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?
I read through a good online discussion of retirement spending/investment probabilities this weekend. Someone was asking early retirees in a forum if they felt a 90% probability of out-living your retirement nest egg was enough, based on a online calculator like FIREcalc. I’ve written about FIREcalc probabilities before and using Monte Carlo analysis to help pressure test your FIRE plan. It is a great tool. … Continue reading Is 90% ‘Good Enough’ Odds?
My son suggested today’s topic: What is the best form of entertainment for your dollar? As a family, we talked about a few things: books, music, theater, sports, movies, television, and games. Books emerged from our conversation as our #1. As a family, we started a ‘Summer Reading Club’ at the beginning of summer and I’ve read a record 5 books in 4 months. My … Continue reading Best Entertainment For The Dollar?
My first boss taught me the old adage “if you don’t measure it, you can’t do anything about it.” I have to admit that I am pretty fanatical about counting & analyzing things. It made me effective as a business leader and helped me focus on what was needed to reach early retirement. Just because there isn’t a daily sales sheet or budget to focus … Continue reading Pandemic Spring/Summer Activity
We voted today. Our state allows early voting and we zipped through the polling station without any delays. Now we can ignore the cacophony of competing TV commercials, lawn signs, and Facebook posts. Four years ago, I wrote a post about the 4 things the new President and Congress could focus on to best help retirees. They are all problems the government themselves created. Predictably, … Continue reading What The New President Should Focus On
