For my readers in the United States, happy 4th of July! And for my readers outside of the United States, happy 4th of July as well 🙂 In a previous post I looked at target date funds offered by Vanguard. In my opinion, they are a great benchmark to measure other target date funds, including… Continue reading Comparing my 401(k)’s Target Date Funds
Years ago, my first job was delivering newspapers for the local paper. Well, first if you don’t count selling tomato plant starts door-to-door to the neighbors. I have fond memories of delivering papers in sub-zero degrees early Sunday morning. Times have changed. For years now, I’ve been building my own personal “newspaper” or “magazine” of… Continue reading How to Build a Personal Newspaper
I’ve been using ad blockers for years. Back when Firefox was the hotness, I used AdBlockPlus. Later, I moved to uBlock Origin. I even switched the default browser on my Android phone to Firefox because it allows extensions like uBlock Origin, while Chrome on Android doesn’t. I get that free content isn’t truly “free”. If… Continue reading Why I use an Ad Blocker
It’s been four months since I posted about my experiment selling covered calls on some stock in DumpsterFireInc. With the pandemic and the associated crazy market volatility, it’s felt like much longer than four months. Its a good time to check in with how my experiment has been going. The Good The good news is… Continue reading Covered Calls Experiment Update
For most of my peers, digging through 401(k) investment literature and understanding the different options is not exciting and even a little scary. Few make it a hobby like I do. I can sympathize with the allure of a “target date” fund. The chief advantage of target date funds is their simplicity. Simply specify the… Continue reading DIY Target Date Fund
If you’ve read any of the Harry Potter books, you’re familiar with Hermione Granger, one of Harry’s friends at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She’s a planner and an anticipator. She’s also a bit of an optimizer. She is anything but a procrastinator. In many ways, I understand Hermione. When planning and executing… Continue reading Hermione Loses
The other day I was listening to a Planet Money episode on the topic of escheatment or unclaimed property. It was a fascinating episode, including a dude who lost thousands of dollars in stock gains all because he didn’t log into his etrade account for years. And the key takeaway from the episode is maybe… Continue reading Unclaimed Money
I’ve had a Google Voice since 2007. That was actually in the pre-Google days when it was called Grand Central. I love a lot of things about Google Voice beyond the frugality of it, but there’s also some annoyances. My Google Voice Setup Google Voice provides a single phone number that you can route to… Continue reading Saving Money Using Google Voice
While writing the post about front-loading my 401(k) contributions a couple weeks ago, I made some additional calculations that I thought were interesting enough to share in a separate post. In the post, I used a theoretical example using a single fund, VTSAX, over a 10 year period. After 10 years of front-loading the annual… Continue reading Is 401(k) Front-loading worth it?
Shortly after we bought our first home, I threw together some spreadsheets to examine the amortization of our mortgage. I wanted to experiment how prepayments towards the principal of our loan would affect the total amount of interest we paid to the bank. I learned a couple things that I thought I’d share. More Interest… Continue reading The Effect of Early Loan Payments
