Retirement

There is a new three-legged retirement stool we should all be aware of. But first, let’s review the old three-legged stool for retirement. It consisted of: 1) Pension (Company) 2) Social Security (Government) 3) Personal Savings (You) The Old Three-Legged Retirement Stool Is No More Given less than 15% of Americans have pensions or will […]

Reaching financial independence is the holy grail of personal finance. But what does financial independence really mean? In this post I’d like to determine the three levels of financial independence. That’s right. Even in financial independence there is no one size fits all since everybody has a different desired standard of living. Some people are

Ever wonder: What does early retirement feel like? I retired early in 2012 at age 34 and want to share you all the ups and downs of not working a traditional day job any more. What’s interesting is that my feelings towards early retirement are very different from the initial couple of years. As the

There are three primary types of retirement plans in the U.S. today: Traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and Roth IRAs. This article will focus on whether doing a backdoor Roth IRA is a good move for higher income earners. It is often debated which of the two IRA options is better: the Traditional IRA that is tax

A stock market correction is an inevitability. In recent history, we saw two 10% corrections in 2018, a 13% correction in 2016, a 12.4% correction in 2015, a 20% correction in 2011, a 16% correction in 2010, and a -57% correction in 2009. Then of course, we saw the fastest correction in history, a 32%

There is a downside of financial independence that’s worth discussing. The media likes to make it seem that financial independence is the best thing since slice bread. But I’d like to provide more balance. One of the things I was counting on when I published, Being A Landlord Questions My Faith In Humanity, was readers coming

If you work at any job long enough, you’ll bound to think about quitting at some point. What if you could negotiate a severance and get paid to quit your job? I did just that in 2012 and received six years of living expenses to walk away! How many months of severance would it take

Let me share why I never contributed to a Roth IRA but why you probably should. I fully admit that I was once an ardent opponent of the Roth IRA in the past. But as a middle-aged father of two young children, I’ve come around. Contributing to a Roth IRA is a great way to

Despite the typical American having less than $150,000 for retirement, the average spending amount in retirement is surprisingly high. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, “older households” – defined as those run by someone 65 and older – spend an average of $45,756 a year, or roughly $3,800 a month. I don’t know