Investing With Purpose

1 >   Reflect Before You Race

Ten years before I wrote this, my employer lost the majority of its funding and I lost my job. I had a wife and two young children. We were partway through major renovations on the 104-year-old farmhouse we lived in, near a tiny town in rural Illinois. I didn’t have a college degree, family with money, or an employment backup plan. We had recently spent most of our savings on materials for our home renovations. We had two or three thousand dollars to our name.

I didn’t have enough money to invest, but I still got to be an investor. I got to decide how to use the resources I had, including my time.

The first investment decision I made was to become self-employed. Instead of hitting the streets to look for a new job, ...