No, that’s not the Ghost of Christmas Future in the picture today. That hooded AI villain is supposed to represent a cyber-attack! MrFireStation seems to have been attacked last week over Thanksgiving. Helpful reader and Doberman-like guard dog, Klaus Wentzel, noticed last week that his comments have been blocked. I found them in a “pending” bucket. He wondered if website traffic had ground to a … Continue reading Under Attack?
Just a quick post this morning to share this chart I came across from Visual Capitalist. I’m sure most readers here understand the difference between “mean” and “median”, but the gap between these is pretty shocking. I’m sure many would look at the “median” column and think they are doing OK. The fact is that half of these people are in a tough place if … Continue reading Mean vs Median Wealth
My sister-in-law posted this on Facebook last night and I found myself nodding with everything on the list. For us, early retirement has been a major enabler for all 7 of these “luxuries”. Plenty of time to live, more focus on keeping fit / playing sports, no work stress, sleeping in each morning, traveling without a care, home improvements as a spare time hobby, and … Continue reading Seven Things To Be Thankful For …
We went to my Mom’s senior center apartment on Saturday and enjoyed walking around a Holiday Boutique they were hosting. One of my brothers was there, too. While I was there, I took care of a couple bills she had. My Dad passed away last year and I became the primary “money guy” for my Mom. I had started taking care of their checkbooks, … Continue reading Long Term Care & Insurance
One of the terrific things about having a place in Celebration FL – the “town that Disney Built” – is that we have a regular stream of friends, family, and acquaintances that are regularly swinging by Walt Disney World for vacation. This past week we met up with a MegaCorp friend who comes to WDW pretty often. They retired to Florida, but live about … Continue reading It’s A Small World
We’re still learning what it’s like to have two places — one in Minnesota and one in Florida. It’s funny how different the same place can feel depending on why we’re here and how long we stay. Sometimes a trip to Florida feels like a vacation. We don’t really settle into a routine — we just enjoy the sunshine, check out favorite restaurants, and maybe … Continue reading Two Places, Two Speeds …
A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to tag-along with a farmer friend, Andy, during his corn harvest. It was a beautiful October day and I took the above picture with my drone. The crew of 3 knocked out about 50 acres on that a single day – roughly 500,000 pounds of corn. Most of that corn, he told me, will eventually make … Continue reading Fields Of Fuel
My Grandparents (on my Mom’s side of our family) lived most of their lives in Racine, Wisconsin. My Mom was born Racine, married my Dad there, and I was born there with my 3 brothers. Racine is a great little city on Lake Michigan, but unfortunately, like a lot of blue-collar Midwestern cities, it has struggled as a small city since the 1960s. It has … Continue reading Rising Tide Regions
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
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