One of the first things I like to do is I rinse off all the tomatoes once they get them out of the garden or even after I pick them up from the stores to make sure all the dirt and stuff is off them. then I just put them on this little pan and I get them over next to the cutting board where I can start cutting them up for the sauce. All right. So now we're just gonna slice up this onion.

That'll be the first thing for actually getting the sauce going sauteing an onion and then once that's done, I'll put the tomatoes on top. now. One of the things I was thinking about today, you know I was able to spend some time out in the garden. we're on the weekend right now, so it's not like I would be trading today anyways.

But one of the things that's really nice is that you know if you think about the average household income being fifty two thousand dollars and the fact that you know that's a thousand dollars a week, well, I've been making twenty to thirty thousand dollars a month day trading. but even if you're only able to make a fraction of that and you're only able to make say, a thousand dollars a week, well, you'd be doing it in two hours a day. And of course, the average household. it's making that fifty two thousand dollars a year.

And yet they're working a full-time nine-to-five job. Now you're earning the same amount. Let's say, just working two hours a day. The advantage is that you have so much extra time.

and for me, I was able to grow all these tomatoes. you know, with that extra time just growing vegetables in my cart I can also make some tomato sauce. So when you think about the fact that I work two hours a day and I'm able to make far more than the average household ami I have all this extra time which allows me to do things like grow my own vegetables. So I can you know make my own tomato sauce and save a little bit of money? So not only am I making the same amount as someone who's working maybe four or five times as many hours, but during that extra down time I can do other things to save money and help reduce my cost of living, right? I'm able to make ten fifteen cans tomato sauce.

You know, over the next couple weeks that's gonna last me all through the winter now. although that might not sound like a lot of money in terms of savings, to the average household is making only fifty two thousand dollars a year grocery bills and things like that, utility bills. those all matter. So you'll notice a trademark of almost all my clothes is some white paint.

And it's because of all my do-it-yourself projects. you know the painting I do around the house I've got a white house and you know it, just a little fix up things that I do just painting shelves or whatever it might be, you know. and I think that again. those are all examples of things that I can do with all this extra time.

I have to help reduce my cost of living and save money when I was first up in Vermont I would cut down trees and chop up my own firewood for the winter. Yeah, it takes maybe a, you know, an hour or a day. You do that through most of the summer, but then at the end you've got. you know, free heat for the whole winter.

How much does it cost most people to heat their home for the winter? you know, Four thousand, five thousand dollars in oil? Maybe more. So again, you're talking about the regular household making only fifty two thousand dollars a year. Now more of that money goes out to buying groceries because of course they're not producing their own food. More of it goes out to paying a premium for things like heating oil because they don't have the time to chop up thrown firewood.

So one of the things that I like to think about with you know day trading is that this is also a lifestyle of self-sufficiency We're trading the markets to make to make money to make our living and then of course the rest of the day. We could focus on other things to help you know achieve the some measure of independence. And I think that's what we're doing right here today. growing tomatoes and make you some tomato sauce.

Alright so we started with our onions. That's done. The garlic is in now. time to add the tomatoes.

These tomatoes are, you know, kind of a funny shape. Now one of the things you tomato sauce is that you don't want it to be like super watery. And of course if it is super watery that you just have to let it cook down for longer. This will definitely take several hours to cook until it's done, but you can make that a little bit faster by not putting in some of the water iasts of the or by you know, taking out you know, some of the seeds and stuff like that and just tossing them aside.

So basically a quarter or you know, cut them in halves corridors, that kind of thing. I don't worry about the the peels of those stay on I don't feel them any, you know, soft spots or brown spots that just toss out. So this is probably I mean if I had to guess maybe I don't know. it's five to seven pounds of tomatoes to onions.

few cloves of garlic and that right there will make that that will get this probably at least half full and they'll fill up several several freezer bags as I can put in the freezer. or if I want to do the route of canning I can do that also. Now the easy thing with putting them in a bag and putting in the freezers that you know when I want them just for myself I can just go grab that bag, break it open, throw it in a pan if I want to give them to friends and family though. canning is definitely the way to go.

It just, you know, presents better than getting someone ziploc bag of tomato sauce at Christmas So just gonna chop these up, put them in and you know that's pretty much it. This will just sit and cook here for maybe three or four hours, let it cook down I'll keep checking on it and stirring it, but it's pretty much just gonna do its thing here and make the house smell really good. It should be nice. this tomato's a really soft one.

This was nice. Actually this would be good just with some olive oil and bread, but it's already going in the pot. I've got these cherry tomatoes here. Those ones I'm not going to use for this I don't think they're pretty sweet.

There are these like light color, kind of mango color, cherry tomatoes and I might add a few, but you know it depends on the how sweet of a sauce you want and you'll obviously don't want to forget to add so and I'll probably add different herbs and stuff like that. These are dried out from the garden so those will go in a little bit later when it's a little closer to being ready. All right. So this is cooking down here.

Just gonna let this cook for a while. It smells really good, the pot is about half full and it'll cook down a little bit. I could have I could have filled it up more, but figure you know, five seven pounds of tomatoes times, you know, four dollars a pound. It's like thirty forty dollars.

And tomatoes. This is gonna produce a lot of tomato sauce and it's all free right out of the garbage. So there's something really satisfying about that and it's really cool. One of the things we were mentioning earlier is the fact that doing things like this helps reduce your cost of living.

and that's really why we're doing this video. you know, hanging out with me watching me cook in the kitchen. These are things that I did as a beginner trader I want to have financial independence, but I knew that my income, the money coming in would be limited. so I needed to do everything possible to stretch that money as long as I could.

And as far as I could, that meant doing things like growing my own food, making my own food, cutting my own firewood, painting my own house. All of those things. Each of them saved me thousands of dollars a year and that allowed me to make make it through the learning curve without going bankrupt, right? I Reduced my costs to living it all depends on the lifestyle that you want. if you want to always have a brand new car, if you want to always have you know new things and lots of fancy things.

That's fine, but when you do something like change careers midlife, you have to acknowledge that you're either going to need a good financial buffer to help you go from ending one job to becoming a proficient and profitable trader, or you need to reduce your cost of living. it's really one or the other. Maybe do a little bit of both for me? I'm gonna have the the means to really keep myself, you know in really good financial condition for a long time when I was learning to trade so I had to do these things to save month. It was just what I needed to do.

Now the things that I encourage beginner traders to do if they're in a similar situation that I visit right, do everything you can to save a little bit of money. It allows you to keep trading, stay in the market. You've got your two hours a day where you're trading and then the rest of the day we can, you know, do other things Now for me. I spend the rest of the day working with students and teaching the classes and doing that sort of thing.

But it's beginner trader. You may find that that time is better spent either having a part-time job or doing things around the house to help you live a more self-sufficient lifestyle. It's all about the steps to financial freedom. All right.

So I Hope you guys enjoy this video and I'll show you pictures of the tomato sauce when it's done. All right. Thanks guys!.