A house or real estate property is by far the best investment to make if you can afford to right now.

Benefits of Owning a House or Real Estate Property

1. Forces you to put away money in the form of mortgage payments.
2. Houses generally and mostly do not go up and down as the stock market does.
3. Most of the time a house always continues to build up equity.
4. If you live in the house, you get the added benefit of enjoying it as well.
5. Later on you can sell it and cash in or turn it into a revenue generating cash box.

If you cannot afford one right now, you should save as much as you can on a weekly basis or a paycheck basis. Save like 20%-5% into a secret account in which you pretend to forget about then throw that money into the stock market and the bonds market.

Simply invest 40% into iShares Lehman US Aggregate Bond Fund (AGG) and put the other 60% into SPDR Trust, Series 1 (SPY).

Keep saving and compounding and you will get there.

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Being frugal should always be top on your list in order to be retire early.

Steps for early retirement

• Be very Frugal. Live below your means and don’t pay for anything that you don’t have to.
  • Use coupons for everything.
  • Ride a bike to your destination or car pool.
  • Send your child/children to public school instead of private school. Major money saver here.
  • Use credit cards with cash back rewards like Citibank, Chase and CapitalOne.
• Save at least 20% of every paycheck. After five paychecks you already have saved a whole paycheck without thinking about it. If 20% sounds like too much, then by all means start by 10% or even 5%.
• Learn how to get multiple streams of income. Get another job, start blogging, fix computers or cars in your spare time. Start somewhere and then that whole paycheck can become 100% saved.
• Invest for the long term in the stock market and always buy low. Try hassle free methods like investing in Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds (ETF). These help you because you don’t need to buy individual stocks and they are well diversified.

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To become financially independent you will first need a road map that will help you attain that level of independence. I have been playing around with some methods and I found that these were some good methods to help me out. A good road map should help you get out of debt, invest, budget and plan for retirement.

Making Money Methods

• Set Goals – What do you want to do? Make money, attack debt or plan for retirement. Hopefully you will like to do all of these things at once. I planned to set my goal to increase wealth and in that respect to increase wealth.
• Read Personal Finance – Read every web article, book and subscribe to personal finance magazines.
• Track Spending – Track all of your expenses so you can see where your money is going. I realized that I spent about $60 per week at Duane Reade. You know that was cut later on.
• Cut Expenses – This goes hand in hand with tracking expenses. You then analyze where you spend too much and then trim them out of your budget.
• Decrease Debt – Start cutting down credit card debt. Start with the smallest debt then work your way up to the big ones. Shop around better interest rates then call up your current credit card and tell them to rate you can get and see if they will negotiate. If they do fine but if not then transfer the debt to the new one and close the old credit card immediately. Cut your total credit cards down to 2 maximum cards.
• Extra Income – Look into alternate streams of income. I use dividend stocks, Google Adsense, web advertisement, regular 9 to 5 job, high yield money market account for liquid money, rent house/apartment.
• Purchase Stock – I would say to purchase dividend stock because they increase per share and they still function as stock.
• Purchase Property -By purchasing a property, you increase your wealth automatically and fast. You force yourself to save and properties increase with inflation.

This simple but highly effective methods are so simple when you think about it, but highly effective. These cover making money, removing credit card debt, gaining extra income, cutting expenses with a tighter budget and planning for retirement by learning steps to increase wealth.

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