My top-recommended retirement book is How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?. It's written by my friend, Todd Tresidder, who blogs at Financial Mentor, and it's simply excellent! In fact, it's good enough to make my list of the only five money books anyone needs to read as well as be one of the 12 books that can make you a financial expert in a year. The book was … [Read more...]
Retirement Update: 3.5 Years
Here we are again -- time for another retirement update where I share what's going on in my life! For the record here's the last one. You may want to read it as some of the items mentioned in this post will assume you know what's in the former post. The past three months have been full of excitement, so let's get to the details! Life I spent a lot of time with my … [Read more...]
How I Lost Five Years of Early Retirement by Not Having a Plan
Here's another one of those "mistakes I made" posts that I like to do every once in a while. It has the added benefit of being a New Years resolution sort of post, which I simply love. :) Doing "mistakes posts" helps me (and ESI Money readers) remember that I'm not always the perfect money manager that this site often seems to make me out to be. In addition, it shows … [Read more...]
Our Meeting with Two Financial Planners
As noted in My Third Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar, my wife and I accepted an invitation to meet with Dustin (financial planner) and Gregg (Chief Investment Officer) from Accelerated Wealth. They had done an impressive enough job at the presentation to convince us it was worth an hour, plus I had a few questions I wanted to run by them, so why not? In … [Read more...]
My Third Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar
I know, I know. I'm starting to get hooked on these things! Ha! In case you haven't been following along, I've written about the first and second direct mail retirement seminars my wife and I have attended. After the second one, I didn't know if we'd go to another one, but turns out we did! I'm glad we did since this was a good one for a few different reasons. But … [Read more...]
Why I Bought Rockstar Finance After I Retired
Here's a fun post I think you're going to enjoy. I liked rereading the article since it was like visiting a bit of history. As many of you know, I bought a financial curation website called Rockstar Finance at the end of 2017. I worked on it for a bit over a year, growing and monetizing it, then sold it for over twice what I paid for it in March 2019. Since then, … [Read more...]
My Second Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar
When I wrote My Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar (and the associated post How to Prepare in Advance for a Great Retirement) I noted I had accepted an invitation for another retirement seminar. I attended a second one for a couple reasons. First, I was surprised by how good the first one was. Perhaps I had mistakenly stereotyped these as spammy, hard-sales … [Read more...]
The Top 10 Factors to Consider Before Retiring
I've recently been to two retirement planning seminars (one I've already posted about in My Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar and the second coming soon). After thinking about what the events offered and how financial advisors use these seminars to solicit new customers, I think I have a great idea for planners looking to court the soon-to-retire crowd. That … [Read more...]
How to Prepare in Advance for a Great Retirement
When I wrote My Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar I promised that I would do a separate post on the main presentation they gave us at the seminar. This is that post. In between arriving at the event and the Q & A at the end, the majority of our meeting time was a presentation titled "Retire on Purpose." Basically it's a summary of what you need to … [Read more...]
My Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar
Have you ever received a solicitation in the mail to attend a "retirement seminar"? We get them ALL THE TIME! They look like the sleaziest things you can imagine (if you read between the lines) -- post cards offering a free meal at a local restaurant in exchange for hearing a presentation about a given retirement topic. Most of them look like they are trying to sell … [Read more...]
