Happy Halloween! Candy prices are up this year, but we’re still splurging on the full-size chocolate bars. We switched to the big bars 10 Halloween’s ago – the year I early retired. My AI research tool thinks that the price of Halloween candy has roughly DOUBLED since 2016, so you might think we’re cutting back. No, our stock market investments have gone up … Continue reading Happy Halloween Splurge
What is your “worry free” spending limit? A cup of coffee? A bouquet of flowers? A restaurant steak? A new golf driver? When we got to a certain net worth, I recall thinking that anything under $20 or so was basically “free”. That is, even if spent every day, $20 wasn’t enough to materially impact our financial trajectory over the longer term. It was … Continue reading Worry Free Splurges
Splurging has been a theme in these posts recently, and what better place to put that into practice than Las Vegas. I spent 4 nights in Vegas two weekends ago and did my best to put a small dent into our savings. First, I arrived earlier than my buddies and checked myself into the resort spa for a massage. Next, I gambled worry-free on … Continue reading Speedy Splurge
The 2025 stock market has been a case study in “follow the bouncing ball”. We were up (inauguration), down (“liberation day”), way up (tariff pause & lower interest rates), and now not up as much (China issues). The volatility with Trump isn’t unexpected given his history, but it has been quite a financial ride in 2025. When we returned for the first time in 6 … Continue reading Follow The Bouncing Ball
I am waking up in Las Vegas today – realizing that I didn’t post any thing yesterday. I was busy spending money and making bad bets here in Sin City / Glitter Gulch and certainly don’t have any helpful personal finance advice from that experience! When I went to the Flamingo Hotel gift shop to buy a T shirt or a deck of cards as … Continue reading Work Anniversary in Las Vegas
I’m on a flight from FL to MN right now and ran across this interesting survey from Empower, an investment company. I thought it did a good job showing how people are thinking about their financial lives & retirement. Link: Empower Study Overall, I’m generally pleased when I see how people are thinking about retirement, even if their actual behavior falls quite short. Like nutrition, … Continue reading Empowerment Retirement Survey …
Kids are expensive. Parents are always excited when their kids grow up and are finally ”off the payroll”. Still, when we are together with our son, we always tell him, “it’s on us”. We’ve been blessed financially. We also only have one child. He’s a smart guy and handles his money well. As a result of all of these things, it’s very easy for us … Continue reading It’s On Us …
If you get guys of a certain age together, they’ll start talking about how they need to get rid of their old vinyl records. I have a buddy who is moving this weekend and after giving his adult kids anything they wanted, he ended up donating the rest of his LPs to the local thrift store. I’m in a similar situation. I was the Music … Continue reading Mr Zero
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