Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb

On Friday, Americans across the country celebrated Independence Day — a moment to reflect on the cherished freedoms we hold dear. But in addition to the parades and fireworks, there’s another kind of independence worth thinking about: financial independence.

While the Declaration of Independence famously enshrines the rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” the original language that Thomas Jefferson drew from — the Virginia Declaration of Rights — offered something even more tangible: the “means of acquiring and possessing property.” In the 18th century, property ownership was directly tied to freedom. And in many ways, it still is.

In today’s world, financial independence means something a little different for each person. For some, it’s the ability to retire comfortably — or even early — and live off savings and investment income. For others, it’s about not becoming a financial burden to children later in life. And for many, it’s the freedom to make meaningful life decisions without money being the controlling factor.

Regardless of how it’s defined, financial independence boils down to one thing: choice.

When you’re financially independent, you get to decide how you spend your time — whether that means continuing to work, launching a passion project, helping family or traveling the world. You also gain the power to say “no” to jobs, situations, or relationships that no longer serve you.

The good news? Achieving financial independence isn’t about luck or extreme sacrifice. It comes down to a few key principles, applied consistently over time.

1. Save more than you spend

This may sound obvious, but it’s the foundation of all wealth-building. High earners who spend every dollar rarely build real freedom. On the flip side, a strong savings habit (ideally, 15–20% of your income) allows you to accumulate the assets that provide flexibility later in life.

Even small adjustments can help: increasing retirement contributions by 1% a year; eliminating lifestyle “creep” or automating savings into a separate account.

2. Spend in line with your values

Every financial decision reflects what you value. For example, if you earn $50 an hour and buy a $50,000 boat, that purchase cost you 1,000 work hours — nearly half a year of effort.

Now ask yourself: Was it worth it? Or could that money have gone toward something that matters more, such as spending more time with your kids, giving back or working towards future time freedom?

Intentional spending helps align your money with your priorities and speeds your path to independence.

3. Plan for the unexpected

Financial independence doesn’t mean you’re invincible. Life inevitably throws curveballs to us all: job losses, illness, major repairs. That’s why having an emergency fund of three to six months’ expenses is essential.

Start with what you can and build it over time. This safety net ensures that an unexpected event doesn’t derail years of progress toward financial independence.

4. Know your ‘independence number’

How much do you need to be financially independent? A common rule of thumb is to save 25 to 33 times your annual expenses. So, if you spend $100,000 a year, your financial independence target may be $2.5 to 3.3 million.

That might sound daunting, but keep in mind: this includes your investments, retirement accounts, real estate and other income sources. More important than the number is understanding how to turn those assets into reliable income over time.

5. Invest with intention

Your investments should support your goals over the short-, mid- and long-term. Your comprehensive plan needs to consider your cash needs, tax strategy, market volatility and diversification.

Working with a financial adviser can help build a “money matrix,” a planning tool that we regularly use to map income, expenses and investment vehicles to each client’s unique timeline and values.

True independence isn’t just about celebrating history. It’s about building a future on your own terms. Financial independence offers the freedom to choose your work, your lifestyle and your legacy.

Start by saving a little more, spending a little less and making decisions that reflect your highest values. Because in the end, the pursuit of happiness isn’t just a founding ideal — it’s a financial goal we can all work toward.

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The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb are financial advisers at Wealth Enhancement Group and co-hosts of “Your Money” on WCCO 830 AM on Sunday mornings. Email Bruce and Peg at yourmoney@wealthenhancement.com. Advisory services offered through Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services LLC, a registered investment adviser and affiliate of Wealth Enhancement Group.

 

“Jurassic Park” is literally about clones — dinosaurs brought back to life by DNA extracted from mosquitoes preserved in amber — and the many sequels in the franchise are the same thing: iterations upon iterations of the same ideas, genetic mutations either monstrous or awe-inspiring or both, as different filmmakers have tried to capture the magic that Steven Spielberg brought forth with the 1993 original.

None have successfully achieved that nearly impossible task, and the “Jurassic World” films especially have seen diminishing returns. But along comes “Jurassic World Rebirth,” which hones in on some of the key characteristics that made the original work.

