Well, it’s Thanksgiving week and I’m not really sure what I should be doing. I’m not one to get bored, I just don’t know where I should spend my time. Normally at this point of the year, I’m spending time getting our Christmas tree up (2019 picture above), putting white lights up outside, shopping for the Thanksgiving turkey, and making plans for the friends/neighbors party … Continue reading Thanksgiving & Holiday Lockdown
Late at night on Halloween a notification came through on my watch that didn’t make sense: a PayPal billing alert. It said that I had a charge from eBay for $71. I buy a lot of things oddball things on eBay, but I couldn’t recall anything quite that expensive. When I looked, I saw a I had paid a recurring fee to eBay for 5 … Continue reading Paying Attention?
Last week I reached another milestone in my early retirement journey. I called the MegaCorp HR Service Center – for the first time in years – and started the enrollment process for retiree benefits. In 2021, I will turn 55 and become eligible to start tapping into the retirement benefits that I accrued over the course of my career. I worked at this MegaCorp for … Continue reading Ringing Up MegaCorp
A MegaCorp colleague that I’m friends with on Facebook just posted that she had reached her 39th work anniversary. Amazing – 39 years! I was a bit surprised as I thought she had retired soon after I did. Her & her husband had moved to Florida, so I figured she had moved on. Apparently she is just working ‘remotely’ at the job she … Continue reading Colleagues Clocking Forward
It was unusually warm this past week in Minnesota with sunny weather in the 70s. That never happens in November and we’ve been ‘living outside’ every day. Tomorrow it looks like we get back-to-normal in a hurry with a cold front dropping the temperatures into the 30s with rain quickly turning to snow. In Minnesota, it’s not an exaggeration to say these might be the … Continue reading Minnesota Winter / Florida Sunshine
The old saying goes “put your money where your mouth is” and I have a friend who has been betting his political analysis/opinions on the interesting website ‘PredictIt’ this week. As you can imagine, he’s had a wild week! While I made a few friendly wagers (a bottle of wine or 6-pack of beer) with some buddies on the outcome, my friend put major $$$ … Continue reading Betting The Presidency
With the Presidential election this week, I thought I would do a quick portfolio check to see where our retirement portfolio is sitting before the markets react. It seems a big enough change-point, that I would keep track of where we are at – at this moment in time. The good news is that despite the pandemic sell-off in March, we’ve weathered the 2020 storm(s) … Continue reading Election 2020 – Where Are We At?
I always think of the few weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving as relatively ‘quiet weeks’ relative to the holiday hoopla that comes in December, but it is a very busy time of the year for board work. It seems that every board I’ve worked with picks these same few weeks to get in quarterly meetings before the end of the year. Board work has been … Continue reading Board Meeting Busy Time
If you’re not familiar with the name Bill Bengen, you probably are familiar with his work. Back in 1994, he published his Trinity Study suggesting that a 4% withdrawal rate of retirement savings would be ‘safe’ for most retirees, based on historical financial returns. Bengen – now long retired himself – has been in the news updating his thoughts on the ‘4% Rule’, as he … Continue reading Optimistic Update To The 4% Rule
We’ve been retired for over 4.5 years now and I find myself surprised that it has been that long. People still say I seem too young to be retired, but when you consider it’s almost been 50 months since I went to work at MegaCorp … it feels ridiculous. Where has all the time gone? I find myself really unable to account for the last … Continue reading Where Does The Time Go?
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