Today is November 1 and I’m working on my plan for 2026 which includes making some moves right now. On the heels of getting a new job offer, I am already planning on dumping most of my pay from November to end of year into a 401k. Because I got laid off end of May,…
Category: Money Management
$5000 Left In Unemployment Benefits
I’ve now collected about $10k of unemployment benefits. It’s been great to receive “free” money although it’s not really free, on any given year, I’ve paid at least $100k in federal income taxes over the past couple of decades so it’s good to get some of that money back. Ironically, I’ll need to pay taxes…
Net Credit Collars On NVIDIA
I continue to be extremely concerned about the over valuation of stocks but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to make risk free money. So far, I have net credit collars on GLD, IWM, IBIT, and recently added more NVDA. Mechanics of Trade Here’s a walk through of the trade. The net credit here…
Now My Bank CDs Are Being Called
While the cat’s away the banks will play…that’s how I feel right now. I’m having a great time in Europe getting ready to move to Asia but I keep getting notifications of stuff happening back home with my financial accounts. The latest thing was this gem below that my 5.05% CDs are being called. Oh…
Gold Collar Trade – How I Am Making Risk Free Money!
Back in April 2024 I wrote a post entitled, “The Gold Bugs, Like Cicadas, Are Out of Hibernation” and the tone of the article was skepticism of where the price of gold was going. In that post I wrote that I have some physical gold and I also own a few gold mining ETFs. I…
September Tax Free Cash: $767.42 & Fear
September and March are my favorite months because those are the months most of my municipal bonds pay me tax free interest. For the month of September, I racked in $623.84 in tax free income. I also have a leveraged municipal bond ETF that paid me $81.56 tax free interest and a non-leveraged one that…
Apple TV+ Streaming 30 Percent Inflation
As part of rationalizing all my streaming services, I canceled Apple TV+ a while back and seeing the announcement today that Apple is jacking up rates 30% from $9.99/month to $12.99/month I am glad I did. I actually canceled most of the streaming services but ironically, I ended up getting some of them back as…
Update On Municipal Bond Portfolio: $60K
Last year I had accumulated $30k in municipal bonds in my taxable brokerage account as part of my tax strategy to earn tax free income and I’m happy to report that now a little over a year later I have $60k in munis earning a blended return of 5 percent. This is the tax free…
Inflation At Costco
I went on a recent trip to Costco and was floored by the cost of stuff. I spent $215 on 13 items and these were normal every day items not electronics or jewelry. I had an inflation category on my old blog where I would periodically track the cost of a cart of groceries but…
Insurance Inflation Is Insane!
I got an email notice from my insurance company that they will now start charging a $5 fee for using credit card to pay my insurance premiums which I do because the whole thing is automated and I don’t want to write checks or pay bills online. They even charge $5 for using a debit…