Funding the Adventurous Life
Frugality is an endearing element of saving money and living the good life. But interestingly, the recent discourse in personal finance circles has seemingly shifted to embrace spending over saving. What is going on, how did this happen, and why should we care?
Continue reading “What Happened to Frugality?”
We often use spending in an attempt to gain admiration and respect from our peers. Here’s why it doesn’t work and what we can do instead.
Continue reading “A Quick Note for Those Struggling with Spending”
Hi. Good morning. How are you? I’m excited this week to bring you a much more in-depth analysis of the Roth Conversion Ladder, a method used to spend retirement money early without penalty and with little to no tax burden. I’ve already talked about this method here, here, and here, but I decided this very important topic needed its own special post.
Changing subjects momentarily, I get a real kick out of directly translating ridiculous American expressions in other languages. For instance, when in a German grocery store in 2018, I suddenly wondered if German lovers addressed each other as honig, the German word for honey.
Honig! I’m home!
See, isn’t that fun?
This week we will investigate the intricate web of methods designed to spend the money you’ve saved. It’s not all milch und honig.
Continue reading “The Bold And Beautiful Roth Conversion Ladder”
Hey guys. I know that 2020 was a hard year. And 2021 only seems like a continuation of that trend. It’s easy to throw up our hands or hunker in a ball, suck our filthy, calloused thumbs, and wait. But that’s not the solution.
Despite everything that happened in 2020, the S&P 500 returned over 18%. For those of you with money in the market back in the late February and March, I hope you held your breath and squeezed your butt cheeks while the sky was falling. During that time the S&P 500 fell over 30% from its recent highs, with several pucker-inducing drops of 10%+ per day! For those who stuck to the plan and avoided market timing, you did just fine.
For instance, someone with $1 million dollars invested on January 1, 2020 ended the year with approximately $180,000 in gains for doing nothing other than owning an index fund. That’s real, folks. Of course, we have to pay tribute to the inevitable years this will not be the case (where we could lose just as much as we made), but over time, history shows us that the market returns approximately 7-10% per year, on average.
These are the simple little things that we did every year. The result? We were able to walk away from paid work in our 30s.
Does financial freedom appeal to you?
Here’s how we can set the ball rolling in 2021.
Continue reading “Your 2021 Guide To Actually Saving Real Money”
We’re out on the road in search of our next home, our sights set on home ownership once again. In this post we examine the complicated process of relocation and the sticky, tangled spiderweb of housing affordability. Is housing in America becoming less and less affordable?
In this post we discuss:
The following are fictional narratives of many of the character traits, decisions, and habits that either my wife or I have exhibited, or those observed or communicated by readers of this website. Let’s examine together some of the many common scenarios where young people set the ball rolling on a path to destroying their finances.
Continue reading “How to Destroy Your Finances in Your 20s and 30s”
The often-touted rule-of-thumb for achieving financial independence is to secure 25 times one’s annual expenses via intentional saving and investing. Even though these are simple systems, we know from the second or third grade that multiplying things by 25 produces much bigger numbers than the thing itself (our spending in this case). Therefore, it seems absolutely outlandish to imagine saving that much money! Outlandish, I tell you!
So, as with many difficult endeavors in life, the tendency is to focus too narrowly on the distant target, and then immediately get overwhelmed. And in doing so, we may never start in the first place. Behaviors remain unchanged; the status quo is preserved.
How can a series of simple systems be implemented to change our lives forever?
Continue reading “The Simple Systems to Kicking Monetary Ass”
Throwing on a jacket, I hurriedly move wide-eyed about the house, gathering my crap strung aimlessly in seemingly every room. Let’s see, it’s a gym day, so I need my gym bag, chalk bucket, climbing shoes, and post-session snack. Damnit, where are my keys?! IT’S TIME TO GO!!
Ugh…honey, can you fill up the dog’s water? LOOK, I’M JUST ASKING FOR ONE SIMPLE FAVOR!!
Yes, love you too. I’m sorry I raised my voice. Kisses?
Sound familiar? Busyness, often worn as a badge of honor, is one of the prime reasons folks struggle to spend less. This is particularly true when it comes to food. Yes, spending less often requires front-end planning and action, preparing meals in advance for easy and quick deployment later. Below we examine the often-ridiculous fallacy of busyness and offer six ways anyone can free up more time to live better and spend less.
Continue reading “But There's No Time to Save Money!”
I promised at the end of our post on spending tracking that we’d also be addressing and tracking one’s net worth. I’m a man of my word, so here we are.
Net worth is defined as total assets minus total liabilities (debt). Simple enough right, so why the post?
First, there’s some nuance involved in the categorization of assets and debt.
Second, and most importantly, despite the relative ease in calculating net worth, I speculate that very few have taken the time to calculate their own. Guys, forget early retirement. Failure to take note of the reality of your finances can leave you very much hosed by the fatty knot of life. Deliberate attention and a hard look at “normal,” however, can flip the script. There’s no better time than today, and we’re here to help.
Continue reading “Net Worth: It’s Really Going to Matter…Someday”
I realize that only some small subset of the folks who end up on this website are likely to pursue financial independence. It’s not for everyone. But if we can make a single small impression on you, dear reader, it would be to invest time in tracking your spending. It doesn’t matter if you are clawing your way out of debt or nearing retirement in your late 20s, you must know exactly how much money is being spent. The more specific you can be in tracking your spending, the more power you have in making change.
Continue reading “Tracking Your Spending: The Ultimate Task”