On paper, Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) is a simple concept – spend less than you earn, grow your savings gap, optimize your taxes, invest your savings, and wait for your money to compound over … Read more

On paper, Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) is a simple concept – spend less than you earn, grow your savings gap, optimize your taxes, invest your savings, and wait for your money to compound over … Read more

How I Am Clearing $59,973.72 of Debt and Overhauling My Finances The Thrifty Issue is under new management! I’m Stephamie, and I will be sharing my debt journey, frugality tips, side hustles, all of it. In the past few years, I had some health and mental health issues, was unemployed for a period of time […] The post New Management + Financial Journeys Clearing Debt, Creating Side Hustles and Financial Freedom appeared first on The […]

Yup. It sounds crazy, but it can work. A low-taxed early-retiree spouse can contribute to a higher-taxed still-employed spouse’s RRSP to create a benefit. And if need be, the early retiree can remove funds from their RRSP or RRIF to make that contribution. We might call that a tax arbitrage. You might be in a situation when the early retiree is taxed at 11% for money on the way out of RRSP land. The money […]

Anyone planning for FIRE 1 knows it’s hard to think about retirement living standards while you’re still having a blast in your 20s and 30s – or even when you’re neck-deep in your responsible 40s and 50s. Like a precog from Minority Report, you can only glimpse fragments of your future. Happily, intrepid retirees have sent us back reports from the frontier. And they’ve supplied just enough detail to fill in the ‘Here Be Dragons’ […]

Hello friends. I hope you’re enjoying the summer break as much as my son is. RB40Jr just wrapped up an incredibly busy freshman year of high school. Now, his main goal seems to be playing video games until 3 a.m. and waking up at noon. Actually, I have no idea exactly how late he stays up because I’m out cold by 11 p.m. Life is sweet for a teenager when school is out. Things are going pretty well on my end, too. My glacial pace transition to full retirement is almost complete. I left my engineering career way back in 2012 and have been meandering toward the finish line ever since. This year, I dialed back on blogging to once a month and cut way down on my catering delivery side gig. That translates to about 15 hours of work per month. These days, I’m staying busy with pottery, ukulele, home repairs, and just goofing off. However, I do have a bit of a confession. The Post-FIRE Reality Check Cutting back on blogging totally killed my interest in the FIRE movement. When I was writing more frequently, I sought out other FIRE blogs and articles for inspiration. Now? I rarely look at personal finance content online. The internet has changed tremendously due to AI. Everything is served up on a silver platter, and old-school blogs are becoming irrelevant. Ouch, that’s kind of harsh. It’s still good to read real experiences from real people. AI doesn’t have that real-life experience we can relate to. Truthfully, it’s been a struggle to write lately. Writing less often means the words don’t flow like they used to. I don’t really know what to write about either. At this point in my life, the financial equation is pretty much solved. We spend less than 3% of our net worth and live a comfortable, moderate lifestyle. The only major financial challenge left is minimizing taxes during our withdrawal phase. That’s a pretty boring long-haul project. Life Beyond the Numbers I still have plenty of challenges, but they have nothing to do with money or FIRE. They are simply about midlife. The Sandwich Generation Dilemma: Mrs. RB40’s parents are older and need more assistance. She has been spending about half her time down in California to help them out. This is a challenging situation for us. RB40Jr gets along with his mom, and he needs her around. Long-Distance Family Support: My dad is also getting older and needs more support. Earlier this year, he underwent radiation treatment for prostate cancer. The prognosis is good, but he feels weaker than ever. I want to be there to help him recover, but I need to be here for my son during the school year. Fortunately, my dad has a younger “friend” who is stepping in to help. I’m heading to Thailand soon to see what I can do. Teenage Life: RB40Jr had a tough freshman year. He loaded up on challenging classes and activities, and

It appears to be an overlooked part of retirement planning. While we should always invest within our risk tolerance level we should also match our investment portfolios to the retirement cash flow plan. The plan gives the marching orders for each account. If you create a portfolio to plan mismatch, you could increase the risk of depleting an account too soon. On the other side if you are too conservative where an account has the […]

You can’t take it with you. Make enjoying your retirement a top priority. Read more in this week’s terrific links. Don’t turn your retirement into another project. Use Your Wealth Your retirement plan is meant to be changed. Meaningful Money The Middle Class is shrinking because they’re moving up in the world. A Wealth Of Common Sense We may already have an ant-aging vaccine. Real Clear Science Qu…The post I Don’t Like Mondays…..When Is My Retirement? appeared first on A Teachable Moment.