A couple of weeks ago, I brought up the idea of negative interest rates with my nine-year-old daughter, Faith. Yes, this might be something a little weird to talk about with your kid, but it piggy-backed off of our personal finance class during homeschooling. And of course, I kept it pretty high-level. I had kept it simple talking about how banks pay interest to people who store their money there. The banks then take that money and loan it out …
I recently completed a transfer of our health savings account (HSA) from Health Equity to Fidelity. Today, I want to tell you why I made this move and explain the process. First off, if you aren’t familiar with health savings accounts, they’re one of the most valuable accounts you can have in your arsenal. I’ve talked about how an HSA is the best bang for your buck in that the account belongs to you and not your employer. Unlike a …
We Moved Our Health Savings Account to Fidelity! Read More »
By early 2017, we had finally built our net worth up to over a million dollars. It was a great feeling to reach that milestone, but it didn’t really change things for us – we just continued to follow our plan. When I left my job at the end of 2018, we had a net worth of about $1.1 million and, thanks to the bull market still pushing ahead, it’s roughly $1.2 million right now. I’ve written a few posts …
I’m only 43 years old right now (Ok, fine – I’m pushing 44!). But this is still prime time to continue on with my career. If I were to keep working, I could build up an even bigger and more secure nest egg. So why don’t you do that? Why did you leave your job and retire early? Are you stupid or just lazy? Haha, talk about cutting to the chase! I actually love when others ask me questions about …
Why Not Keep Working and Saving? Are You Stupid? Read More »
Another day where the personal finance community helps each other out. This time it was with my very own coin collection. As we’re continuing to prepare for our big move to Panama later this summer, we’re cleaning house as much as we can. Between selling, giving away/donating, and trashing all our stuff, we’ve been plenty busy. Eliminating the big stuff like furniture has been nice. It’s been pretty quick to go on OfferUp and frees up tons of space. We …
My nephew recently started reading this blog and it got me thinking. What would be valuable information for him as a reader? What do I wish I knew when I was younger? He’s almost 20 years old and he just started a career in construction probably close to a couple of years ago. At his age, I know I wasn’t very smart financially. Don’t get me wrong – I thought I was, but looking back, I made some stupid decisions. …
8 Financial Tips I Wish I Knew When I Was in My 20’s Read More »
Retirement money is definitely something you shouldn’t be gambling with. But hey, it’s only your future on the line… what could go wrong? I admit it – I love gambling. That’s not something you’d expect to hear from a blogger in the personal finance community, but it’s true. I’m not an avid gambler – I just enjoy some table games or video poker at a casino every now and again. Sometimes I’ll even throw a little bit at a periodic …
After last week’s post on the breakdown of our net worth, I thought it might be a good follow-up to provide more detail on our drawdown plans… a part II, if you will. “Why?”, you might ask.* I realized that there aren’t a lot of folks in the trenches talking about this subject. Many FIRE sites talk about the strategies of getting to the point of early retirement. However, it seems like there aren’t too many that talk about actually drawing …
I’ve been considering providing a breakdown of our net worth for a while now. I’ve held off for a couple reasons though: For some reason, this isn’t very common for many bloggers to do. We seem to consider this to be sacred territory and almost taboo. I’ve been making a lot of changes and wanted to let the dust settle a little before talking about this. Well, I love breaking taboo – if you’d ask my friends, they’d tell you …
The Breakdown of Our Net Worth Savings & Investments Read More »
One million dollars. It’s the coveted goal for many. Maybe it’s something you think is way out of reach. Or maybe you’re on the other side of the spectrum and close to it or even long surpassed that number. Regardless, one million dollars just seems to be a good round number in our heads to strive for reaching. In fact, it’s a number that many folks have had as their target number for financial independence or retirement for decades. You …
