Is selling online courses a legitimate side hustle? How do I find the right course? Testing the waters With four or five years to go before I start seriously considering a mid-life pivot, I am testing the waters on side hustles. My first side hustle sort of fell into my lap. I heard about a college that needed a teacher for a course in my field and pretty much got the job as soon as I expressed an interest. This second side hustle will require a little more hustle. Choosing a course I wanted to create a course that would be valuable and at the same time not rehash something…
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Book Review: How Much Can I Spend in Retirement?
by Wade Pfau This book is very narrow in scope but highly detailed. It is an in depth look into withdrawal rates for retirees who have chosen to invest most of their wealth in the stock market. This is an exceptional resource for the standard F.I.R.E. investor with a large nest egg in index funds. If you want to go deeper into the origin, and rationale of the venerable 4% rule then this is the book for you. Insights I found the discussion early in the book about different types of risk to be quite useful. How do you best balance your investment and withdrawal strategy to hedge against not…
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Pivot 1: Online Teaching
My first foray into the world of the side hustle is online teaching. I am currently a medical physicist working full time at a cancer center. Last year I got an opportunity to teach physics to students in my field for a college in Washington state. Thing is, I live in Alaska, so the whole thing was done online. The money was not great per hour the first year, but with the initial investment of time already over, I can teach the same course next time without all the startup costs of planning lessons, writing assignments, etc.. In fact I am considering pre-recording my lectures next time I teach, so…
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Book Review: WSJ Complete Retirement Guidebook
The Wall Street Journal Complete Retirement Guidebook was published in 2007. It is a good overview of the issues that a soon to be retiree needs to consider. The book is split into two sections. The first one is about planning out what you want your retirement to look like. The second is about the money. Strengths The book has a very broad set of information. It goes into not just money issues but also the psychological and social aspects of retiring. The stories of successful and unsuccessful retirees are also valuable. Weaknesses This book suffers a bit from being overly broad in its subject matter. It does not delve…
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A deep dive into F.I.(ish) P.E.E.
The original F.I.(ish) P.E.E. post was too short to explore all of the subtle nuances of F.I.(ish) P.E.E. theory. So here are some more ramblings. On the spectrum For each of the major components of a retirement plan you need to be comfortable with the level of risk you are taking. If you have no appetite for risk in a certain category you will need to compensate for that by using worst case math. Categories include longevity risk, sequence of returns risk, volatility risk, etc. For instance, the 4% rule was built on a worst case scenario to hedge against exceptional sequence of returns risk. If you retired just before…
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F.I.(ish) P.E.E.
Smash the 4% rule! Forget FIRE! Retire even earlier with F.I.ish P.E.E.! So here I am starting yet another FIRE blog. I’m sure this one will stand out from the crowd. If not, then it will at least help me formulate my own FIRE plans. Unfortunately I caught FIRE a bit late. I’m currently 42 and my retirement account contains about four times my projected retirement spending. So after reading all the FIRE blogs I’m starting to think “Gosh darn, them young whippersnappers is retired already? I’m missing out!” To make things more complicated I have a wife and six children, the youngest of which just turned two. So what…
