money

Okay, folks. Last Friday, I wrote about how I was suddenly thinking about retiring early, but quite a bit daunted by just how exactly I’d go about doing that. I haven’t been actively budgeting for a while, and I started to take a look at my spending habits, trying to figure out just how much I’d need to comfortably retire. It was a lot. That didn’t mean I was giving up on the concept of retiring early, but it did mean I was resolved to the fact that I was likely going to have to budget like a madman to

I’ll be honest. The idea of “retiring” has always been something that I’ve almost completely ignored, mainly because it’s felt so far away. Through my work, I get 14% of my salary stashed into a 401k each month, and so I’ve felt like that’s enough so that when I’m 65 or 70 or whatever the retirement age is, I’ll be able to retire and be fine. End of story. Except now I’ve been thinking it from a different angle. To retire, I need to have saved enough money so that Denisa and I can live on the earnings. In other

Last week I was talking with Tomas, and he was telling me all about the stocks he’d bought. I did a bit of a mental double take, because I hadn’t realized he’d been buying stocks. I asked him how he was doing it, and he told me all about Robinhood, the stock buying app that’s all the rage with the younger crowd. I had some downtime, and they offered $5 of free stock if I signed up with them, so I decided to give it a whirl. My initial impressions were very favorable. It was super easy to open the

Oh joy. Time for us to submit our taxes again. I got mine finished over the weekend, after starting them about a month ago. I typically do that to get a rough estimate on how much I’m going to owe (or get back), so that I can be sure to be prepared when the time comes. But then my inherent laziness steps in, and I wait until much closer to the deadline. And as my friend Dan always points out, the Simpsons say it best: Then again, the yearly ritual of doing my taxes is also a great time to

It’s been a tough couple of years for everyone, right? Right. And I’ve mentioned multiple times how I’ve been off my game for the past while. This has resulted in some lapses that I normally just don’t make. The last little bit, I realized I had made two fairly large goofs that were going to cost me some significant money. Through my job, I put aside $2,750 each year to spend on medical bills through a Flex Spending Account. This is good for tax reasons, but it comes with a couple of stipulations. First, you have to voluntarily re-enroll each