My son suggested today’s topic: What is the best form of entertainment for your dollar? As a family, we talked about a few things: books, music, theater, sports, movies, television, and games. Books emerged from our conversation as our #1. As a family, we started a ‘Summer Reading Club’ at the beginning of summer and I’ve read a record 5 books in 4 months. My … Continue reading Best Entertainment For The Dollar?
My first boss taught me the old adage “if you don’t measure it, you can’t do anything about it.” I have to admit that I am pretty fanatical about counting & analyzing things. It made me effective as a business leader and helped me focus on what was needed to reach early retirement. Just because there isn’t a daily sales sheet or budget to focus … Continue reading Pandemic Spring/Summer Activity
We voted today. Our state allows early voting and we zipped through the polling station without any delays. Now we can ignore the cacophony of competing TV commercials, lawn signs, and Facebook posts. Four years ago, I wrote a post about the 4 things the new President and Congress could focus on to best help retirees. They are all problems the government themselves created. Predictably, … Continue reading What The New President Should Focus On
Our lower level is being used as a branch office for the small software development company that our son works at. He’s been doing the COVID-19 ‘Work From Home’ approach since he started working back on June 1st, after he moved home as a new college graduate. We’ve tried to give him his own space and not bother him too much during office hours, but … Continue reading Bring Your PARENTS To Work Day
Our house is our single biggest investment and one that needs lots of care and maintenance. We’ve lived in our house for 11 years now and it feels like there is always something that needs work. I analyzed it a couple years ago, and the ‘experts’ say that homes require somewhere in the range of 1%-3% of the value of a home in ongoing annual … Continue reading Bless This House – Ongoing Repairs
Just a short post today. The weekend was SO busy I am actually happy it is Monday. That’s the way things go in early retirement – the weekends can be so packed with entertainment that Monday is the first time in 3 days that you can catch your breath! This weekend was busy because it was our son’s birthday on Friday and we were also … Continue reading Thank God It’s Monday
Monday Night Football celebrated its amazing Fiftieth Anniversary this week and I enjoyed all the clips of Howard, Frank, and Dandy Don. Plenty of people want to ‘boycott’ the NFL this season, but I’m not going to get into that here. When I was a kid in the 1970s and early-1980s Monday Football was a big deal. I remember doing a speech about how popular … Continue reading Monday Night Football
I recently listened to an interesting podcast with investor Peter Schiff of Euro-Pacific Capital. He’s the guy that earned the title ‘Dr. Doom’ when he correctly forecast the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession. He wrote a book about it two years before it happened. Schiff – a self-described libertarian capitalist – did a 3 hour interview with Joe Rogan recently. He raised … Continue reading Bubble Economy?
Last fall, my friend, neighbor, and reader, Jeff, was retiring from his MegaCorp job and told me about a retirement plan he came up with to visit every State Park within three hours of our town. It was one part of his ‘Not Bored List’ and a good cross-training endeavor since he is also a marathon runner. Related: Pre-FIRE ‘Not Bored List’ I’ve never been … Continue reading Hiking Into Fall
It seems life gets more luxurious the older you get. An online question on the ‘fatFIRE’ Facebook Page, prompted a lot of discussion of things that were viewed as luxuries when we were growing up in the 1970s/early-1980s. These were the things that made you say ‘cool!’ if you saw them at someone’s house when you were a kid. I certainly thought a car with … Continue reading 40 Luxuries From The 1970s
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