Investments

Book Review: Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence

Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence

2 Comments / Product and Service Reviews, Debt, Education, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Investments, Real Estate, Saving, Self-Employment, Spending, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

I don’t normally write book reviews on this blog, but I’m making an exception for the new Choose FI book.  I was expecting my opinion to sway one way with the book but my impression after reading it went in a completely different direction. Chris Mamula is the author of Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence (along with coauthors Brad Barrett and Jonathan Mendonsa).  If you’re not familiar with Chris, he retired in 2017 at the young age of […]

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Do Low and Negative Interest Rates Scare You?

12 Comments / Saving, Investments / /

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

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We Moved Our Health Savings Account to Fidelity!

25 Comments / Investments / /

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

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How to Get a Million Dollars for Your Nest Egg

How to Get a Million Dollars for Your Nest Egg

14 Comments / Saving, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Motivation, Real Estate / /

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

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Why Not Keep Working and Saving? Are You Stupid?

42 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving, Spending / /

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

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That Day I Sold My Coin Collection to J. Money...

That Day I Sold My Coin Collection to J. Money…

23 Comments / Investments / /

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

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8 Financial Tips I Wish I Knew When I Was in My 20’s

16 Comments / General Thoughts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Health and Fitness, Investments, Kids, Life in Early Retirement, Motivation, Real Estate, Saving, Self-Employment, Spending / /

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.

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My Gamble with $691k in Retirement Money

20 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

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

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The Drawdown on Investments - Our Game Plan

The Drawdown on Investments – Our Game Plan

14 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Spending / /

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

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The Breakdown of Our Net Worth Savings & Investments

The Breakdown of Our Net Worth Savings & Investments

19 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving / /

I’ve been considering providing a breakdown of our net worth for a while now.  I’ve held off for a couple of reasons though: Well, I love breaking taboo – if you’d ask my friends, they’d tell you how I tend to say things that seem inappropriate, but are usually what everyone is thinking.  It might be some stirring the pot but it gets some good conversation going! When our net worth hit the $1 million mark back in 2017, a

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