We’re having a very snowy month in Minnesota. We’ve gotten over two and a half feet in the last couple weeks and have cracked the list of the State’s ‘Top Ten Snowiest Months’. This is still with 8 days left in the month and two snow systems lined up to come through in the next week with more wintery fun. Flashback: Frosty, Frigid Fun – … Continue reading Plowing Through Time Wasters
When I was a kid, I enjoyed many beautiful summer days inside watching game shows and sitcom reruns. I watched so much TV, my older brothers would joke that I had a ‘TV tan’. While I played organized sports – baseball, football, and basketball – I was more the indoor-sy kind of kid and happy to plop down in front of the screen. I guess … Continue reading The Sun Always Shines on TV
I’ve been late in ‘closing the books’ for our finances in 2018. With tax preparation season on us, I’ve spent a few hours this week trying to figure out exactly where things ended last year so that I can effectively pull together our tax statements. I also taken opportunity to recalculate the historical probabilities of our overall FIRE plan. The financial markets ended 2018 badly … Continue reading Recalculating FIRE Odds
Yesterday morning, I got up about 45 minutes before we left for church. That was plenty of time to get ready, have breakfast, and even shovel most of the snow off the driveway before we left. When I was working, I would get up 30 minutes before I had to leave and that meant I was always rushing around. Fifteen extra minutes makes quite a … Continue reading An Extra Fifteen Minutes Each Morning?
We live in Minnesota where the winters are pretty dark & cold. January is the toughest month for brutal weather and this past week we had temperatures that exceeded Antarctica for their frigidity. Schools closed. Businesses closed. Even the USPS shut down. And me? I got out and enjoyed the nastiness! You can’t change the weather, so you might as well enjoy it. Rather than … Continue reading Frosty, Frigid Fun – Not Hiding Inside
After an ugly close to 2018, the financial markets have leapt off to a strong start in the new year with the S&P 500 up almost 7% year-to-date. While many of the economic issues that lagged the market are still unresolved, the bulls are running on Wall Street again. It’s amazing that in just 20 days, the market has gained back all of last year’s … Continue reading Inflation Expectations – Up or Down?
We’re enjoying a sunny trip in the Caribbean right now with our son who is off from college. We left right after New Year’s, so I never got a chance to look at our final spending numbers for 2018. That said, I ran across this interesting chart from JP Morgan’s Consumer Expenditure Survey that looks at how much people spend annually as they get older, … Continue reading Lower Spending As You Age
The week between Christmas and New Year’s have always been one of my favorites. I used to always take the week off of work – and enjoyed time off of school before that. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever held any responsibilities between the start of Christmas Eve and the last play of the New Years Bowl Games. Three years ago, just before I … Continue reading Between Christmas & New Year’s Day …
One of the things that I’ve learned about early retirement is that you have to make your own ‘current’. You can’t expect to be carried along with hundreds of other people by the the ‘stream’ that comes with the highly-planned cadence of work or school. I wrote earlier this year about the schedule I keep from day-to-day in this POST. I also noted that it’s … Continue reading A Year In Beer – Dive Bar Tuesday
Last month, I fell short of my monthly walking goal for the first time since I stopped working 30 months ago. My goal is 12,000 steps a day and I’ve reached at least that many steps whether sunny, rainy, cold, or snowy until I averaged just 11,755 in October. Related: Fitness Activity in Early Retirement I could have probably jumped on the treadmill for ~75 … Continue reading Walking In A Winter Wonderland
