This is the final weekend to work on your income taxes. April 17th is the deadline this year because the 15th falls on a Sunday and the 16th is a District holiday in Washington. We filed our taxes earlier this week. We finally got the right paperwork from MegaCorp – whose bureaucracy still operates as it did in the 1990s. The cost of running the … Continue reading A Shocking Comparison for Tax Day
Some people complain about the inefficiency of government, other people complain about the inefficiency of working for a big company. I’ve been spending hours dealing with the nexus of both of these time wasters in getting my income taxes together before the April deadline. Last year, I spent more than 20 hours on the phone trying to straighten out what day I left MegaCorp the … Continue reading MegaCorp Nonsense Doesn’t End in Retirement
At the end of the year, the media is full of retrospectives on the top news events and celebrity stories, so with that in mind, I set my thoughts to what are the biggest news happenings that have affected people on their journey to financial independence and retiring early (FIRE) in 2017. Here’s my list (in no particular order) … TRUMP BUMP – The stock … Continue reading Top 7 FIRE News Stories of 2017
December is always a crazy month in the office. I had the fortune of visiting MegaCorp yesterday and be reminded of what an unusual month it is. It had been quite a while since I had been back in the old digs. I saw the daily calendar printout of one of the people I was meeting with. He was back-to-back with 8 or 9 meetings … Continue reading Christmas Time At MegaCorp
No words of wisdom from the FIRE Station this morning – just some interesting numbers to put your journey to FIRE into some perspective: AGING 50% of Americans are retired at age 63 18 years is the average length of retirement 13% of the US population is over age 65 today 6.1K Americans turn 65 each day 10.K Americans retire every day 55% of Americans … Continue reading Numbers To Put Your FIRE Journey In Perspective
I visited with a friend over a beer last week and we discussed a lot of things, including – inevitably – national politics. As I wrote in my election day post about what the next President needs to do, I argued that the most important issue is government out of control spending. Rein in the spending, and you rein in the government. My friend argued that it … Continue reading FIRE Politics – Seize The Rich?
Regardless of your politics, you can’t help but notice the discussion around minimum wage that has been on the news over the last year. I won’t make this post political, but at the risk of great blogging danger, I wanted to share some information I researched (as part of my Sociology class) that describes who minimum wage workers are. Afterall, many people start their journey … Continue reading Minimum Wage Jobs – Worker Profile
On Sunday’s CBS 60 Minutes, they reported that 82% of likely voters are more disgusted than excited for the election. Regardless of your politics, neither candidate gets high marks for trustworthiness and there is a lack of confidence that the country is heading in the right direction. On this day before Election Day, I thought I would comment on the four key things that will … Continue reading What The New President and Congress Need To Address
Summer is over and I’m reflecting today on how quickly it seemed to go by. I thought time might slow down in early retirement, but it turns out that it feels about as quick as when I was working full time. While I certainly have more time, it still cruises by unexpectedly fast. The change of seasons seems to heighten the speed of life. I … Continue reading Time Cruises In Early Retirement
For today’s Mr.FireStation post, I decided to turn the space over to my 18 year old son who starts his freshman year of college on Wednesday. Just as MRS FireStation posted her perspective on our early retirement a few weeks ago, I thought it would be interesting to hear from the other member of our nuclear family. “What does your Dad do for a living?” … Continue reading “What Does Your Dad Do For A Living?”
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