We find ourselves thankful for so many things this year as the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend arrives and we get together with family & friends. Three years ago I was putting the final plans for our FIRE escape into place before early retiring. Our relatively free & independent lifestyle since then has been amazing. I was reading about the Mayflower Pilgrims and other early colonial … Continue reading Thankful Thanksgiving
Last week Americans voted in the midterm elections, which yielded a ‘comeback’ for Democrats and a split legislature in Washington DC. The media weren’t sure what impact that would have on investors, with MSNBC publishing two articles (within hours of each other) stating that the likely government gridlock was both the BEST and WORST thing that could happen to Wall Street. A week later is … Continue reading Mid-Term Elections – Historical Impact on Investors?
How do you manage your spending with your spouse? How do you ensure that your spending is ‘fair’? Do you use combined accounts? Separate accounts? A hybrid approach? Today, I thought I would share the approach that Mrs. Fire Station and I use, which leverages a unique concept we named “Sunshine Funds”. First, all of our income and spending have always come out of one … Continue reading Sunshine Funds – Budgeting Our Individual Fun Money
I just came across a couple interesting articles about envisioning your early retirement and saving for early retirement and how those two things relate to each other. The first article, from MoneyWatch relates the top ten words that MIT researchers heard from people when they think about “life after their work careers”. They are pretty fun words that do a good job of describing the … Continue reading Getting Your Eyes On The Prize
Tomorrow is Election Day. It far exceeds April Fool’s Day in terms of the number of people who get pranked! A lot of this year’s focus continues to be on health insurance, so with November Open Enrollment now here, I thought I would take a quick look at what premiums we are likely to pay in 2019. I titled this post as a ‘First Take’ … Continue reading Health Insurance for 2019 – First Take
If you follow personal finance news at all, you may have recently seen Suze Orman making headlines by throwing up all over the FIRE (financially independent & retired early) movement. When it comes to FIRE, she says she “Hates it. Hates it. Hates it.” and it may be the “dumbest personal finance decision” people can make. I’ve written before about Orman’s highly suspect financial expertise and … Continue reading Really BAD Financial Advice
I didn’t buy a ticket for this week’s $1.7B MegaMillions lottery. While I love the basic idea of getting a chance to be an instant billionaire, doing the math on the odds spoils the fun for me. While now commonplace, lotteries are certainly one of the most interesting social concepts of all. “Let’s have tens of millions of people put a small amount of money … Continue reading Did You Play The Lottery This Week?
It’s hard for me to keep up with all of the promises I made myself when I early retired from MegaCorp a few years ago. Just shy of fifty years old, I wanted to make sure if I wasn’t working at the office every day, I wouldn’t just be piddling my time away at home and driving my wife crazy. One of the first things … Continue reading Fifty States Quest – The Country Is Waiting
My friend Russ approached early retirement hobbies much smarter than I have financially. He performs with friends in a rock band and I’ve enjoyed our sports car and participating in performance driving events. While we’re both investing extra time into these hobbies that we enjoyed before careers and kids got in the way – I am investing a lot more money. In fact, I’m … Continue reading Hobbies That Cost, Hobbies That Pay
I had a nice visit to both of my former MegaCorp’s last week. I had lunch with a friend on Wednesday and attended a retirement send-off for another friend on Friday afternoon. On that second visit, an also retired buddy and I had the chance to wander around the hallways and see the old ‘haunts’. When we were there, I was talking with one former … Continue reading Dreaded Sunday Blues?
