I met a friend of my wife’s at the garden center this past Monday morning who retired a few years ago after 30+ years at a local MegaCorp. We were talking about the negative fortunes both our former employers have shown in their stock price. Both companies have seen much better days – down 25-40% from their peak a few years ago. He knew a … Continue reading MegaCorp Stock – Trading on the Familiar
Our son graduated from high school in 2016 and we let him choose a big international trip to mark the occasion. No surprise that the boy who grew up loving Nintendo, Pokemon, and electronics chose Tokyo! I’ve written a couple posts about it – packing for the trip & Japan’s unique retirement perspective – but I never have done a destination guide to the sites. … Continue reading FIRE Travel – Electric Tokyo, Japan
We had a chilly and wet weekend here in Minnesota. Since our seasons are so extreme, we count on nice summer weather June through August before weather slides into fall and winter. With rain almost all day yesterday and temperatures in the 50s when we went to the garden center today, quite a few people were grumbling. Last night, the ‘weather elf’ on our local … Continue reading ‘Unfortunate Work Week’ – For Who?
This past week, I had the chance to host a table at a ‘New Alumni Breakfast’ with 170 graduating seniors at the same high school I graduated from back in the 1980s. My son also graduated from there a couple years ago and I got asked to be involved in the Alumni Association when I stopped working. One of the ‘table questions’ the students were … Continue reading FIRE Advice for New Graduates
With Memorial Day over, we are now officially into summer travel season. We have a couple of fun trips planned for this summer – to the Holy Land & Petra in July and Toronto, Canada in August. We generally plan our trips out 3-9 months in advance depending on how adventurous the trip is. Like last summer, I’ll post some additional destination guides to places … Continue reading Summer Travel – Rudy Maxa Thoughts
Mortgage rates are in the news again as the average rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage reached 4.6% this week. It was the highest the rate has reached in the last 7 years – up 0.7 percentage points from where they were at last year. Fifteen year rates are also up – reaching 4.15%. These rates are still incredibly low relative to what they … Continue reading Paying Off Your Mortgage As Rates Rise
Like many early retirees, I worked ‘One More Year’ (OMY) beyond what I had originally planned. I was enjoying work and I had an idea to work OMY exclusively to raise money for a charitable fund. It was an idea that I originally wrote about three years ago in this POST. When I did leave MegaCorp for the final time, we had set aside my … Continue reading One More Year / Angel Fund Update
My friend that snowbirds in Florida during the Winter came back to MN a few weeks ago. We are now three tennis matches and three softball games into early summer. The activities we enjoy each week are inevitably capped with a cold refreshment and often with a visit to a new restaurant/pub. We’ve been to 30+ different places over the past few years! We were … Continue reading Hazy Recollection of MegaCorp
It’s been almost a year since I published my initial post on cryptocurrencies and I thought it would be a good time to provide an update on how our foray into this Wild West of personal finance has advanced – and what I’ve come to believe about their benefits and the confusion around them. PORTFOLIO STATUS If you read the headlines, you may believe that … Continue reading Update – Is Bitcoin a Bust or Bounty?
This weekend is the annual city garage sale in our suburb where the Lion’s Club organizes hundreds of sales as a fundraiser. Yesterday morning there were charter buses, 12 passenger vans, and pickups loaded with stuff bought at these sales all around the city. Related: Garage Sales – Our Old Crap Can Be Your New Crap We have good friends from college that have made … Continue reading Finding FIRE at Garage Sales
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