With Memorial Day over, we are now officially into summer travel season. We have a couple of fun trips planned for this summer – to the Holy Land & Petra in July and Toronto, Canada in August. We generally plan our trips out 3-9 months in advance depending on how adventurous the trip is. Like last summer, I’ll post some additional destination guides to places … Continue reading Summer Travel – Rudy Maxa Thoughts
Mortgage rates are in the news again as the average rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage reached 4.6% this week. It was the highest the rate has reached in the last 7 years – up 0.7 percentage points from where they were at last year. Fifteen year rates are also up – reaching 4.15%. These rates are still incredibly low relative to what they … Continue reading Paying Off Your Mortgage As Rates Rise
Like many early retirees, I worked ‘One More Year’ (OMY) beyond what I had originally planned. I was enjoying work and I had an idea to work OMY exclusively to raise money for a charitable fund. It was an idea that I originally wrote about three years ago in this POST. When I did leave MegaCorp for the final time, we had set aside my … Continue reading One More Year / Angel Fund Update
My friend that snowbirds in Florida during the Winter came back to MN a few weeks ago. We are now three tennis matches and three softball games into early summer. The activities we enjoy each week are inevitably capped with a cold refreshment and often with a visit to a new restaurant/pub. We’ve been to 30+ different places over the past few years! We were … Continue reading Hazy Recollection of MegaCorp
It’s been almost a year since I published my initial post on cryptocurrencies and I thought it would be a good time to provide an update on how our foray into this Wild West of personal finance has advanced – and what I’ve come to believe about their benefits and the confusion around them. PORTFOLIO STATUS If you read the headlines, you may believe that … Continue reading Update – Is Bitcoin a Bust or Bounty?
This weekend is the annual city garage sale in our suburb where the Lion’s Club organizes hundreds of sales as a fundraiser. Yesterday morning there were charter buses, 12 passenger vans, and pickups loaded with stuff bought at these sales all around the city. Related: Garage Sales – Our Old Crap Can Be Your New Crap We have good friends from college that have made … Continue reading Finding FIRE at Garage Sales
I got an email from a friend from high school recently asking how our early retirement financials are holding up since it has been two years since our FIRE escape. He wanted to know if we were trending over or under our projections. Stated another way, he said “I want to know if I can retire!” 🙂 After reading his note, I realized that I … Continue reading Second FIRE Anniversary – Financial Tracking Update
“Uh oh.” That’s what I texted to my wife after I dropped the glass soap dispenser into the bowl of our powder room sink. I was just finished wiping the granite countertop off when the soap dispenser slipped out of my hand and smashed the porcelain bowl. Unlike most of my family, I don’t recall anyone ever calling me handy around the house. I always … Continue reading A New Job In Early Retirement
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