Since we are coming up on the end of June – the mid-point of the calendar year – that makes it a good time to look at market performance and see how our portfolio is performing so far in 2018. In short, it has cooled off significantly from last year, although that’s to be expected given the blazing returns posted in 2017 when the S&P … Continue reading Mid-Year Market Musings
It’s been almost a year since I published this POST about shopping for our next SUV and our “7 rules” to maximize our purchase. Just today, I am finally signing the papers on our next set of wheels. After a few stops & starts, I finally got serious about finding our next SUV last month when we had a $2.8K breakdown. I had kept putting … Continue reading Car Shopping – Patience Pays
We went to dinner at a local taco fast food place recently and they had me sign for my credit card on an iPad – the kind that many small businesses use nowadays. Prior to signing however, there was a screen where you could select a tip amount to add to the bill – $0, 10%, 15%, 20%, or more. The counter-service employee pretends to … Continue reading Are We Becoming A Nation Of Beggars?
My friend Russ posted this profound and entertaining mock graduation speech on LinkedIn last week. I hadn’t seen it before – although it has appeared it many popular forms over the last twenty years. Originally a Chicago Tribune column by Mary Schmich from June 1, 1997, the advice to new graduates quickly became a sensation. First shared virally through email, the column was made into … Continue reading Graduation & Life Advice “Wear Sunscreen”
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
