While we really love the house we live in right now, financially it certainly falls into the category of financial failures. When we designed and built it, we thought we were being really clever, but I don’t think we could get back for it today what we paid for it almost 7 years ago. Here’s the story – one of a series of financial failures … Continue reading Financial Failures On The Way To Early Retirement / House Value
Deciding to retire early, just before I turned 50, certainly makes me a bit counter-cultural in terms of expectations for how long one works. I have estimated before that only about 1 in 20 workers (5%) in the United States retire at 50, and the average age of retirement is sixty five. Since we are traveling right now in Japan (I am writing this on … Continue reading Changing Japanese View of Retirement
I read a few versions of this story online recently and thought I would share a cleaned-up version of it. It highlights both the incredible cost of small bad habits to our journey toward financial independence and retiring early (FIRE) and the self-righteousness that some “geniuses” apply to other people’s decisions – forgetting that personal finance starts with the word PERSONAL. The example here is … Continue reading Parable of Saving: Where’s Your Ferrari?
The question I hear the most after four full weeks of early retirement is “is every day just like a weekend now?” The answer is both a “yes” and “no”. I would say overall, Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday continue to hold their special status as the best days of the week. Weekends continue to be great because there is a lot happening around town … Continue reading Everyday Is Weekend In Early Retirement?
Last week I published a post that discussed the ‘honeymoon’ phase of retirement and included a chart on the phases of retirement (from Forbes.com, sourced to Dr. Sara Yogev). While I certainly feel like I’m in the honeymoon phase now – after just a few weeks away from the office – I went to the forums on Early-Retirement.org to see what some more ‘experienced’ early … Continue reading Never Ending Honeymoon?
Last week was my first week of early retirement. It was great fun, but at the same time quite strange to be home all week, while all of my (former) colleagues continued to work. As I wrote last week, it really felt like I was ‘skipping school’ – in full view of my classmates and the teachers. While my wife was out of town and … Continue reading Stepping Into Early Retirement – Initial Observations
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