My parents were born and raised in the south hills of Pittsburgh. They attended the same high school but didn’t start dating until five years after graduation when they were in a wedding party together. Dad was a high school teacher on the ...
Inflation is destroying wealth and making food so expensive. The Fed keeps raising interest rates — how can the housing market survive it? The 16th largest U.S. bank failed a few months back. Then the 14th largest bank failed! The COVID-19 pandemic hap...
This Arrived Homes review was last updated on 04/26/2023. Arrived Homes is a real estate crowdfunding platform allowing non-accredited investors (all U.S.-based investors 18 and up) to own shares of single-family and vacation rentals. Arrived use...
Common advice from life coaches and career gurus is to build a career you love so much you don’t want to retire. I appreciate this advice and wish I’d followed it more in my 20s and early 30s. But genuinely loving what you do is a rar...
Early retirement is a loaded phrase that ignites internet skepticism. We can partly blame the mainstream financial media for picking up stories about “early retirees” that run six and seven-figure businesses. Inconsistent messag...
When I lost my job in 2017, my former employer didn’t have the means to pay me a severance. Our family had emergency savings, but our multiple income streams kept us afloat. Five years earlier, a job loss would have been much worse. But since I s...
Risk-free government Treasury yields have risen dramatically over the past year. The increase is a direct result of the Federal Reserve rate increases that started in 2022. Higher short-term yields are good for retirees and give us multiple optio...
I spent the summer of 1996 tending the 13th street beach stand just off the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD. Beachgoers came to me for rentable beach chairs, umbrellas, and bodyboards. On a good day, I’d sell about $500 and receive 20% as pay. ...
The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson wrote an article about the best career advice he’s come across that “might be marginally useful.” Your Career Is Just One-Eighth of Your Life was applicable to my situation back in September 2022 whe...
NewRetirement is an online retirement calculator and planning tool. It’s the most comprehensive financial tool I’ve ever used — miles better than any elaborate spreadsheet. I’ve been tinkering with NewRetirement since 2017, when...
My Uncle gifted me one share of Chevron stock in 1995, seeding my lifelong dividend stock investment portfolio. But I didn’t start living off dividends until I left my IT career in 2022. There were no online brokers or index ETFs making it ...
I recently left my 20-year information technology (IT) career to be a full-time blogger. Most of my career involved partnering with a large government customer to modernize its massively-complex and outdated IT systems. My teammates trusted me. M...
Financial advice can be free (google it) or expensive (hire an advisor). But financial advice tends to be tactical — buy this investment, optimize that tax advantage — instead of behavioral — think this way, stick to the plan, and be patient Success in...
Happy New Year! The turning of the new year brings two things to mind for a lot of us: Whoa, I spent too much money last month/year How can I improve my finances this year? I’m not a big fan of new years resolutions (most don’t stick). But ...
Inflation is eating away at our wealth quarter-by-quarter. It appears to have peaked in May 2022, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate increases. But the chart below shows how the products we consume have recently become more expensive...
After 20 years in information technology (IT), I decided to change careers to be a full-time blogger in early December. It’s an exciting milestone I’ve been planning for about five years. Monday morning, after my last day at work, I s...
Traditional retirement is a suboptimal goal. Building a career you genuinely do not want to retire from is better. Writing those words here or in a 240-character tweet takes little effort. But it’s an enormously complex concept for most middle-ag...
November is American Diabetes Month. Parents of kids with Type 1 Diabetes laugh that it starts the day after Halloween. My 10-year-old son was diagnosed in September 2021. Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disorder that typically presents be...
The 2022 HBO documentary Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off is a fascinating biography of the skateboarding icon. As told through interviews with his Bones Brigade peers — all trailblazers themselves — Tony’s life is a story of risk-taking, fai...
Our perception of the value of time and money shifts as we age. In early adulthood, time is abundant, while money is scarcer. We want more money and are willing to sacrifice our time to get it. By middle age, a thriving career helps us earn more,...