I guess it is a good time to be a retiree living off investments. Wall Street is loving the CV19 rebound and loose money policies of government & central banks. The S&P 500 is now up an amazing 83% since last year’s CV19 low point on March 23rd, 2020. Globally, stocks are at an all time high. Still, forgive me if I’m more than a … Continue reading Negative Outlook Amid The Exuberance
Someone posted a curious question about real estate investments in an online forum this week. They wondered if anyone had ever reached a financially comfortable early retirement “without investing in real estate”? They held the hypothesis that real estate is one of the primary routes to FIRE (financial independence & retired early). I thought the question was a bit odd. While I always surmised that … Continue reading Added Real Estate Investment Risk?
No long post today! Just a remembrance that today – April Fool’s Day – is the fifth anniversary of my FIRE escape from MegaCorp. Five years – has that gone fast! Related: Last Day EVER At Work There will be no ‘service anniversary’ gift to pick out of the MegaCorp premium catalog today. I have a few clocks, a watch, and telescope from anniversaries past. … Continue reading Anniversary Gift is Time
Right on schedule – an amazing 32 years after starting at MegaCorp – pension and retiree health insurance information have arrived just before my 55th birthday. It’s like a golden piggy bank that was hidden away years ago has made a triumphant return. Related: Ringing Up MegaCorp I still have to dig into the health insurance information a bit, but the immediate surprise was that … Continue reading MegaCorp Pension Arrives
Americans have been cash-poor for decades leading into the pandemic last year. It seems that using credit – mortgages, student loans, car loans, and consumer credit – have just become an unfortunate part of American life. Related: Debt Has Spread Like Virus With the pandemic, people are spending less on discretionary things like travel and eating out and the government has sent out several rounds … Continue reading A Tale Of Two Charts
You can’t go from the Midwest to Florida in the winter – for any length of time – and not have people ask if you are getting ready to buy a place down here. We’ve been down here for 5 weeks now and that has brought us 35 days closer to coming up with a more permanent Snowbird plan. We’ve really clicked with the Florida … Continue reading Kicking Off ‘The Florida Project‘
It’s been a little more than 5 years since we started our Angel Investing Fund. The goal was to use the money that I made in the last year of my work career and do some good in the world. We called it our “One More Year Fund”. I made 6 Angel investments for our OMY Fund over the first 3.5 years. All of the … Continue reading Angel Investing – 2020 Update
We went to Walt Disney World on Wednesday morning and spent the day at one of our favorite places …. EPCOT Center. Before we left our rented townhouse, I peeked at my daily FaceBook ‘Memories’ which included this unforgettable post from exactly 5 years ago … The funny this is, I had forgotten it. You would think like a birthday or anniversary, you would remember … Continue reading Suddenly … Five Years
We just arrived in Florida for our ‘No Responsibility February’. I took this picture with my camera drone above Melbourne Beach on a beautiful 75-degree day. We visited with some Minnesota friends that are staying here with a beautiful ocean view. Leaving cold high-tax Minnesota for sunny low-tax Florida inevitably brings up the “should we move to Florida for 6 months and a day?” conversation. … Continue reading Sunny Skies & Lower Taxes
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?
