1/ If I woke up broke (thread)

Interesting thought experiment -- what would you do if you woke up with $0 net worth (or negative)?

Here's what I would do

2/ I'd start by slashing all of my costs TO THE BONE

Restaurants - gone
Subscriptions - gone
Vacations - gone

ALL costs -- fixed and variable -- would be reduced as much as possible

All food would be made at home

All fun would come from free sources only (dark green)

3/ I'd focus INTENSELY on boosting my income

All waking hours would be used towards increasing income, especially overtime/bonuses

Free time would be spent on side hustles

Great list by @BudgetsAreSexy:

https://www.budgetsaresexy.com/ways-to-make-money/

Taking care of animals sounds good to me!

4/ I'd boost my savings rate to 50%

SUPER hard to do, but not impossible

As money came in, it would be deployed in the following manner to get me to step 13

All retirement funds would be indexed for simplicity (what I do now)

5/ As my net worth grew, I'd set up a schedule to reward myself based on net worth achievements

I'd use my "low-cost favorite things" to reward every small victory

And reward bigger net worth milestones w/ something like this:

6/ Basically, I'd HUSTLE LIKE CRAZY to get the snowball rolling as quickly as possible

As Charlie Munger said, "The first $100,000 is the hardest, but you gotta do it.”

Then I'd gradually decrease my intensity in certain categories as net worth milestones were reached

7/ Life would be pretty stressful in the beginning,

Working like crazy and spending no money isn't much fun

but you only have to be super intense for a few years, and then you can gradually ease off

8/ To me, the short-term pain would be worth it

Not so that I could afford nicer things...

but so that I could greatly reduce my long-term financial stress

and eventually, reach financial independence

9/ What would you do differently?