Summary  Welcome to our December spending post! Our total spend for the month was £2,719.  There were a few additional expenses this month, but generally not too bad considering it was Christmas! Our spending on food and presents went up due to the festive season. We also had 2 new windows fitted and a number of other DIY jobs. Aside from that, it was a fairly standard month throughout.   We break our main expenses down into broad categories starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else falls into the entertainment category, with any large inclusions explained in detail.   CategoryAmountNotes Housing£1,035See below Food£781See below Transport£100See below Entertainment/misc£803See below Total£2,719

As I’ve mentioned before in these here pages, I consumes lotsa FIRE content (with my favorite media being blogs). Tho I am trying to cut down on this a bit, It’s hard habit to break. In some cases because I feel like I’m reading or watching a story unfold and want to keep reading on. But in other cases because, although I’ve got all the 101, 201, and probably 301 FIRE-related stuff locked down, a […]

Jordan Grumet (aka DocG) is a long-time thought leader in the financial independence and retire early (FIRE) community. His podcast, The Earn & Invest Podcast, is nearing its 600th episode.  He’s interviewed just about every blogger, author, and intellectual authority in the personal finance and retirement space (check out my interview, #580). An article I… The post The Purpose Code: A Free Book Giveaway appeared first on Retire Before Dad.

Last Updated on January 9, 2025 by Daniella Learning how to sell Canva templates can be a rewarding way to add a new income stream. Plenty of creatives do this as a remote side hustle to supplement their income or even earn a full-time wage from it. Even though it seems easy to do, it’s an involved multi-step process that requires some planning and time to get a consistent profit rolling in. Don’t sweat, that’s […]

Sometimes you just want a crunchy treat. Chips or pretzels come to mind, but have you noticed the prices lately? According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a 16-ounce bag of potato chips now costs 47% more than it did five years ago. Here at Casa Frugal we have a frugal workaround: homemade croutons. I started making them for salads, but often they would be gone before supper because DF favors them as […]

Best Way to Invest Cash A reader recently asked what to do with several hundred thousand dollars that he received when he sold his tech stocks. What a great problem to have, you come into $100,000, $500,000 or more, in cash and you’re wondering how to invest it. Investing large sums of money into the stock market all at once can be frightening, especially now, when the stock market is overvalued. It’s a well-known tenet that when stock prices get ahead of their underlying value, at some point, those prices will fall back in line with the company’s valuation. But here’s the catch, stocks can remain overvalued for years, and years. This article may contain affiliate links which means that – at zero cost to you – I might earn a commission if you sign up or buy through the affiliate link. Price Earnings Ratio source: Shiller PE Ratio – Multpl The average Shiller PE ratio is 17.19, in contrast with the January 2025 PE ratio of 37.74. According to this metric, the S&P 500 is overvalued by roughly 100%. No wonder, the reader is concerned about reinvesting his windfall into the stock market today. What if he invests $100,000 or more into the stock market today and within the year, the stock market takes a tumble and falls 20%. His $100,000 is then worth $80,000. Here are the steps to take when considering “How to invest $100,000 or more.” Questions to ask before investing large amounts of money in the stock market: Will I need the money soon, within the next few years? How would I feel if I invested the money in the stock market today, and next month the market dropped 20%? Can I leave the money invested in the stock market for seven years or more? Keep your answers in mind, as you review the article and watch the YouTube video below. Next we’ll explore how to invest a cash windfall in the stock or when to invest a cash windfall in a high yield liquid asset. How to Invest a Cash Windfall, if I Will Need the Money within the Next Five Years? If you are wondering the best way to invest a cash windfall but will need the money within the next few years, then your answer is simple. Any money you’ll need within the next one to five years should not be invested in the stock market. The reason is that the stock market is volatile and could decline precipitously at any time. If you’re planning a large home remodel, buying a new car for cash or buying a home and need a large down payment, then don’t put your cash windfall into the stock market! The risk of loss, is too great. Here’s the best way to invest cash short term. The key to short term investing is to make certain that the principal value remains steady and funds are liquid. This means you’ll trade the potential

What if I told you that you could make ONE decision now that would help make allllll your financial decisions for the next 12 months so much simpler?  Would you be interested? (Duh. Of course you would!)  I call this decision your Chief Initiative, and it is basically a values and goals statement that can guide all your decisions for the next year. Think of it as a “true north” for your finances. One time […]

I’ve had a few clients reach out to me over the past couple weeks (the last week of December 2024 & first week of 2025) with similar concerns: “How and why did my account go down at the end of 2024?!” The short answer: accounts are down because the market is down, and the market is down due to inflation and interest rate fears that were stoked by the December 17/18th Federal Reserve meeting. But that’s not what I want to focus on today. Instead, I want to focus on the true genesis of the question: these clients noticed a 1% to 2% drop in December, and that was cause for concern . For a $1MM account, that’s a $10,000 to $20,000 decrease. And I get it – the idea of “losing” $20,000 in a single month would furrow anyone’s brow! I want to address that stress today. Looking at investment returns over a single month – any single month – isn’t ideal. It’s a case of “missing the forest for the trees.” It’s too zoomed in. We need to zoom out! I want to show you why. Let’s Look at Some Numbers Imagine someone who retired in 2003. They were 58 then, they’re 80 now. They’ve followed many simple investing tenets described here on The Best Interest. They have a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds. As with many prior examples from old articles, our retiree has a 60% stock, 40% bond portfolio. They retired with a healthy, but certainly not outlandish, $500,000 in their retirement portfolio. They rebalance their account quarterly (about as high a frequency as I’d recommend). I want to share some interesting data points about how their portfolio has performed over the past 22 years. Specifically, I want to zoom in on the monthly returns of that portfolio, since that’s how today’s Q&A got rolling in the first place. But first, I want to assure you: this retiree has done quite well. Their portfolio has grown from $500,000 to $2.6 million.** As you look through the data points below, don’t forget about their success by staying the course. **Since this article is focused on investment returns, I intentionally did not want to muddy the waters by including any distributions. I do recognize that any normal retiree would be distributing money from their portfolio. But it simply distracts from today’s main point. The first chart below shows our portfolio’s monthly performance, measured by percent change. I find it messy, random, and hard to get concrete takeaways. So that’s why I created the second chart. It shows the same exact data, except ordered from best month to worst month over the ~22 years. There are clearly more good months than bad months. But breaking it down further: The best month was +8.3% The worst month was down