July 27, 2026 – Welcome back to a new part of my Safe Withdrawal Rate Series. In my 10-year quest to study safe withdrawal strategies and find ways to hedge or at least alleviate Sequence of Return Risk, I’ve come across a lot of purported “solutions.” Some actually work to at least some degree. For example, a reverse glidepath can improve outcomes. Momentum strategies look promising. But most proposed solutions to Sequence Risk are ineffective […]

This chicken, tomato medley is baked in a sweet and savory balsamic glaze and topped with golden-brown Mozzarella cheese. With the addition of onions, honey, garlic, and other spices, this caprese chicken is an explosion of tastes and textures sure to satisfy your tastebuds!  What can I expect?  This recipe has all the rich flavors of traditional baked caprese chicken recipes. However, instead of being made with brown sugar, the dish features honey and other natural, whole food ingredients to create the sweet and savory flavor we want. In addition, we omit the carb-heavy pasta you’ll find in other recipes. The end result is a baked, low-carb recipe featuring tender chicken breasts and caramelized veggies topped with gooey, savory cheese. It’s easy to prepare, quick to cook, and sure to leave you feeling full!  Is Caprese Chicken Healthy?  Let’s take a look at the main ingredients:  Chicken breasts Avocado oil Honey Vegetables Mozzarella cheese Chicken, avocado oil, and fresh vegetables are all natural, nutritious food sources. Include them in a variety of recipes for flavor, protein, and nutrients.  But what about mozzarella cheese? Is dairy healthy? Here’s what we know. Dairy is full of vitamins, minerals, protein, and natural fat energy. But if everyone consumed dairy all of the time, dairy farming would become abusive and unsustainable… Let’s be mindful of our dairy intake. Buy dairy that comes from pasture-raised cows and try to eat less.  Sugar is what makes food unhealthy. Traditional caprese chicken recipes are made with brown sugar and served over wheat pasta (starchy carbs), which digest very similarly to sugar.  Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of brown sugar and a serving of pasta to this recipe, for a total of 45 to 50g of sugar, and you’re looking at heartburn with an energy crash. (And you’ll be scouring the pantry for your next sugar snack within the hour.) Omit the brown sugar and pasta, and this recipe becomes nourishment. The ingredients provide vitamins, minerals, protein, and quality, whole-food energy.  Enjoy this caprese chicken knowing it supports your well-being. Learn more about eating less sugar here. Caprese Chicken Tips

In this week’s stock market outlook, Joel Wenger examines the current market trend, price performance, and headline risks.

I’ve spent more late nights than I’d like to admit hunched over credit card and bank statements, trying to figure out where my money actually went that month. You know the drill. You open your banking or finance app, then your credit card app, then maybe a brokerage app, and by the time you’ve pieced together the full picture you’ve lost the will to actually do anything about it. Everything is technically there, it’s just […]

Your Brain Is the Worst Fund Manager You’ll Ever Have The biggest problem in investing is not math. It is not access to information. It is not even greed. It is the fact that your brain is running software built […]

Earlier today, I watched an reel from someone who has followed the FIRE principles to become a millionaire at 40. This person listed several rules that she followed to meet this goal. The first rule was to start saving 50% of earned income as soon as humanly possible. The math says that when you start … Continue reading “Ideal is the goal. Consistency is for real life.” The post Ideal is the goal. Consistency is […]

How I Cleared $10,134.72 of my Debt in One Month A month ago, I shared my massive consumer debt of $59,973.72. It was daunting putting the full amount out there but did help keep me motivated. My debts included:$44,014.72 Personal loan (medical and a car)$5,600 Personal loan$1,500 Zip$1,300 Loan from a friend they need back […] The post Debt Update: How I Cleared $10,134.72 in a Month appeared first on The Thrifty Issue.

Here’s a sentence I keep hearing recently:  Deer in the UK are “overpopulated,” they’re “invasive,” because they have no natural predators, and hunting them is just responsible management.  Now imagine someone proposing the same solution for street dogs or cats. Suggest culling them at scale, and you’re a monster. The thing is that the root problem is the same; species that are overpopulated because of humans, yet the response we have is completely different.  This has been bugging me for weeks. So I went down a rabbit hole, and here’s what I found. The stats The most-cited figure of the UK deer population growth comes from the Forestry Commission and Defra: from roughly 450,000 in the 1970s to about 2 million today.  Some estimates go as high as 3 million. Other researchers push back hard on the higher numbers, saying they’re inflated to justify more aggressive culling policy. Either way, deer numbers have increased; this part is true. Why don’t deer have predators anymore? We talk about deer “overpopulation” like it’s some accident of nature, where it’s not. Humans caused it, deliberately. Wolves were the UK’s last big predator, but kings ordered their extermination. Edward I literally decreed in 1281 that all wolves in England be wiped out.  Kings paid bounties for wolf kills and handed nobles land on the condition they cleared wolves off it. Add centuries of deforestation wiping out their habitat, and by the 1400s-1500s, wolves were gone from England. Scotland held out a bit longer; the last confirmed kill was in 1680, with straggler sightings into the 1700s. Bears and lynx went even earlier. So when people say “there’s no natural predator to control deer,” what they actually mean is: “we killed the predator, on purpose, over hundreds of years, and now we have to keep doing that job ourselves.” We destroyed the balance, and then we act shocked there’s none. The damage deer cause In fairness, deer do cause property damage, for example:  £3 million a year in tree damage on Scottish public land alone Up to 74,000 deer killed or injured in road collisions annually in the UK Deer strip bark and eat tree shoots, which stops woodlands from regenerating naturally Some conservationists argue culling deer also protects other struggling native species.  However, I don’t see how that argument changes anything. Killing one animal to protect another doesn’t address the root cause. Now compare that to street dogs and cats Globally, there are an estimated 200 million+ stray dogs and 480 million stray cats.  In Europe alone, that’s over 100 million strays. Romania has 500,000-1,000,000 stray dogs.  Turkey has around 4 million. Stray animals cause enormous ecological damage too.  What street cats do Globally linked to at least 63 known species extinctions, and responsible for roughly 14% of all bird, mammal, and reptile extinctions worldwide. Some regional studies put that figure as high as 26% Currently threatening 360+ more species that are still hanging on In the US