Director Gareth Edwards now steps into the lab, bringing his own pedigree, which includes epic sci-fi films featuring skyscraper-scale creatures, “Monsters” and “Godzilla,” and an emotional, dystopian family story in “The Creator.” He also has a not-so-secret weapon in screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote the first two “Jurassic Park” movies, and brings “Rebirth” back to the basics, while weaving in DNA strands from such classic monster movies as “Aliens” and “The Island of Doctor Moreau.” Coupled with Edwards’ excellent cinematic craft, and a complete cast overhaul, “Rebirth” turns out to be one of the best “Jurassic Park” sequels.

It still has its issues, as any genetically modified clone might. The first act is a rocky one, as the world and new cast of characters is hastily introduced. It’s been 32 years since “Jurassic Park” in our world, and in their world, too. Dinosaurs have become mundane to the viewing public, and due to climate change, can only survive near the Earth’s equator, where travel is expressly forbidden.

Our tough mercenary heroine, Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) is contracted by a slimy corporate pharma type, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), for a dangerous retrieval and extraction mission to obtain blood and tissue samples from the most colossal dinosaurs living in the wild, in order to develop a drug to combat heart disease. Krebs wants to rake in trillions of dollars, Zora wants to make enough to get her out of this line of work and have a personal life again, while their third recruit, Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), who did his post-doc under Dr. Alan Grant, just wants to see a dinosaur.

They assemble their crew, including captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and a few obviously disposable soldiers for hire (Ed Skrein, Phillipine Velge, Bechir Sylvain), and set out to get that dino blood. The establishment of this setup is a tonal mess. Johansson’s performance is strange, swinging from oddly perky to grief-stricken by both the loss of her mother and a colleague in a car bombing. The whole thing feels ungrounded, the world-building thin.

But the film locks into place with the introduction of the Delgado family, who happen to be on a long-distance sailing trip when they run into an underwater mosasaur and have to call for help. They’re picked up by Kincaid’s boat and soon find themselves under attack from more aquatic monsters, then stranded on the abandoned island where genetic experiments with dino DNA once took place. The family embarks on a journey to find rescue, in a parallel but intersecting story with the professionals who remain hellbent on gathering their specimens, despite their dwindling numbers.

The Delgado family — dad Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), teen daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise), her boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono), and little sister Isabella (Audrina Miranda) are an immediate correcting force on the story, because their motivation is clear and palpable. They want to survive together. It also introduces that awe and wonder element that is best seen through the eyes of children in these films.

Much in the way that composer Alexandre Desplat interpolates John Williams’ “Jurassic Park” theme, “Jurassic World Rebirth” interpolates many of the iconic moments and scenes from the original. Dr. Loomis (side note: using the name of one of the most memorable characters from the “Halloween” franchise should not be allowed) is moved to tears seeing dinosaurs in the wild for the first time the way his mentor Dr. Grant was. There are intense suspense sequences involving the Delgado children escaping dinosaurs that call to mind the glass of water vibrating with each T. rex stomp in the first film. In these moments, we see that “Rebirth” really can be a second coming of what made us fall in love with “Jurassic Park” in the first place.

“Park” purists may nitpick, but fundamentally, “Rebirth” is a gorgeously rendered all-ages adventure film. Edwards and cinematographer John Mathieson shot on 35mm on location in Thailand, and the extra effort to shoot on film makes for a stunning spectacle, the perfect kind of summer escapism. If there are moments that don’t quite hit right, the ones that do are impossible to forget. Remember, this is about having fun, and “Rebirth” is a blast.

‘Jurassic World Rebirth’

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references, language and a drug reference)

Running time: 2:14

How to watch: In theaters July 2

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Amy Lindgren

Now and then I like to pull together ideas I’ve been musing about. Here are a couple of things currently on my desk.

Office! I meant office!

In last week’s column I repeatedly used the term RTW (return to work). At least I’m consistent, but I should have been using RTO (return to office). Longtime reader Barb C. brought this to my attention, noting “Return to work makes it sound like we were on a work hiatus this whole time. I assure you, we were not!”

Nope, you weren’t and neither was/is anyone else whose work happens to occur somewhere other than a communal workplace. After acknowledging my error, I popped onto the internet to see how RTW and RTO are being used by others.

What I saw erased any lingering doubt about which is the better phrase. Although I had imagined the W would be more inclusive (because not every remote worker is “office”-based), I soon understood just how frustrated home-based workers have been about this issue.

As noted on several discussion boards, the more we describe a change in the work setting as a return to work, the more we imply that work wasn’t being conducted before. While that’s merely annoying in some contexts, it’s demoralizing for public employees who already fight an uphill battle related to their image. As a Reddit poster succinctly wrote, “Language matters.” Consider me educated.

