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With an election looming in the USA, our airwaves are saturated with attack ads and rampant hyperbole. Among other things, the candidates and talking heads keep rattling on about entitlements and the role of the government versus the private sector. I’ve already voted and I don’t wish to turn Interesting Money into a political blog, so just allow [...] Read more

Last Saturday, after my customary cup of homemade iced coffee – as is typical for me on a hot Texas summer morning – I gazed out the window and decided it was high-time to attack the grass, which has been growing with reckless abandon since we actually had a few drops of rain recently. Rain can be a rarity in south TX, so I don’t begrudge the [...] Read more

Previously I posted the content of my taxable investment portfolio. In that same spirit, it’s now time to sneak a peek inside my tax-advantaged accounts. Here’s how everything looks as of August 2012. Roth IRA – Through Schwab Current allocation: 70% Stocks / 30% Bonds If one uses the age-in-bonds method to derive asset allocation, then the [...] Read more

For the past few weeks I’ve been writing articles in which I started fantasizing planning for an early retirement. You can read those articles here: Part I – Setting a Budget Part II – Determine Your Retired Living Expenses Part III – Build Your Income Streams Especially in Part III, I discussed building a portfolio of passive investments with the [...] Read more

This is a continuation of our series on Steps to Early Retirement. Please also see Part I – Setting a Budget and Part II – Determine Your Retired Living Expenses. Crafting an early retirement plan involves the harmonic interweaving of multiple components. During pre-retirement, we have a long period of asset buildup, which basically involves [...] Read more

In a previous article we looked at creating a budget for your pre-retirement life, as it’s the first crucial step in going down the early-retirement path. At this point we’re going to skip ahead a few years. I say a few optimistically, because it sounds emphatically better than saying, Let’s skip ahead 26 years to when you may finally be able to [...] Read more

Since I’m now getting serious about retiring early, the first step is to formulate a master plan on how to get there. Everything I’ve learned so far tells me that there is a simple formula on how to achieve early retirement: Spend less money now + earn more income however you can + invest the difference = NO MORE BOSS. Over time, your savings will [...] Read more

Lately, I’ve done a lot of reflecting on the first post I ever wrote for InterestingMoney. In that (short) post, I wrote about my longer-term goals. Specifically, I mentioned that my purpose in founding InterestingMoney was to track progress toward a single, specific goal. Here’s the first paragraph that I wrote here, back in 2007: Alright, so my [...] Read more