We recently crossed the half way point of 2017 and I thought this would be a good time to dive into the status of our financial independence (or FI) journey. Not to long after starting this blog a couple of years ago, my wife and I laid out a rough plan to be completely FI […]
Category: Financial Independence
The Case Against Front Loading Your 401k
One common piece of advice I often hear in the financial independence community is that you should front-load your 401k and max it out as early in the year as possible. Unfortunately, for most people pursuing FI, this is probably the opposite of what you want to be doing! There are certain times where front-loading […]
New Podcasts and How to Support Money Metagame
Hello loyal readers! This will be a quick post to let you know about a couple podcasts I recently appeared on and a new page I set up to make it easier to find the links that help support this site. Thanks in advance for checking it out! Saverocity Observation Deck Episode 56 – FIRE […]
Unison Homeowner Equity Access is Probably a Terrible Idea!
While researching different ways to access home equity for my last post on hacking your mortgage into a high interest savings account, I came across an interesting company I hadn’t heard of before. This company, Unison, offers a way to access the cash tied up in your home equity without any interest charges or monthly […]
How to Hack Your Mortgage Into A High Interest Savings Account
If you happen to follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed I was recently looking into different HELOC options. The first lesson I learned was to never give a real phone number to LendingTree when attempting to check rates. Luckily, I thought ahead and used a google voice number instead of my regular cell […]
Stockpile Review: Gifting Stocks and A Free $5 to Start (No Purchase Necessary)
Not too long ago, Becky and I were invited to our nephew’s first birthday party back in Chicago. While we weren’t able to make the trip back home, we did want to send a gift but didn’t want to go with the standard clothes and toys option. His parents were insistent that they already had plenty of […]
How to Remove Escrow From Your Mortgage and Save Hundreds Each Year
Are you currently making payments towards a mortgage? If so, do you know what the different parts of that payment are comprised of? Most commonly, there are 4 different parts that make up a standard mortgage payment and those 4 parts are often abbreviated into PITI which stands for Principal, Interest, Taxes, and Insurance. Principal and […]
Why Are We Invested In Bonds? Good Question!
In response to my post explaining our simple investment strategy of 90% stocks, 10% bonds, several readers inquired why we were in bonds at all. It’s a great question and one that I’ve been researching a bit over the past couple weeks. As with most of our financial decisions, I try not to reinvent the […]
My Latest Obsession: Obstacle Course Racing
It all started with a goal of getting into better shape that I set for myself around the holidays last year. I wouldn’t say I was ever “out of shape”, but I did manage to pack on 15 or so extra pounds and haven’t challenged myself physically in a while. 2017 would become the year I stepped […]
Our Simple Investment Strategy
We’ve been aggressively saving money for the past few years, specifically after discovering financial independence (FI). Not only are we putting aside a large percentage of our income each month, but it’s important to make sure that money continues to grow, particularly in a safe, long-term fashion. The places that we invest our money in today […]