Our lower level is being used as a branch office for the small software development company that our son works at. He’s been doing the COVID-19 ‘Work From Home’ approach since he started working back on June 1st, after he moved home as a new college graduate. We’ve tried to give him his own space and not bother him too much during office hours, but … Continue reading Bring Your PARENTS To Work Day
Our house is our single biggest investment and one that needs lots of care and maintenance. We’ve lived in our house for 11 years now and it feels like there is always something that needs work. I analyzed it a couple years ago, and the ‘experts’ say that homes require somewhere in the range of 1%-3% of the value of a home in ongoing annual … Continue reading Bless This House – Ongoing Repairs
Just a short post today. The weekend was SO busy I am actually happy it is Monday. That’s the way things go in early retirement – the weekends can be so packed with entertainment that Monday is the first time in 3 days that you can catch your breath! This weekend was busy because it was our son’s birthday on Friday and we were also … Continue reading Thank God It’s Monday
Monday Night Football celebrated its amazing Fiftieth Anniversary this week and I enjoyed all the clips of Howard, Frank, and Dandy Don. Plenty of people want to ‘boycott’ the NFL this season, but I’m not going to get into that here. When I was a kid in the 1970s and early-1980s Monday Football was a big deal. I remember doing a speech about how popular … Continue reading Monday Night Football
I recently listened to an interesting podcast with investor Peter Schiff of Euro-Pacific Capital. He’s the guy that earned the title ‘Dr. Doom’ when he correctly forecast the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession. He wrote a book about it two years before it happened. Schiff – a self-described libertarian capitalist – did a 3 hour interview with Joe Rogan recently. He raised … Continue reading Bubble Economy?
Last fall, my friend, neighbor, and reader, Jeff, was retiring from his MegaCorp job and told me about a retirement plan he came up with to visit every State Park within three hours of our town. It was one part of his ‘Not Bored List’ and a good cross-training endeavor since he is also a marathon runner. Related: Pre-FIRE ‘Not Bored List’ I’ve never been … Continue reading Hiking Into Fall
It seems life gets more luxurious the older you get. An online question on the ‘fatFIRE’ Facebook Page, prompted a lot of discussion of things that were viewed as luxuries when we were growing up in the 1970s/early-1980s. These were the things that made you say ‘cool!’ if you saw them at someone’s house when you were a kid. I certainly thought a car with … Continue reading 40 Luxuries From The 1970s
I love cars, but I hate car dealers. Unfortunately, it seems that over-engineered, unreliable electronics are making us more reliant on dealer service than ever. That makes cars more costly than ever. Related: Sports Cars: ‘Every Day This Man Takes A Vacation’ Our sports car recently suffered a blow to its stereo/navigation system. I stopped at the grocery store a couple miles from our house … Continue reading Taken To The Cleaners – Dealer Service
People make investments out of many things that they enjoy as hobbies – classic cars, antique watches, sports memorabilia, and other collectibles. I have a lot of collections of things, but I’ve never viewed any of them that way. One of the biggest collections we have is LEGO models & sets. I have many sets from when I was a kid and we’ve bought & … Continue reading Colorful, Collectible Bricks
My son and I returned to the movie theater this past Monday for the first new feature we had seen since late February. It was strange and novel to be back in front of the big IMAX screen with 100 decibel sound for Christopher Nolan’s time-travel thriller, Tenet. We love going to movies and see about 30 new ones a year. Most are in theaters, … Continue reading The Great Movie Return
