In my post, What They Don’t Tell You About About Retiring Overseas, I wrote about how my wife and I are avid travelers. With one of our kids now seemingly living in Europe on a semi-permanent basis it makes a great deal of sense for us to consider buying a home somewhere in Europe to…
Category: Risk Management
Which Investment Broker(s) Do I Use?
Over the course of my career, I’ve collected a cornucopia of brokerage accounts. During that time frame, many of these brokers began buying each other out. For example E-Trade got swallowed up by Morgan Stanley, TD Ameritrade is now Charles Schwab. Fidelity is probably one broker that hasn’t been swallowed up or changed names over…
Zepbound: My Health Journey – End of March Edition
War! That’s the only way I can describe what happened to me after I finally got my second month of Zepbound. I rotated from taking the shot on Thursdays to Saturdays because of the fiasco that ensued in February. Note: I had intended on posting this at the end of March but I went on…
Why Central Bank Rates Matter For Dividend Stocks
I’m on vacation this week but I won’t leave you empty-handed. One of the things I monitor closely is what the Federal Reserve does at each of their FOMC meetings. As a matter a fact, I have these meetings in my own personal calendar and I will always take my lunch break around watching CNBC…
Real Estate Rental Properties & Risk Mitigation
We own some rental properties and we are far from being experts in anything related to real estate rentals. We became accidental rental property owners but it’s worked out ok so far without any major issues. I really like the mostly passive income stream that comes from property rentals but it’s not completely passive. Last…
Zepbound: My Health Journey – Early March Edition
It’s been a fiasco! If you hadn’t heard, there was some type of cyber security attack on Change Health that disrupted insurance payments and processing of pretty much anything health care related. The cyber incident happened right as I was expected to get my second shipment of Zepbound. I had been waiting for two weeks…
Zepbound: My Health Journey – February Edition
At the start of this year, I decided to finally do something about my weight. Over the years I kept gaining about 1 or 2 pounds per year then I started working from home and the weight gain turned into 3 to 4 pounds a year to where I ballooned up to a weight that…
Do You Have An I-Bond Time Bomb?
One of the blogs I love to read is www.tipswatch.com by David Enna. The blog covers, as you might imagine by the name, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and a recent post had me thinking about my own bond portfolio. The crux of the matter is if you’ve been buying bonds for a long time and…
Retirement Planning: Step 5 – Putting It All Together
Let’s review my five retirement planning steps in case you missed any…click on the Steps to go to the appropriate Step. Step 1 – Total all retirement accounts. Step 2 – Estimate how much social security might provide. Step 3 – Estimate what the IRS standard deduction might be during my retirement years. Step 4 – Estimate…
Why You Should Always Cash Out Company Stock Grants
I’m going to share the hardest money lesson and regret that I had in my career but as bad as it was, some had it far worse. The Great Financial Crisis 2008 The year was 2007 and I was hired by a company that offered me $100k worth of company stock every year as part…