Early Retirement
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I have a confession; I’m a hypocrite. My greatest platform has been a complete lie. Please don’t blame me. It got out of control and before I knew it the lie was so big I had no way out with the exception of telling the truth.
From the beginning I railed against traveling while I’ve visited most of the U.S. states, Canada several times, Jamaica and Costa Rica. And here I am pounding out a post while traveling and sitting at the kitchen table of my first Airbnb stay. For a guy who whines so much about traveling I certainly do a lot of it.
Traveling has certainly been a love/hate relationship for me. The anxiety is almost overwhelming (sometimes it is and I collapse). This post will publish Thursday and I’m writing Tuesday night and the clock claims the night is closing in on 10:30. For several weeks leading up to FinCon the anxiety increased. Sleep turned fitful, my thought disorganized. I dreaded the flight. Most of all I dreaded all the people. Farm boys from the backwoods of Nowhere, Wisconsin never truly adjust when pushed into civilization. The savage is always there.
It is in this fog of insanity I realized I travel too damn much, but also realized I travel to places even the most seasoned travelers rarely go.
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One of the most difficult decisions you can make as you struggle toward financial independence is deciding between paying off the mortgage quickly or investing the excess funds instead. The water is more muddy when we see a roaring stock market for as far back as the eye can see coupled with low interest rates. The answer seems simple and obvious: pay off the mortgage as slowly as possible and invest the difference in broad market-based index funds.
You might also think people well past the mile-marker of financial independence would have an even easier choice. Once the risk of a market decline passes due to your excessive net worth, it is tempting to automatically choose the course with the greatest opportunity for maximum gain.
Your favorite accountant has struggles with the same decision: pay it off or invest. It all came to a head recently when the topic came up on Facebook. I gave my opinion and the fur flew. Before long my inbox was stuffed with requests for a fully fleshed out explanation of my position.
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If you’re reading this the day it’s published it means this is the due date for extensions for partnerships and corporations. If you work in a tax office and things are quiet you might want to consider another job. (This is an inside joke directed at a former employee who struck out on her own. If you need bookkeeping in Vegas I know a qualified person to handle that. Seriously.)
I thought today would be the perfect day for me to announce my candidacy for president with a few tax policies I’ll sign into law via executive order if elected. Some of you might be darn excited about this unwelcome event as you think I’m a Democrat. Other might be excited because they think I’m a Republican. The truth is I’m neither. I prefer to waffle between both side of the aisle or as the police call it: walking in a drunken stupor.
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I preempt our regular programming. I had an awesome post planned for today, but then my oldest daughter returned from college and told me something that made my mouth sweat. (You can enjoy the planned awesome post Thursday.)
Regular readers may remember I swore off commercial television decades ago, including my beloved football (not to be confused with soccer, my non-North American friends). Still, football is a massive part of the backwoods lifestyle of Phuket, Wisconsin. (Can you blame us? It’s all we have! Either that or admiring our frozen tundra.)
Now I know what you’re thinking. You like football and if you enjoy the sport you should be able to enjoy the sport. I agree. But readers around here are frugal and it takes a king’s ransom to get into the game! If you’re lucky enough to be in the 1% it’s still affordable, but if you’re in the 1% somebody else paid for those tickets or you don’t attend such extravagant events. Paying for NFL game tickets is for the 99% and chumps.
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Call it First World problems; the minor inconveniences of life: the traffic light turned red at the last moment, you’re surprised by a repair, you discover you have to work past the age of 30. We live in such opportune times it’s easy to forget real difficulties exist. Some right in our own communities.
September is National Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month and Melanie Lockert of Dear Debt is asking personal finance bloggers once again to take up the keyboard to prevent unnecessary tragedy. I participated in the first two Suicide Prevention Blog Tours but intended to sit this one out when I got the email. I had no idea what I wanted to write. I said what I needed to say and had no more to add to the heap of literature on suicide prevention. Then I walked to the mailbox.
Certain characteristics tend to show up again and again. If you admire people with money you might notice they tend towards frugality and index fund investing or own a business. You can emulate that easy enough. You might notice many travel and want to do the same. By following their example you increase the odds you will accumulate more resources to travel.
There is no guarantee you will get the same results. A person in prison will have limitations from the rest of the population. Nelson Mandela is a perfect example. He gained the respect of the guards and the people of a nation while imprisoned. He was fortunate that he was released and led South Africa for many years. Other people doing the same thing will almost certainly get a different result.
This blog is about wealth. It might depress you when I say you can search the traits of those you admire and incorporate those traits only to find less admiration than those you worked to emulate. That misses the whole point. Successful integration of quality traits do not guarantee anything and shouldn’t even be the goal! It is the daily effort to improve yourself with the traits you acquired that makes you wealthy.
The daily journey is the reward, the riches you seek. You can examine the admired of your community and work to integrate those positive traits into your persona. But please, kind readers, make plenty of room for you. Explore the qualities already inside you.
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It happens to all of us. A project gets on our desk and we stall out; a credit card bill needs to be challenged with the bank and we can’t get the energy to get it done; a book we really want to read sits on the night stand waiting for the day you actually crack the cover. Like I said, it happens to all of us.
As an accountant I feel overwhelm often. People don’t bring me the easy ones and the IRS doesn’t care about your schedule. They pay me for things that make mere mortals head’s explode. Generally I’m booked out 6-8 weeks, and any time I say yes to something or set an appointment within 6 weeks it means I subtract it from personal time. Then I stall out!
It isn’t the worst or most difficult tasks that cause my tires to spin. I eventually reach a point where fatigue sets in and if your file is in the wrong place at the wrong time (or I made too many commitments), it ends up on the hellish side of my desk where things don’t get done. I keep putting it off because opening the file creates visions of pain in my skull. When fate (a disgruntled client) pushes me to engage the task it usually is something much less involved than I thought.
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“Should I feel guilty when spending money?” It’s a common question when I consult with clients. They are so tuned into frugality they sometimes start associating negative feelings with money. It’s a bad thing to start feeling.
Spending money is NOT an evil activity! In modern society we have it so easy that we tend to either overspend (the vast majority) or become hyper-frugal (a significant percentage of the demographic reading this blog). Both lifestyles are unhealthy. Overspending leads to serious problems when the bills come due and income might not keep up. Debt is a serious issue I ask clients (and readers) to consider purging. The opposite of overspending is the hyper-frugal drive. This can suck the pleasure out of life as fast as a heavy debt burden.
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