Not many years after building a supercharged allowance system for my kids to teach them the power of compound interest, I started looking for ways to expose them to additional ideas about personal finances, economics, and life in general. I decided to institute a family book group involving my three oldest, ages 13, 15 and… Continue reading Financial Economic Book Group (#1)
One challenge that first time investors face is where to invest. The options are nearly infinite, with the financial industry creating new products every day. The myriad of choices are overwhelming. I propose the following four levels of investing. A beginning investor could start at the first level and as their education and stomach for… Continue reading Level Up Your Asset Allocation
In less than two months, my oldest starts her freshman year at college. Yikes! To put it mildly, it’s going to be different starting college during a pandemic. Most of her classes are online and a couple are “hybrid”, mixing in-person and online components. Everything after Thanksgiving is online. Like I said, it’s going to… Continue reading Laundering College Expenses Through a 529
In 2017, Equifax announced they had a security breach where the personal information of 147 million users was released. As far as breaches go, this was a big one. If you are American and have bought a house or car in the past couple decades or even just used a credit card, it’s highly likely… Continue reading Why I Have Frozen My Credit
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
