Splurging has been a theme in these posts recently, and what better place to put that into practice than Las Vegas. I spent 4 nights in Vegas two weekends ago and did my best to put a small dent into our savings. First, I arrived earlier than my buddies and checked myself into the resort spa for a massage. Next, I gambled worry-free on … Continue reading Speedy Splurge
The 2025 stock market has been a case study in “follow the bouncing ball”. We were up (inauguration), down (“liberation day”), way up (tariff pause & lower interest rates), and now not up as much (China issues). The volatility with Trump isn’t unexpected given his history, but it has been quite a financial ride in 2025. When we returned for the first time in 6 … Continue reading Follow The Bouncing Ball
I am waking up in Las Vegas today – realizing that I didn’t post any thing yesterday. I was busy spending money and making bad bets here in Sin City / Glitter Gulch and certainly don’t have any helpful personal finance advice from that experience! When I went to the Flamingo Hotel gift shop to buy a T shirt or a deck of cards as … Continue reading Work Anniversary in Las Vegas
I’m on a flight from FL to MN right now and ran across this interesting survey from Empower, an investment company. I thought it did a good job showing how people are thinking about their financial lives & retirement. Link: Empower Study Overall, I’m generally pleased when I see how people are thinking about retirement, even if their actual behavior falls quite short. Like nutrition, … Continue reading Empowerment Retirement Survey …
If you get guys of a certain age together, they’ll start talking about how they need to get rid of their old vinyl records. I have a buddy who is moving this weekend and after giving his adult kids anything they wanted, he ended up donating the rest of his LPs to the local thrift store. I’m in a similar situation. I was the Music … Continue reading Mr Zero
I’ve always been more “indoorsy” than “outdoorsy”. Growing up, I was more at home in the library than at a campfire. Still, early retirement gives you the time to try new things. Five years ago, a friend got me started on visiting MN state parks. Each year – usually in the autumn – I’ve gone on a road trip to visit & hike in a … Continue reading Unlikely Outdoorsman
About a week ago, I got this provocative fortune in a cookie at a Chinese restaurant. It’s not often that you get interesting admonitions from Panda Express, but this one got us talking. My wife and I couldn’t think of many things that we had done that were “scary” over the last 5-10 years (a blue moon is once every 30 months, on average). … Continue reading Scary Fortune
The website, Ooma, recently published this interesting infographic comparing the states for the cost of living for retirees. They used 9 different dimensions for their ranking It’s a looooong infographic, so I broke it into key components so you can see the comparisons more easily. How does your state compare? I wasn’t surprised to see that our primary home state of Minnesota ranked in … Continue reading Retirement Cost of Living
My brother and I used to joke at frequency of news articles declaring something to be “America’s Fastest Growing Sport”. Every new sport seemed to claim the title, including disc golf, ultimate, handball, roller hockey, ‘slam ball’, and arm wrestling. I’ve played a lot of those sports, but Pickleball might be the current fastest-growing sport – and the one that breaks through with lasting, mass … Continue reading Fastest Growing Sport?
Just a quick post this morning. I wanted to share this data I just came across in the Wall Street Journal. If you want to feel good about how your retirement savings are going, just compare your savings with these mean & median figures from across the USA. I’m guessing if you found your way to this site, you are running well ahead of the … Continue reading Mean & Median Net Worth
MrFireStation 