I’ve been late in ‘closing the books’ for our finances in 2018. With tax preparation season on us, I’ve spent a few hours this week trying to figure out exactly where things ended last year so that I can effectively pull together our tax statements. I also taken opportunity to recalculate the historical probabilities of our overall FIRE plan. The financial markets ended 2018 badly … Continue reading Recalculating FIRE Odds
Yesterday morning, I got up about 45 minutes before we left for church. That was plenty of time to get ready, have breakfast, and even shovel most of the snow off the driveway before we left. When I was working, I would get up 30 minutes before I had to leave and that meant I was always rushing around. Fifteen extra minutes makes quite a … Continue reading An Extra Fifteen Minutes Each Morning?
A few years ago, returning from a trip to Scotland, we found that we paid a substantial premium on some Scotch we bought there. Instead of getting a bargain for buying it at the distillery and bringing it all the way back to the US, we paid about 40% more the experience. So, on our recent cruise in the Caribbean, we decided we would to … Continue reading Booze Cruise Bargains?
Our son’s J-Term from college ended yesterday. He’s been out of the classroom since just before Christmas and will be starting his Spring semester today. It’s hard to believe the he’ll be finishing his Junior year in a few months and he has already started to interview for summer internships. I thought this might be a good time to look back on how the 15 … Continue reading College Savings / 529 Plan Check-In
We live in Minnesota where the winters are pretty dark & cold. January is the toughest month for brutal weather and this past week we had temperatures that exceeded Antarctica for their frigidity. Schools closed. Businesses closed. Even the USPS shut down. And me? I got out and enjoyed the nastiness! You can’t change the weather, so you might as well enjoy it. Rather than … Continue reading Frosty, Frigid Fun – Not Hiding Inside
We are back from our Winter vacation in the Caribbean and that means it’s time for us to preparing for tax time. We promised our accountant that we would connect with her as soon as we got back from our trip as there are so many changes to the tax code that she wanted to get paperwork from us as soon as we could. The … Continue reading Changing Tax Deductions
After an ugly close to 2018, the financial markets have leapt off to a strong start in the new year with the S&P 500 up almost 7% year-to-date. While many of the economic issues that lagged the market are still unresolved, the bulls are running on Wall Street again. It’s amazing that in just 20 days, the market has gained back all of last year’s … Continue reading Inflation Expectations – Up or Down?
We just returned from a wonderful two weeks in New Orleans and a Caribbean cruise. Our son is off of college this month on ‘J-Term’, so we took a very early spring break when he has time to enjoy it with us. It wasn’t all ‘No Responsibility January’ however, this was a busy trip with a lot of walking and some fun adventure activities. One … Continue reading Climbing Into The New Year
We’re enjoying a sunny trip in the Caribbean right now with our son who is off from college. We left right after New Year’s, so I never got a chance to look at our final spending numbers for 2018. That said, I ran across this interesting chart from JP Morgan’s Consumer Expenditure Survey that looks at how much people spend annually as they get older, … Continue reading Lower Spending As You Age
With the New Year underway, I thought it would be a good time to give an update on our (very) small Bitcoin investment that I have written about several times. Reading the headlines, you would assume that the bottom has fallen out of the cryptocurrency market. Like many things, that is a matter of perspective. Each morning, I get a notification on my iPhone signaling … Continue reading Bitcoin – Has It Dissolved Yet?
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