This is the second of two posts that detail the eight dimensions on this ‘Life Wheel’ that I developed just before early retiring from MegaCorp two years ago. It is a long answer to the most common question I get these days: “What do you do to stay busy?” Last week, I covered the first 4 sections of the wheel in this POST. Today, I … Continue reading FIRE Second Anniversary – Life Wheel Update (2)
Some people complain about the inefficiency of government, other people complain about the inefficiency of working for a big company. I’ve been spending hours dealing with the nexus of both of these time wasters in getting my income taxes together before the April deadline. Last year, I spent more than 20 hours on the phone trying to straighten out what day I left MegaCorp the … Continue reading MegaCorp Nonsense Doesn’t End in Retirement
A friend of mine’s daughter got married last summer and I was shocked to hear that the wedding was costing $35,000. It turns out that is close to the average cost of a wedding in 2016 according to a website called, TheKnot.com. I don’t remember how much our wedding cost 28 years ago, but while it was a beautiful day, we certainly didn’t break the … Continue reading Financial Analysis: How Many Years of Work Does A Wedding Cost?
I retired much earlier than most people. I was 49 years old, just two weeks short of my 50th birthday. As I talk with people about early retirement, I find that most people don’t really know how early is ‘early’. The average retirement age in the USA is 62. That’s a bit higher than it was a few years ago, it’s also a bit lower … Continue reading Are You Retiring ‘Early’?
There’s something about the term ‘millionaire’ that still captivates people’s imagination. Even as Forbes released their annual list of the world’s ‘billionaires’ (spoiler alert: Jeff Bezos, $100B), people are still excited about accumulating 1/100th of that amount. I’ve noticed that many of my top read articles over the last three all have ‘millionaire’ in the title. Maybe as the world’s richest move into billionaire territory, … Continue reading Aspiring Millionaires In A Billionaire World
If there was ever a poster child for modern society’s affluenza of over-consumption, it would have to be self storage garages, right? People have SO much stuff that they can’t fit it into their homes – despite the average living space doubling over the last 40 years. A friend and I met for lunch recently at a wickedly greasy steak place and he talked about … Continue reading The World of Self Storage Garages
Many people think of the stock markets as being owned by fat-cat rich people like Mr. Monopoly. I recently ran across an ARTICLE on Business Insider with a great chart showing how much ownership of the $25T US market has changed over the years. You can see there has been a significant democratization of US equities with a tremendous share of company ownership in employee … Continue reading Who Owns The Stock Market?
Today we have a Guest Post from Tom “FIRE” – a FI blogger who reached out to Old Mr. FireStation to see if he could share a little Millennial experience with our readers. Tom’s website is FIREdUpMillennial.com. His experience with getting too deep in credit card debt in your twenties is very familiar to my wife & I, and he offers a great approach to get out … Continue reading Guest Post: How I Saved Money on My Credit Card Debt with a Personal Loan & Lessons I Learned Along the Way
We had some new friends over for dinner on Saturday night and I, of course, got lots of questions about how we retired before we turned 50. The husband figured that I made some amazingly, lucky investment that paid out like we had won the lottery. He asked what our special investing strategy was and I told him I pretty much just invest in S&P … Continue reading Callan Periodic Table – Fascinating, But Useless?!
We made it to Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis yesterday and the experience was absolutely electric. Having the NFL’s biggest event hosted in your own hometown is an incredible experience and we enjoyed all of the week’s activities – concerts, exhibits, celebrity sightings, and the big game itself (which USA Today is calling the best Super Bowl ever!). If you are a sports fan, this … Continue reading Super Bowl Indulgence & Everyday Frugality
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