Happy New Year! I hope you had a merry Christmas and are ready for 2021! I know I am. Busting The Myths of Plastic Recycling This month I listened to Planet Money’s episode on recycled plastic, titled Waste Land. I remember hearing their earlier episode on how recycling of plastic has never been very viable. … Continue reading December 2020 Update
During the presidential election, one proposal put forth by the Biden campaign was to switch traditional 401(k) contributions from a tax deduction to a tax credit. With today’s current tax regime, when you make a contribution it reduces your taxes at your marginal rate, which for me is 22%, or 22 cents for every dollar… Continue reading 401(k) Deduction-vs-Credit
November 2020 Update Hope you had a great Thanksgiving! I started this blog a year ago. We were in the middle of our family DIY study abroad in Spain (remember when traveling was a thing?). After reading Jeremy’s suggestion to “do interesting things and share them publicly” in his Selling the Dream post, I decided… Continue reading November 2020 Update
A couple months ago I shared some of the books that I’ve read recently with my older children as part of a family book group. My focus has been on exposing them to a wide variety of ideas, in the hope that a small fraction of them stick. Usually we make a goal to read… Continue reading Financial Economic Book Group (#2)
One of the ways we have fun at Ocho Sin Coche is through playing board games. It’s our way of finding ways to interact and laugh together. Every year we add games to our collection and with the holiday season right around the corner, I thought I’d share some of the games we played this… Continue reading Games We Played in 2020
Here are some highlights of October 2020. Creating Zoom Video Backgrounds I haven’t stepped foot in the office since mid-March when the pandemic started in earnest. Instead, I’ve been meeting with coworkers via Zoom. Early on, I decided to use photos from our trip to Spain as my background. It was a fun way to… Continue reading October 2020 Update
September 2020 Update It’s crazy to think that almost exactly one year ago we’d just arrived in Spain for our 81-day family trip. Remember, back when travel to foreign places used to be a thing? This September has been a little bit different, mostly uneventful. Having our oldest at college has been a little different.… Continue reading September 2020 Update
Exactly one year ago, we arrived in Spain on our 81-day, do-it-yourself, family study abroad in Spain. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since we left. Following a gentle nudge, I put down some thoughts on the lessons we learned from our journey. Lessons We Learned It wasn’t as expensive as we thought… Continue reading What I Learned Spending 81-days In Spain
Last week I achieved a 600-day streak on Duolingo. I started the Spanish course almost a year before our trip to Spain to help me prepare for the experience. With that milestone fading into the rear-view window, I thought I’d put together a post about my experience trying to learn Spanish. First, my experience with… Continue reading Learning a New Language
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)
