannot be successful financially if you spend more than you earn or you carry high interest consumer debt. Both will continue to compound until they become unavoidable and unmanageable so […]
Introduction to Income Portfolios
Introduction to Income Portfolios An income focused portfolio is a collection of investments in a brokerage account that are focused on returning income in the form of dividends and interest, but will probably not grow at the same rate as growth focused investments. The goal of an income focused portfolio is to create a lower […]
2023 Annual Report
2023 was a bounce-back year for stock markets after a rough 2022 in which staying invested and dollar cost averaging (again) proved to be beneficial for financial net worth growth. The S&P 500 returned +26% growth after losing 18% in 2022. My portfolio, largely invested in the stock market, also benefited greatly from the total […]
About us
Appreciating Capital’s mission is to help W-2 employees (“Corporate Athletes”) accelerate achieving financial freedom, primarily through inspiration, education, and community. Social media often tells stories of how entrepreneurs, full time investors and other non-traditional people achieve financial freedom, but the truth is that most of us are W-2 employees with the same goal of […]
Master Layer – Accelerating Your Financial Future
Master – Accelerating Your Financial Future The top layer of the personal finance pyramid is focused on accelerating your path to financial freedom through investments in higher risk / higher reward assets. It’s not an area that everyone will get to, nor should you want to, because it involves accepting more risk for the potential […]
Mid-Layer 2: Investing toward Financial Freedom
Mid-Layer 2: Investing toward Financial Freedom Mid-Layer 2 is all about investing toward financial freedom by incremental investing in additional to your retirement plan – NOT replacing it. This is a passion area of mine and an area that I’ll spend a lot of time and many blog posts, but this post will serve as […]
Mid-Layer 1: Building for Your Future
Mid-Layer 1: Building for Your Future Now that you’ve built a strong foundation the next layer in the personal finance pyramid is building for your future and specifically setting up and automating your tax-advantaged retirement accounts. This layer assumes you have paid off your high interest consumer debt and built an emergency fund so if […]
Base Layer – Building a Strong Foundation in Personal Finance
Base Layer – Building a Strong Foundation Ask anyone who has achieved financial freedom and almost all will say creating a strong foundation is the most important step. While it’s not as sexy as investing and growing your money, it’s equally if not more important – even millionaires go broke if they don’t have a strong […]
Personal Finance Pyramid
Personal Finance Pyramid Personal finance is one of the most important topics currently not taught in most schools. By the time people learn, usually through bad experiences, they have already put themselves years behind where they could have been with proper education. My goal and passion is to share what I learn on my journey. […]