Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.

Rather than direct readers to a specific article or mention names, I’ll do my best to describe the contents of the news article. Additionally, I typically don’t give these articles a second glance because they all have something in common.

The article, in its most simplest breakdown, is one of those “success stories” where someone is sharing how they got rich, retired early, and want to share their tips or tricks.

As for how it connects to my life? Well, technically, it connects to just about everyone who works for a living and wants to earn enough money to retire someday.

Why I don’t usually care to read these articles? Because the tips make sense, but the success can’t be easily replicated. They also are sometimes accompanied by some sort of grift in the form of “buy my book and you too can be rich and retire early!”

The reason the stories can’t be replicated by just anyone is because there is always some sort of special fiscal circumstance that they try to gloss over or avoid mentioning. This usually is in the form of some kind of inheritance from a relative or some other family connection, or an awesome severance package. The reality is that not everyone is going to just have $80k sitting around to invest in stocks, or reach the level of employment where they can receive a six-figure severance package.

This all makes the articles entirely uninteresting to me.