Tomorrow is election day in the United States, and it looks like we will get the ideal investor outcome. Gridlock! After two years of Republican control, it looks like Congress will swing to the Democratic Party. That means very little will get done with Trump vetoing any legislation that squeaks through. The Democratic control will not strong enough to override that. Investors love certainty, and … Continue reading Investor Certainty
It has been a while since I looked closely at what we are paying for health insurance. I knew it had been going up, but I didn’t look at it until a MegaCorp colleague asked me about it how much it was. When I retired in 2016, health insurance was one of the biggest unknowns in our FIRE financial plan. Unlike most retirees, we needed … Continue reading Health Insurance Inflation Continues
One of the interesting things about personal finance is that we rarely know how we’re doing compared to everyone else. It’s a bit of a mystery as most people don’t share such private information. Sure, we hear plenty about billionaires in the news, but what does a typical American household actually have? And how does that change with age? My MegaCorp boss, Don, sent me … Continue reading How Do You Compare?
We’re in “back & forth” season right now. As the daily temperatures drop in Minnesota, we’ve started to go back and forth to our vacation place in Florida. We just got back from a week in Florida and will be down there again in November & December. In January, we’ll be in full snowbird mode. Wherever we are, people ask us if we’ve … Continue reading What Time Where?
It’s common to be surprised how high prices have gotten when compared to 30 years ago. But, what will they be 30 years from now? I saw this chart online that applies the inflation rate from the past 30 years to the next 30 years. Can you believe the average house will be getting close to $1 million? The average house at $869,000?!? This assumes … Continue reading Always Going Up
Like a lot of Snowbirds, we are back in Florida after a long Summer up North. We went to a fun “Dueling Pianos” show at our clubhouse over the weekend and met up with a lot of our Sunshine State friends. It’s been a while since I looked at the active returns of our neighborhood investment club predictions, so I thought I would take a … Continue reading Investment Club Update
Just one quick post this week as I’m just back from a quick trip on Monday and we’re leaving for our Florida place today. I saw this article in The Atlantic yesterday that talked about an issue we’ve been discussing for the last 12-18 months: How retirees are getting wealthier – not drawing down their large retirement nest eggs. Link: Americans Aren’t Spending Their Retirement … Continue reading Boomer Piles of Money?
The discussion in the comment section after my Monday post this week focused a lot on mortgage rate history. It prompted me to find this graph on 30-year fixed standard mortgages from 1971-2025. I remember the peak in 1981 as we moved that year for my Dad’s job and my parents got a 16% mortgage for our new house. Bad timing. It was quite … Continue reading Mortgage Memories
For most of our married life, every Sunday in the autumn we would read through the big Sunday paper & ads while watching the GB Packers or MN Vikings. It’s been about 10 years since we’ve had a newspaper subscription, but yesterday I accepted a $1 offer for the digital version of our local paper. One of the articles in the Business section was titled … Continue reading Building A Strong Retirement
What to make of Scott Galloway? He’s a successful businessman turned self-proclaimed academic “thought leader” / NYU Stern MBA professor. Outspoken on politics and anti-Trump, he famously encouraged people to exit the stock market when The Donald won the Presidency in 2016. He now admits that he paid a lot for the investment strategy – which he followed himself. Selling all of his stocks triggered … Continue reading Investment Lesson
