The FIRE movement is built around the 4% rule—the idea that you can safely withdraw 4% every year in retirement and not run out of money. It’s the mathematical formula upon which we’ve organized the past 10 years of our lives, and if math is our religion, the 4% rule is our scripture. Even though the Trinity Study has been cited as the inspiration behind the 4% rule, the actual person who deduced this rule […]

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’ […]

I recently saw this video where Anna Stansbury, an assistant professor at MIT, explains that people who grew up in poverty end up earning less than their more affluent peers, even when they attended the same university: We know that socio-economic background matters for how well someone does in school, whether they get the chance to go to university, what kind of university they go to, what kind of degree and grade they get. I think there’s often an assumption that these effects of socio-economic background are kind of washed out from then onwards… But to document that two people who were literally getting exactly the same degree at the same university in the same subject at the same time with the same grade, still end up having a 7% earnings gap 10 years after graduation is the kind of big new striking finding I want to pull out. A study from researchers at the NBER, covering over 30 million students, illustrated this pattern at scale by examining the differences between parent and child incomes based on university attendance. Though children who attended college saw a smaller earnings gap between those from poor and wealthy families, a gap exists nonetheless. Before we can address why poorer kids lag behind their wealthier peers, let’s see how much they lag behind in the first place. How Big is the Earnings Gap? We can see the size of the earnings gap (based on parental income) in the plot below which shows child income rank vs. parental income rank nationally (in grey), for children who attended two-year schools (yellow), elite colleges (in blue), and other four-year colleges (in green): This chart shows how a child’s income rank (at age 32-34) compares to their parent’s income rank across the income spectrum.  For example, if a parent was at the 20th percentile of income, we would expect their child to have a 42nd percentile income whether their child attended college or not. This is represented by the National (grey) line. However, if we knew that their child attended a two-year school, we would expect them to have a 48th percentile income (yellow line). If they attended a non-elite four-year college, we would expect them to have a 60th percentile income (green line). And if they attended an elite college, we would expect them to have a 73rd percentile income (blue line). Overall, future earnings tend to increase when children attend more selective educational institutions. This is why each line has a higher intercept (on the y-axis) than the one below it. This effect is so pronounced that the poorest students at more selective colleges tend to have higher expected earnings than the wealthiest students at less selective ones! This suggests that getting into a good school probably matters more for your future earnings than the family you grew up in. That’s the encouraging part. However, the slope of each line is not zero, meaning that parental income is still correlated with child earnings even among students at

Republicans are warning that millions of Californians could face higher health insurance costs as state lawmakers move forward with changes to a healthcare tax designed to help fund Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. GOP lawmakers argue that California’s growing healthcare expenses; including the cost of expanding Medi-Cal coverage to eligible undocumented immigrants; have contributed to a funding shortfall that is now being addressed through a tax structure critics say could increase premiums for privately insured […]

During our Easter decluttering spree, we found the old growth charts that hung on the walls in our daughters’ rooms when they were small. The girls might be all grown up, but those charts brought back fond memories of their childhood! It’s time for another Clutter Tale. The post In the blink of an eye, they’re all grown up appeared first on Boomer Eco Crusader.

a.disclaimer-button { font-family:arial,helvetica; font-weight: normal; font-size:8pt; font-style:normal;background:#b5b5b5;color:#ffffff;padding: 2px 7px;} a.disclaimer-button:hover {background:#999999; color:#ffffff; } Having a hard time organizing your finances? Why not try the Tally app? Tally helps you manage your debt automatically so that you can pay it back as soon as possible. You will learn more in this Tally app review. Dealing with your bills and loans can be a hassle, and there’s always the risk of forgetting them. That can lead to […]

A weaving woman was in the lobby of the hotel this morning, and I couldn’t resist this alpaca bag. Look at the colours! I may be a tightarse, but I’m still human. This is coming back to Australia, along with the canvas shopping bag I bought in the Galapagos, with two blue footed boobies on […] The post Peru: Day 13; Cusco. I may have bought a few things. appeared first on Burning Desire For FIRE.

Thessaloniki is Greece’s second largest city and a major port along the northern coast. Like most of Greece, it’s filled with ancient ruins, graffiti, interesting history, and cats. While the city center is at sea level, rising behind it are hills with old fortresses and crumbling city walls to explore. These hills have many spots […] The post Catting Around In Thessaloniki  appeared first on Bonus Nachos.