Something shocking happened at work. I was hosting an event to share recent vacation pictures with the group. Our other presenter had recently spent a month in Mexico. He even wrote a blog post for our company about how to successfully work from anywhere. He used 2 weeks of PTO to basically work half time and extend his time there. Their main goal for the trip was to look into buying a house near Puerto Vallarta. Continue reading “Early Retirement Dropped At Work”
A Flat Market = No Problem
The end of Q1 2018 has me at about 0% market gains for the year (while the S&P 500 is down -1.22%). This inspired me to do a thought experiment. What if the highly improbable happened and the market remains stagnant at a 0% gain until I retire? How long would that add to my working career? My initial thought was several years since the average of 7% would add $17,850 to my current portfolio so my savings for the year would be made of approximately 20% gains and 80% savings. Continue reading “A Flat Market = No Problem”
Sweet Sweet Dividends
It’s the end of Q1, which means it’s once again DIVIDEND SEASON! I look forward to it every 3 months because even though I know this is a distribution from the 3,000+ businesses I partially own it still feels like it’s free money that’s dropped into my account.
So how did I make out this quarter? Like a bandit if I do say so myself! I made $787.04 from my investments. That’s a 43% increase from last year! Yes my investments have increased 56%, but that’s besides the point 🙂 . Just assuming an overall 43% increase from last year’s dividends of (even though it will be more) I’ll receive $3,916.04 in dividends in 2018. Woah. That’s like 2 weeks of salary! And I’ll receive it no matter what the market does (we’re down 1% for the year at the time I write this). An extra half a month’s salary no matter what. I like the sound of that. To next quarter!
Q1 Budget Check-In 2018
I understand that time moves faster the older you get, but HOW is the year 25% done?! I feel like it’s crawling and then look at the date and feel like it’s flying by. Fascinating. I wanted to check in on my goal to decrease my spending from $18,436.60 last year by $436.60 to a solid $18,000 this year. Let’s see how it’s going.
Singapore: A Travel Blog
SINGAPOREWelcome to Disneyland! Jk – it’s Singapore. And it’s basically a grown up Disneyland. I had no expectations when visiting Singapore, but was quickly blown away. I also realized that this is the first vacation I’ve taken in a few years that was not based on luxury and beach relaxation. Instead I was being a real explorer again! So I’ve decided to start a new series that catalogs tips I learned during my travels and how much it cost. Continue reading “Singapore: A Travel Blog”
Locked Retirement Date: October 2, 2020
I seem to change my mind annually about my retirement date – not just when it is based on math, but if I even am locked into a date or a number. Once again I’ve changed my mind 🙂 . As I’ve mentioned, current numbers including my raise show me solidly retiring in 2020 assuming average market growth and the same amount of stretch bonus as I received last year. If I continue to receive a 4% raise each year (as my boss claimed we would) my date is at the beginning of November with 7% market returns, October with 8% and mid-August with aggressive 10% growth. Continue reading “Locked Retirement Date: October 2, 2020”
The Crypto Craze
It’s times like these that I am so glad I started this blog. It will be very interesting to look back on this post years from now and see how things turned out with the latest rage: Cryptocurrency. I first heard about Cryptocurrency when Bitcoin started getting press when I was still at Company 2 in 2012 and since then it has slowly grown in media attention and been joined by a host of new coins, some too ridiculous to believe (e.g. Garlic Coin anyone?) Continue reading “The Crypto Craze”
2 Weeks Off Keto
I originally started keto on January 4, 2017. On February 13, 2018 I traveled to Singapore. Almost exactly a year before that I was on my way to Thailand – only 1.5 months into my keto journey and ready to give it all up for 2 weeks to experience this new country. Continue reading “2 Weeks Off Keto”