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
I was at a wonderful MegaCorp reunion a few nights ago and a few colleagues were celebrating their first year of retirement, or were planning to at the end of the year. A couple friends said that despite a lot of planning, they weren’t entirely confident that their financials were going to hold up to the next few decades of retirement life. Despite having financial … Continue reading Are You Likely To Run Out Of Money?
