The FIRE movement made the rounds in national news for a few years and still gets a head nod here and there. The early retirement (RE) part of FIRE always received more criticism because it’s the goal when someone doesn’t like their career choice and wants to escape. In hindsight, this was me. Both financially…
The minus your age rule of thumb is a simple math formula used in personal finance to help DIY investors and advisors determine a suitable stock-to-bond ratio for an investment portfolio. I’ve always referred to this as the 130 minus your age rule of thumb on this website, but that only tells part of the…
Many of us secured historically low mortgage rates for our homes in the past decade. We now find ourselves content with a 4% rate or better as our home values continue to rise. Our family refinanced to a 20-year loan in September 2020 at 2.75%. That rate has eliminated our desire to move. With a…
My Dad retired in 2002 with a 403(b) and lifelong teacher’s pension. Unsure of his retirement savings, some fellow retired teachers recommended a financial advisor who “specialized in retired teachers”. So he converted the 403(b) to an IRA, transferred his and my Mom’s IRAs to the advisor, and trusted him to manage their money for…
The financial independence number is a benchmark to determine retirement preparedness. It’s also known as the FI number. Financial independence is achieved by: The financial independence number is the target lump sum. Calculating the amount answers the question, how much money do I need to stop working full-time? Though not perfect or set in stone,…
ProjectionLab is a powerful financial planning tool that empowers do-it-yourselfers to set and track financial goals and forecast how their wealth will change over a lifetime. We can use it to experiment with various scenarios and assumptions to help us determine if we have enough to retire or achieve other financial milestones. This retirement planning…
The Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge attraction opened at both Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, and Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL, in 2019. Despite the long-awaited openings, Disney stock analysts were disappointed to see overall theme park attendance down 3% in the fiscal third quarter. Visitors to the planet Batuu meet face-to-face with the Millennium Falcon…
I’m a DIY financial planner and investor. Hiring a financial advisor never made sense since I studied finance and enjoy money management as a hobby. I almost became an investment advisor a few times. My financial situation has never been that complicated. I keep my investments, taxes, and personal finance activities within my capabilities, so…
I can describe my ideal retirement in three words. Long and healthy. If my retirement is long and healthy, I’ll have very little to complain about. Beyond that, everything else is icing on top of the cupcake. But like my sugar-crazed daughter, I spend a lot of time thinking about the icing. A Healthy Exercise…
November is National Diabetes Awareness Month. The most significant mental hurdle before leaving my full-time career was health insurance. My former employer offered excellent healthcare benefits at an affordable cost. Leaving meant giving up the low-cost benefit but keeping the insurance through COBRA. Our 2023 health insurance plan is the same as when I was…
The future value (FV) formula is a Finance 101 and retirement planning staple that allows us to estimate what current assets will be worth at a future date. It’s one of the baseline formulas that let us build more complex personal financial models using elaborate spreadsheets or more sophisticated tools like Boldin and ProjectionLab. Future…
My parents were born and raised in the south hills of Pittsburgh. They attended the same high school but didn’t start dating until five years after graduation when they were in a wedding party together. Dad was a high school teacher on the other side of town. He wanted a shorter commute, a big yard,…
Inflation is destroying wealth and making food so expensive. The Fed keeps raising interest rates — how can the housing market survive it? The 16th largest U.S. bank failed a few months back. Then the 14th largest bank failed! The COVID-19 pandemic happened. That sucked. Now there’s a stupid war in Eastern Europe. The stock…
The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson wrote an article about the best career advice he’s come across that “might be marginally useful.” Your Career Is Just One-Eighth of Your Life was applicable to my situation back in September 2022 when I was approaching my career departure date, and it’s still relevant today as a self-employed blogger….
Financial advice can be free (google it) or expensive (hire an advisor). But financial advice tends to be tactical — buy this investment, optimize that tax advantage — instead of behavioral — think this way, stick to the plan, and be patient Success in building wealth is less about how much you know (or can…
Happy New Year! The turning of the new year brings two things to mind for a lot of us: I’m not a big fan of new years resolutions (most don’t stick). But I believe in habitual change — deciding something is worth pursuing and taking steps toward that objective every day. Making better daily money…
Inflation is eating away at our wealth quarter-by-quarter. It appears to have peaked in May 2022, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate increases. The products we consume continue to become more expensive. The Federal Reserve is mandated to target 2% annual inflation as measured by the year-over-year change in the consumer price index (CPI)….
Maybe you’ve heard of universal basic income (UBI). UBI is a type of social program administered by governments to provide basic income for citizens — ideally, enough money to cover basic expenses or meet poverty level income. Universal basic income became a popular topic in the political discussion during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, promoted…
Over the life of this blog, I’ve recommended books and blog posts by an author named Joshua Becker. Joshua is the founder and primary writer of the website Becoming Minimalist, one of the leading minimalism blogs. Joshua defines minimalism as the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that…
After two years of COVID-19 apprehension, our family is going on a real vacation — airplanes, amusements, and sit-down restaurants. Planning for upcoming trips reminds me of the kind of retirement travel that I’m ultimately working toward — month-long+ excursions on and off the beaten path — and how I’m getting closer to that kind…
Our family spent the dog days of COVID at home. No travels, no visitors, and zero breaks from each other. By the end of 2020, we’d had it with school and working at home. So we booked a beach house for Spring Break in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And to treat ourselves, we…