Bored at work? Have a dream? Looking for leisure? Just want to try something new? Maybe it’s all of the above. Your motivation for digging into early retirement doesn’t have to be pure or simple, and you don’t necessarily have to wait till you are financially independent. The Cubicle Conundrum The standard outsiders view of the F.I.R.E. community tends to boil down to escaping the rat race. If you are dissatisfied at work you might dream of the day you can just walk away. This may be a motivator for many early retirement dreamers, but I don’t think it’s the only one. It may not even be the most important.…
-
-
One Weird Trick to Double your Stock Market returns!
That’s right, I have the secret trick that will double your returns. It’s not clickbait, it’s not a scam, and I’m not going to make you wait till the bottom of the article to find out what it is. Here is the secret that the entire mutual fund industry has been fighting for over forty years. Do Nothing! Just buy and hold. You heard me. Do nothing. Don’t sell when the market is high, don’t sell during a market crash to limit losses, don’t buy when the market is low, don’t keep a reserve of cash to use when stocks are on sale, just buy an index fund and hold…
-
Triple Your Food Budget!
There are a lot of naysayers in the personal finance space that scoff at the idea of giving up your $5 cup of coffee to build financial security. The $5 coffee seems to be the target of many F.I.R.E. bloggers. Why do we spend so much time on such a small thing? Because small things add up to big things! What does $5 get you? The $5 coffee or $5 breakfast sandwich adds up to about $100 per month if you are only buying during workdays. Since we are talking about retirement here the opportunity cost of the $5 is about that much less you can invest. Now of course…
-
Mortgages on F.I.R.E.
How do I choose between a 15 year mortgage and a 30 year mortgage? Does the F.I.R.E. philosophy change the game? How the Game is played In general, the more you can invest in high growth rate index funds the better off you are. This is especially true if you are a standard investor with a 30 to 40 year investment horizon. In the standard timeline you are likely better off taking a 30 year mortgage and investing the rest, than you would be taking a 15 year mortgage and investing less while you pay off the mortgage. In a long timeframe strategy, the compounded growth of the extra investments…
-
Part Time Work as Strategy
How do you bridge to pivot projects, let your nest egg grow, and de-stress your life all at the same time? Go part time and get a head start on all your pivot projects even earlier. The accumulation phase During your accumulation phase years, you are working full time and saving your pennies for the future. There are at least four things happening during that time. You are saving and investing part of your money You are allowing your nest egg to grow You are learning to control your spending by living on less than you earn. You are aging Adjustments that increase your savings rate will both increase your…
-
F.I.(ish) P.E.E. from another angle
I became interested in the early retirement movement as a consequence of a rising sense of dissatisfaction with my job. It seems a bit ungrateful no matter how I look at it. I have a very good job, doing important work. Nevertheless I have a hard time doing the same thing day in and day out. Gratitude So what is the solution to mid life blues? I think having options is a good start. Having a sense of gratitude for what I have now is another piece to the puzzle. I have a great life, a wonderful wife, and good children. In nearly all ways I’m already a very rich…
-
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…
-
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…
