I’m Jennifer 💜 I spent 26+ years behind the chair doing hair, and I genuinely loved it. But eventually I had to admit something I didn’t really want to admit. My body wasn’t going to let me do it forever. Chronic pain made standing behind a chair all day harder and harder, and honestly, I’d always wanted something different too. More freedom. More flexibility. And a way to make money that didn’t depend on me physically showing up every single day. Network marketing was my first real introduction to making money online, and I learned a TON from it. But I eventually got tired of the chasing, the pressure, and having so much of my income tied to one company. So I started building differently. Today I have multiple ways I make money online, I get to work from wherever I want, and I’ve built communities full of people figuring this stuff out right alongside me. And that’s probably my favorite part. I love helping women realize there isn’t just one way to make money online. You can build something that actually fits your life, your personality, your strengths, and the season you’re in. So if you’re figuring out your next chapter too, give yourself grace. It’s a journey of becoming. Excited to connect learn from @Richard Dias and grow together Tell New where you are from in the comments Kentucky gal here

No amounts here, on purpose. Just the list, because the list is the point. A rental check. An oil and gas royalty deposit. A small app that charges a monthly fee. Three deposits, three different reasons, and not one of them needed me to punch a clock. The app still takes real work, and so does the print-on-demand shop I am building now, but it is work on my schedule. I still think about making money, having enough, and not outliving my money. What changed is that I think about what to add rather than how fast the account is draining. What is on your list right now, even if it is one line? -Rich Results vary, and I am not a financial advisor.

A couple posted this on a retirement forum this week, and it drew more than 200 replies. One pointed out the 4-year gap before their pension starts at 62. I retired at 55 in 2022. What made the date feel doable was not the size of my balance. It was being able to name the income streams that would land in the account every month, and where each piece came from. So my answer to them is Tuesday's covered number. Run it before you pick the date, not after. If you could write back to this couple, what would you tell them? -Rich Not financial advice, just my experience.

A balance is one number that answers a question nobody asks you in retirement. Nobody asks what you have. The grocery store, the insurer and the property tax bill all ask a different question, and they ask it monthly. This is the reframe that took me the longest to get, so I will put it as plainly as I can. A balance is a photograph. It tells you what is there on one day. It tells you nothing about whether it will still be there, or what it produces while it waits. Monthly income is a video. It tells you what happens next. The reason this matters is not philosophical. It changes what you work on. If you believe the balance is the plan, the only thing left to do is save harder and pick a better withdrawal rate. Both are small levers by your late fifties, and one of them is somebody else's market. If you believe monthly income is the plan, a new question opens. What could I add? And that question has answers you control. New Census figures this week list six places income actually comes from for Americans over 65. Five of them were settled years ago by your earnings and by whoever employed you. The sixth is the only one still taking edits. Five photographs and one video. Spend your attention on the video. Which do you catch yourself checking more often, the balance or the monthly number? -Rich

It was a Sunday in early 2021, and I was at the kitchen table coffee in hand and a legal pad. I had been running the numbers on retiring for about four years by then. I knew my balance to the dollar. I had spreadsheets I was proud of. And that morning I realised I had never really written down, on one page, what would actually land in my checking account on the 1st of a month after I stopped working. So I wrote it. Not a model. A list. It took maybe 15 minutes, and two things happened. The first was that the number was smaller than I expected. Not catastrophic, just smaller than I expected. The second was that one line on the page had almost everything on it. The line for things I owned that paid me whether I worked that week or not, like my rentals and royalties. That line was the reason the other numbers held together. I retired the following year, at 55. Here is the part worth keeping. That page is still the only document I reread. Not the spreadsheets. That page. If you sat down this morning with one sheet of paper, could you write what arrives on the 1st and where each piece comes from? If you need help figuring out yours, jump in our Q&A calls. -Rich