Personal Finance Archives - Page 10 of 10

November 5, 2018January 22, 2022

Part 1: The CC Family Investing Strategy:

Philosophy and Asset Allocation

We’ve spoken now in shades of vagueness about our investments and investing strategy. We’re focused first and foremost on simply getting folks to save more. Begin with allocating the majority of your effort to increasing the gap between money in and money out. Slowly chip away, with a goal of spending less than half of your income. If you can make step-changes in this area, you are light years ahead of most Americans, and frankly most humans. So yeah, start there.

…We’re focused first and foremost on simply getting folks to save more.

The next element of this game is getting your new-found savings to start making money for you. Your traditional savings and checking accounts are not your friend. With an average interest rate on a typical savings account at 0.08% APY (!), your money is losing value over time as your courageous dollar fights a valiant, but fruitless battle against the tyrant forces of inflation (current inflation rate is around 2%). Remember, goods and services today will cost more next year. You either need more income or higher interest rates on your savings, just to keep up!

October 29, 2018December 8, 2018

In Pursuit of Passion: Chuck and Maggie Odette

For those unfamiliar with the climbing world, climbers — perhaps more than any other sport participants — routinely restructure their lives in very unconventional ways to pursue the sport more fully. As we’ve discussed here and here, in the U.S. at least, this usually means taking on an increasingly mobile existence — sans house/apartment/permanent dwelling — and instead living in a van, pull camper, or some other makeshift shelter on wheels.

Today we want to highlight Chuck and Maggie Odette, one of many climber couples living this lifestyle. What’s different though is that they’re sort of doing it all in reverse. Instead of hitting the road and blowing off traditional life in their 20’s or maybe 30’s, Chuck and Maggie are now in their 60’s and 40’s, respectively, and are incredibly talented climbers who have retired early to live the climbing life.

October 22, 2018November 29, 2018

Holier Than Thou: Why It’s Hard to Talk About Money

Discussing finances in America is about as appealing as using a rotary tool to cut your over-thickened and rotted toenails. I’ve never done that and my toenails are blue ribbon winners, but it sounds unappealing.

We’ve struggled over the past few years with sharing this major shift in our lives and what it means for our futures. One of the primary reasons for starting this site was to provide a platform to more deeply explain our philosophy and financial strategy, because frankly nobody wants to talk about money.

October 8, 2018May 6, 2020

On Deprivation: Food

The first response we usually get (or sense) when explaining the concepts behind financial independence – and in particular frugality – are that we must be depriving ourselves of “the lives we deserve” by being in a higher income bracket yet choosing to spend so little money. Instead of waxing poetic about the philosophy of simple living, let’s start with some examples of what we consider low-hanging fruit in the hierarchy of unnecessary spending.

“I love eating out, so I’m happy regularly spending money in restaurants.”

September 8, 2018December 22, 2018

The Goal of Clipping Chains: Linking Up Personal Finance and the Climbing World

Two facets of my life that keep me fully engaged are rock climbing and personal finance. I’m guessing you’ve come to this site because you are more interested in one of these seemingly unrelated subjects than the other, but I’ll slowly, hopefully, make the case that there are valuable lessons to learn from my experiences in wading deep into either respective…pool?