Over the past 12 months, I’ve added a few municipal bond ETFs (exchange-traded funds) to my taxable investment portfolio. I’ve done this to diversify my dividend income and reduce taxes in non-retirement accounts. These investments are easy to buy, have low volatility and risk, and provide monthly dividend income. I use the monthly tax-exempt income…
Don’t Follow the Money to an Unremarkable Career
I fell into my career at age 23. A childhood friend worked for a nearby information technology (IT) consulting company in a hiring frenzy. It was 1998. Dot-coms were booming. Y2K loomed. The U.S. government had a revenue surplus, and we lived in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. Experienced talent was scarce, opening…
10 Wise Investments for a Cash Windfall
The U.S. government is borrowing $1.9 trillion to provide pandemic relief and stimulate the economy. A big chunk of that will be direct payments to Americans. I won’t get into the details of who gets what; you can find that here. Long story short, many Americans will get more than a thousand dollars deposited to…
A Healthy Obsession with Money
I’m obsessed with money. I think about earning, saving, and growing money most of the day. I’ve written about money for more than seven years. Saying someone is obsessed with money might conjure to mind words like greed, fame, power, influence, and opulence. Picture a celebrity flashing fancy clothes and jewelry on Instagram and their…
Craft a Better Life Than Your Parents
In a recent article published at CNN.com, author Tami Luhby writes that only half of Millennials earn more than their parents did at age 30 — an all-time low (see chart in the article). That means the other half may be worse off than the previous generation. This reminded me of an article I wrote…
Don’t Let an Oppressive Mortgage Prolong Your Career
A former manager was into office gift-giving. Most of the team was over 50. As a joke, she gave everyone a pocket guide to texting acronyms. The “older folks” were still learning about terms like LOL, TL;DR, LMFAO, OMG, and WTF. This was around 2014 before we had our third child. Flipping through the pages,…
Sure Dividend Review: Is it Worth the Cost?
This Sure Dividend review was updated on 01/18/2021. Sure Dividend is an investing blog and paid newsletter service that focuses on dividend and income investing. When the Sure Dividend blog started in 2014, it built a significant audience by providing in-depth analyses of stocks on the Dividend Aristocrats list. The Aristocrats are stocks in the…
10 Ways to Improve Your Finances in 2021
Happy New Year! The turning of the new year brings two things to mind for a lot of us: Whoa, I spent too much money last month/year How can I improve my finances this year? I’m not a big fan of new years resolutions (most don’t stick). But I believe in habitual change — deciding…
How I Quit My Career at 39 with Out-of-State Rental Properties
The following is a guest post by Eric Hughes, who writes the blog Rental Income Advisors. Eric left his corporate job by creating passive income with out-of-state rental properties. He owns 18 properties that produce nearly $70,000 per year. Eric explains how rental properties can be a shorter path to financial independence than a traditional…
How Much Money is Enough?
A few years ago, somebody asked how much money is enough for me to retire. I used a back of the napkin estimation based on the financial independence number and answered. This was 2015-ish. At the time, I thought the number would be more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of our lives,…
Intoxicated by the Romance of the Unusual
Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual. – Ernest Hemingway This Hemingway quote came up in one of my social media feeds (read to the end to learn the quote’s origin). Most of the time, I roll my eyes at quotes and memes shared…
Growth Stocks vs. Dividend Stocks
What’s the best choice between growth stocks vs. dividend stocks? The answer depends on which strategy helps you to best achieve you investment objectives. One of the biggest financial mistakes I ever made was selling a stock. In 2006, I bought 40 shares of Apple (AAPL) for about $58 a share. I called myself a…
Retire Before Dead
Someone on Facebook with a very dry sense of humor commented: You misspelled dead. — Facebook Reader It took me a while — then, the epiphany. After seven years of blogging, I realized my blog name is one letter away from Retire Before Dead. And wow, far more people are probably striving for that goal…
8 Alternative Investment Ideas for Asset Diversification
Diversification is said to be the only free lunch in the investment world. If your stock portfolio is heavily weighted toward one company, you can reduce your risk by purchasing shares of other companies. The same is true for asset classes. As your stock accounts grow with regular contributions and gains, your net worth becomes…