Remembering on-the-job training

There has been a lot of talk about the value of apprenticeships, trade schools, and non-college ways of learning work skills. I’m all for it, and try hard not to point out my decades of columns as proof. After all, no one likes a know-it-all. But it does seem important to tie the parts together, so “new” ideas are recognized for the foundation they stand on.

Ready? In decades past, fewer people went to college. Those that did tended to go into what became white-collar jobs. They weren’t necessarily trained in college for those jobs, but were chosen for the perception that college had made them into thinkers, analysts, writers, etc. They were trained on the job, famously starting out in the mail room or on the sales desk before gaining their striped ties (because they were more often men than women).

Meanwhile, their friends who didn’t go to college were enrolling in trade school or going directly to work in manufacturing, retail, hospitality, construction …basically everything else. They also didn’t show up with the needed skills, unless they had worked in a family business or had related classes in high school. They, too, were trained on the job.

In other words — not to be too blunt about it — employers took responsibility for training their workers to work for them. Sometimes they found people already trained (such as folks just out of the military), but they didn’t count on such fortune as their only pipeline. Nor did they demand previous training or experience or certificates as the entry point for their jobs.

So that’s the foundation, prior to the explosion of external training programs that provided employers the promise / expectation / assumption of already-trained workers.

I’m skipping quite a lot here, including that people used to hang onto jobs for life if they could. Partly because they feared not getting on the escalator at the same floor if they tried to go elsewhere. And partly because employers sweetened the pot by providing pensions and not cutting staff on a whim.

Too much has changed in all aspects of our lives to imagine going back. Not to mention, those glory days were only glorious for certain segments of our population, who still paid a price for all that glory. My point isn’t to wax nostalgic but to ask frankly: Whatever happened to on-the-job training?

I’m asking for your thoughts on this but I’ll cover some ground first by saying I know some companies have made headlines partnering with schools or developing pipelines for kids coming out of the justice system. And I know that apprenticeships are gaining traction again. Daily press releases also keep me abreast of individual initiatives tucked into different pockets of the country.

But I’m still asking. Given the constant drumbeat of articles and surveys where employers say their jobs demand skills their applicants don’t have: Why aren’t they training them?

It’s got to be more complicated than I think, but then I wonder if it is. Anyone?

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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

By Alex Brown, Stateline.org

Hunters, hikers and outdoors lovers of all stripes mounted a campaign in June against a Republican proposal to sell off millions of acres of federal public land.

The public outcry was so forceful that the measure’s sponsor pledged to scale back the proposal. Then on Saturday, before an initial U.S. Senate vote on Republicans’ tax and spending cuts package, he withdrew it altogether.

But even though the land sales proposal was defeated, experts say federal lands face a slew of other threats from President Donald Trump’s administration. Agency leaders have proposed rolling back the “Roadless Rule” that protects 58 million acres from logging and other uses. Trump’s Justice Department has issued a legal opinion that the president is allowed to abolish national monuments. Regulators have moved to slash environmental rules to ramp up logging and oil and gas production. And Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of the agencies that manage federal lands.

“This is not over even if the sell-off proposal doesn’t make it,” said John Leshy, who served as solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration. “The whole thing about leasing or selling timber or throwing them open to mining claims, that’s a form of partial privatization. It’s pretty much a giveaway.”

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has repeatedly described public lands as America’s “balance sheet.” He has argued that some lands could be used to provide housing, while calling for an expansion of mining and oil and gas drilling to increase their economic output.

“President Trump’s energy dominance vision will end those wars abroad, will make life more affordable for every family in America by driving down inflation,” Burgum said before his confirmation hearing.

Public lands advocates are bracing for ongoing battles for the rest of Trump’s term in office. They expect Republicans to add last-minute public lands amendments to other bills moving through Congress, and for land management agencies to attempt to strip protections from other federal lands. Given the vocal backlash to the initial sell-off plan, advocates expect future attempts to be shaped behind closed doors and advanced with little time for opponents to mount a defense.

Meanwhile, they expect states to play a key role in shaping those battles. In Western states, where most federally owned lands are located, many leaders from both parties view public lands as special places open to all Americans and critical for clean water, wildlife and tourism. But some conservatives resent the fact that large portions of their states are managed by officials in Washington, D.C., limiting development and private enterprise.

