If you follow personal finance news at all, you may have recently seen Suze Orman making headlines by throwing up all over the FIRE (financially independent & retired early) movement. When it comes to FIRE, she says she “Hates it. Hates it. Hates it.” and it may be the “dumbest personal finance decision” people can make. I’ve written before about Orman’s highly suspect financial expertise and … Continue reading Really BAD Financial Advice
I didn’t buy a ticket for this week’s $1.7B MegaMillions lottery. While I love the basic idea of getting a chance to be an instant billionaire, doing the math on the odds spoils the fun for me. While now commonplace, lotteries are certainly one of the most interesting social concepts of all. “Let’s have tens of millions of people put a small amount of money … Continue reading Did You Play The Lottery This Week?
It’s hard for me to keep up with all of the promises I made myself when I early retired from MegaCorp a few years ago. Just shy of fifty years old, I wanted to make sure if I wasn’t working at the office every day, I wouldn’t just be piddling my time away at home and driving my wife crazy. One of the first things … Continue reading Fifty States Quest – The Country Is Waiting
My friend Russ approached early retirement hobbies much smarter than I have financially. He performs with friends in a rock band and I’ve enjoyed our sports car and participating in performance driving events. While we’re both investing extra time into these hobbies that we enjoyed before careers and kids got in the way – I am investing a lot more money. In fact, I’m … Continue reading Hobbies That Cost, Hobbies That Pay
I had a nice visit to both of my former MegaCorp’s last week. I had lunch with a friend on Wednesday and attended a retirement send-off for another friend on Friday afternoon. On that second visit, an also retired buddy and I had the chance to wander around the hallways and see the old ‘haunts’. When we were there, I was talking with one former … Continue reading Dreaded Sunday Blues?
I published our FIRE Travel Framework a couple years ago and thought I would send out a link to it again today, as we have taken our big trips for 2018. Our budgeting for travel has worked out very well. We have been taking trips 4x a year – or roughly once a season since we stopped working: Sunny Winter Trips: Disney World, Los Cabos, … Continue reading Travel Framework Update – Bonus Trips
Last week my wife and I had the opportunity to visit an Amish settlement in southern Minnesota. We went on a three hour tour of Amish farms with a private guide who knew the families well and was welcome on their farms and businesses. There are about 800-900 Amish that live in the area on dozens of farms. It was really interesting to learn a … Continue reading Amish Approaches to Financial Independence
We watched the movie “The Italian Job” a few nights ago. It’s the heist movie where Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, and company steal and re-steal $35 million in gold bars. It got me thinking about the trend in gold prices since I last wrote this article almost 18 months ago: LINK – Gold: An Investment In Fear? Despite being considered an excellent hedge against inflation … Continue reading Time Yet For Gold?
The economy is performing about as well as one could hope at this point in time, but you wouldn’t know it to watch political ads on TV. Despite quarterly GDP growth reaching 4%, the S&P 500 up +30% over the last two years, the unemployment rate at 3.9%, and consumer confidence approaching all-time highs – every political ad is full of gloom & doom. Despite … Continue reading Mid-Term Elections – Plan For More Inflation?
