This site often seems like a brag-fest to me. Many of the posts are about how I did this well or did that well. Of course, I have had my successes and they are worth learning from. But as we've seen now and then, I've also made a lot of mistakes. Fortunately these have been limited in number and not that large. But they do happen and are just as worthwhile to learn … [Read more...]
My Response to the Equifax Breach
Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past couple weeks you've heard that the credit reporting company Equifax was hacked. If this is new news to you, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. You can find details as well as recommended solutions from the FTC. In this post I'm going to detail what we did in response to this nightmare. Equifax Is Evil Before we get … [Read more...]
Retirement One Year Anniversary Update
Can you believe it's been a year since I retired? It seems like it's been longer (in a good way). My last retirement update was at six months and from here on out I'll probably only have annual reviews (maybe every six months if something exciting happens). To make this summary easier to read, I've put my thoughts into categories. Here's what's happened since my … [Read more...]
Kids, Cars, and How I Got a 2008 Forester for $10
I thought I'd give you all an update on the car situation around the homestead since it seems to be a growing part of our lives. :) To get everyone up to speed, we made our kids an offer to get a new car. Details can be found in Kids and Car Incentives. My daughter took the challenge, my son didn't (he opted for the matching program -- he saves for a car and we match what … [Read more...]
2017 Financial Resolutions Update
Today I'm giving a mid-year update on the 2017 money resolutions I shared in January. It's been a busy year so far and I've made quite a bit of progress. To make things simpler, I've divided the original list of 16 resolutions into three categories below: "Completed", "In Progress", and "To Be Done". Here we go... Completed Earn extra money. I had a $4,000 "plug" … [Read more...]
We Spent 17% of Our Income
The other day I was listening to a podcast where the person being interviewed was talking about living on 25% of her family's income. The implication was they saved 75% of what they made. But I don't think that's the entire story. She said her percentages were based on "take home pay". Immediately I started doing the numbers in my head -- what did that really mean? I … [Read more...]
The Value of an MBA
In The Value of Growing Your Career: A Real-Life Example I mentioned that getting my MBA was one of the vital moves I made to grow my income. Separately, I was listening to an Afford Anything podcast about careers and the issue of return rate on various career investments came up. They were talking more about seminars, training, and the like, but the same principle applies … [Read more...]
My Jobs, An Interesting Transition
Last time I shared some of my career history I left off when my company had a big downturn. Today I continue this series by giving details on the next position I held. As you recall, the company was doing poorly at a key time period and the blame was being placed on my shoulders. At the same time, a few other things were going on: As I mentioned in the last post, … [Read more...]
The Value of Growing Your Career: A Real-Life Example
In the course of writing the follow-up post to How to Go from Zero to Millionaire, Part 1 I ran a boatload of numbers on Quicken (thankfully I have 22 years of data saved) and recorded my earnings by year (for the years I didn't have, I knew my first starting salary and estimated from there until I got to the point where I had data). I'll be continuing that series with part … [Read more...]
Explaining Early Retirement to Strangers
Last fall I shared responses I received from people when I told them about my early retirement. These were family members and friends -- people I know well (of course.) They know me and our family and while they may have been surprised, it wasn't a total shock given what they know about us. But there's an entirely different dynamic when you explain early retirement to … [Read more...]
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