I like to tell my son – “my turn running the world is over, it’s your responsibility now.” With Biden now in office, I started looking at what impact the Democratic Party proposals might have on our household. I sold a lot of stock options for cash last year to get ahead of potential changes in tax rates, but that cash will only last so … Continue reading No Impact From Washington DC?
I just got this notification from WordPress that it has been 6 years since I started babbling nonsense through this blog. In January 2015, I still was 14 months from quitting my job and living a life of nonsense. This writing project was inspired as a way to perhaps help others think through their journey to early retirement. I found very few longer-form descriptions of … Continue reading Six Years Of Nonsense
Count us among the very, very lucky in 2020. Amid the craziness of a deadly pandemic, global race riots (that started in our metro area), and a rancorous Presidential election, we stayed healthy and our retirement nest egg did much better than expected. Last night I went through our year end numbers and updated the spreadsheet I use to track our portfolio. We’ve been enjoying … Continue reading 2020: A Most Unexpected Result
It’s always interesting to see what articles people responded most to at the end of the year. Some posts connect with current events, some were linked to by bigger websites, and some are perennial favorites. have several thousand hits. Top 2020 posts … 1. Time To Put Off Retirement? – This early-pandemic post (April 2020) pondered if it was a still a good time to … Continue reading MrFireStation’s Top 10 Posts in 2020
I took this cool picture on a hike with my friend, Russ (also retired), last week in a nearby state park. We took a number of hikes over the last few weeks on day trips away from our metro area – grabbing lunch at little places we came across. Former colleagues, we both recalled how busy MegaCorp used to be in December. As the last … Continue reading Enjoying The Amazing View
The writers at Kiplinger’s sometimes talk about retirement in three phases: the ‘go-go’ years, the ‘slow-go’ years, and the ‘no-go’ years. The phases relate to how capable people are to travel, take on new hobbies, and lead an active lifestyle. They break out the ages like this: ⁃ Go-Go Years: Ages 65-75 ⁃ Slow-Go Years: Ages 76-85 ⁃ No-Go Years: 86-100 It makes sense when … Continue reading When Does ‘Go-Go’ Become ‘Slow-Go’?
I don’t understand the stock market anymore and in the short term, I’ve decided to give up. As the Dow Jones bounces around 30,000 and the Schiller S&P 500 PE sits above 33 (average is 16), nothing makes sense to me. We are still in a global pandemic – the economic fallout of which isn’t fully understood yet – aren’t we? I called our financial … Continue reading Cashing Out From Confusion
It has been an interesting year for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin just topped its all-time high this week at almost $20,000 – up 1.6x from last year at this time. The private, all-digital currency still has its skeptics, but it is getting broader acceptance among financial services companies and institutional investors. The pandemic may be remembered as Bitcoin’s coming of age. I wondered back in April if … Continue reading Bitcoin’s Coming Of Age?
Is there anyone more interesting & successful in the business world right now than Elon Musk? Really – I am in awe of this guy and all he is accomplishing. The sad thing, is that I bet ‘against’ him three years ago and can’t believe how wrong I was. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Musk is flipping 4 entire industries on … Continue reading The Worst Stock Bet I Ever Made
Last week I reached another milestone in my early retirement journey. I called the MegaCorp HR Service Center – for the first time in years – and started the enrollment process for retiree benefits. In 2021, I will turn 55 and become eligible to start tapping into the retirement benefits that I accrued over the course of my career. I worked at this MegaCorp for … Continue reading Ringing Up MegaCorp