Officials in some states, including Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, have pushed lawsuits or resolutions seeking to force the feds to hand over huge amounts of land. Public land experts say the lawmakers behind those efforts will likely press harder now that Trump is in the White House. Such state-level takeover attempts could shape the proposals that emerge from Trump’s allies in Washington.

Sell-off proposal

The firestorm over federal lands exploded when U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, introduced legislation that would force the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 3.3 million acres of land. The measure also would direct the agencies to make more than 250 million additional acres eligible for sale.

“We’ve never seen a threat on this magnitude ever,” said Devin O’Dea, Western policy and conservation manager with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. “There’s been an overwhelming amount of opposition. We’ve seen record-breaking engagement on this issue.”

Lee, a longtime federal lands opponent, claimed the lands were needed for housing and argued the government has been a poor manager of its land.

“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land,” Lee said in June when announcing the proposal. “This bill puts it in better hands.”

But a wide-ranging coalition of opponents argued that the proposal had no protections to ensure the lands would be used for affordable housing, and that many of the parcels eligible for sale had little housing potential. A furious social media campaign highlighted cherished hiking trails, fishing lakes and ski slopes that were in danger of being sold, urging people to call their lawmakers to oppose the measure.

In recent days, Montana Republican U.S. Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, as well as Idaho Republican U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, came out in opposition to the land sale proposal. That put into question whether Lee’s legislation could earn even a simple majority.

Then the Senate parliamentarian ruled the sell-off could not be included in the reconciliation bill without a 60-vote majority. That ruling came a day after Lee posted on social media that he would be making changes to the bill in response to concerns from Hunter Nation, a nonprofit whose board includes Donald Trump Jr.

Lee released a scaled-back measure last week that would exempt national forest lands but would direct the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 1.2 million acres. It would require land for sale to be within five miles of a population center and developed to provide housing.

Public land advocates say Lee’s changes did little to assuage their concerns. They argue that federal land sales or transfers should happen through the current, long-standing process, which requires local stakeholder input and directs the proceeds from land sales to be reinvested into conservation and public access on other parcels.

“It’s the overwhelming belief of hunters and anglers that the budget reconciliation process is not the appropriate vehicle for public land sales,” said O’Dea, with the hunting and fishing group.

In late June, Lee announced that he was withdrawing the proposal, saying that Senate rules did not allow him to include protections that land would not be sold to foreign interests. But he pledged to continue the battle over federal land ownership, working with Trump to “put underutilized federal land to work for American families.”

States’ role

While the sell-off proposal aligned with some state officials’ goal of taking over federal lands, some lands experts say private developers would have been the real winner.

“If the lands are transferred to the states without money, the states lose,” said Leshy, the former Interior Department official. “It’s a hit on their budget, which means they’re gonna have to sell them off. If states got a significant amount of public lands, a lot of that would end up in private hands.”

In Utah, where leaders have made the most aggressive push to take over federal lands, lawmakers argue that they could raise lease prices for oil and gas operations, bringing in enough revenue to cover the state’s management costs.

“The policy of the state is to keep these lands open and available to the public,” Speaker Mike Schultz, a Republican, told Stateline.

O’Dea pointed to an economic analysis of what it would cost Montana to take over federal lands. The report found it would cost the state $8 billion over 20 years to take on wildfire management, deferred maintenance and mine reclamation. He noted that many Western states have sold off a majority of the “trust lands” they were granted at statehood, undermining claims that a state takeover would leave lands in the public domain.

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Other proposals

While Lee’s land sales proposal has gotten the biggest headlines, public land advocates are fighting a multifront battle against the Trump administration’s moves to roll back the protected status of certain lands, slash environmental rules, and expand logging, mining and drilling operations.

“The approach is to throw as much as you can at the wall and see what sticks,” O’Dea said. “There’s only so much you can mobilize opposition to. There’s a huge risk that some of these things could fly under the radar.”

Some conservative states and industry groups say Trump is allowing federal lands to be used to their full economic potential. Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, said his constituents are “keenly aware of how the federal government’s ownership of 60 percent of Alaska’s lands can inhibit economic development and cause challenges for our communities.”

Leshy noted that public lands have proven to be a popular cause, but Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce could undermine public confidence that the federal government is capable of managing the land.

“if you make it terrible for long enough, maybe people say, ‘The feds shouldn’t be managing this, they do such a bad job,’” he said.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.