I was honored to have our journey to FIRE (financial independence & retiring early) featured in our suburban magazine this month. My friend, Samantha, suggested they interview me for a feature in their December issue because people that ridiculously walk away from a perfectly good career before they are 50 are pretty unusual. 🙂 I tried to use the opportunity to help people see that … Continue reading Our Journey To FIRE
Last month, I fell short of my monthly walking goal for the first time since I stopped working 30 months ago. My goal is 12,000 steps a day and I’ve reached at least that many steps whether sunny, rainy, cold, or snowy until I averaged just 11,755 in October. Related: Fitness Activity in Early Retirement I could have probably jumped on the treadmill for ~75 … Continue reading Walking In A Winter Wonderland
We’re Sam’s Club members and just before Thanksgiving, I stopped in to quickly return something. I was glad I hadn’t bought anything that day, because the line to get OUT of the store was an incredible sixteen carts long. Both Sam’s and Costco require customers exiting to have their receipts checked by store employees by the door. I always felt that this practice was ineffective … Continue reading Warehouse Club Time Wasters & Lies
We find ourselves thankful for so many things this year as the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend arrives and we get together with family & friends. Three years ago I was putting the final plans for our FIRE escape into place before early retiring. Our relatively free & independent lifestyle since then has been amazing. I was reading about the Mayflower Pilgrims and other early colonial … Continue reading Thankful Thanksgiving
Last week Americans voted in the midterm elections, which yielded a ‘comeback’ for Democrats and a split legislature in Washington DC. The media weren’t sure what impact that would have on investors, with MSNBC publishing two articles (within hours of each other) stating that the likely government gridlock was both the BEST and WORST thing that could happen to Wall Street. A week later is … Continue reading Mid-Term Elections – Historical Impact on Investors?
How do you manage your spending with your spouse? How do you ensure that your spending is ‘fair’? Do you use combined accounts? Separate accounts? A hybrid approach? Today, I thought I would share the approach that Mrs. Fire Station and I use, which leverages a unique concept we named “Sunshine Funds”. First, all of our income and spending have always come out of one … Continue reading Sunshine Funds – Budgeting Our Individual Fun Money
I just came across a couple interesting articles about envisioning your early retirement and saving for early retirement and how those two things relate to each other. The first article, from MoneyWatch relates the top ten words that MIT researchers heard from people when they think about “life after their work careers”. They are pretty fun words that do a good job of describing the … Continue reading Getting Your Eyes On The Prize
Tomorrow is Election Day. It far exceeds April Fool’s Day in terms of the number of people who get pranked! A lot of this year’s focus continues to be on health insurance, so with November Open Enrollment now here, I thought I would take a quick look at what premiums we are likely to pay in 2019. I titled this post as a ‘First Take’ … Continue reading Health Insurance for 2019 – First Take
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?
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