Anyone who has the goal of improving their financial situation should at least be tracking their spending. Without knowing where the money goes once it gets into your accounts, it becomes extremely difficult to set realistic goals for yourself and build wealth over time. We use a combination of Mint and Excel to track all […]
Category: Financial Independence
How We Averaged 14% Back On Our Everyday Spending Last Year!
Recently, I broke down exactly how much money we spent last year and mentioned that we are pretty good about maximizing our return on that spending with the use of credit cards. I thought it would be fun to break down exactly what kind of return we got from that spending and on which cards. […]
Reviewing Our 2016 Expenses
The past year is getting further away in the rear-view, but won’t completely disappear out of sight until we’ve at least filed our taxes in a couple months. This is a good time to look over last year’s expenses to see where all of our money went and look ahead to see if there’s any […]
Random Musings as 2016 Comes to a Close
I haven’t published a post in a while, so I thought I’d close out 2016 with a few things that are on my mind at the end of the year. Expect my high level thoughts on our spending, credit cards, financial independence, and more.
Off To FinCon 2016 in San Diego!
As I’ve mentioned previously, Becky and I will be attending FinCon this year in San Diego. We fly down today and will be in and around the conference up until Sunday! I’m looking forward to seeing people again that I’ve met in the past and hopefully meeting some awesome new people at the conference and various […]
Early Retirement Cash Flow With The Roth IRA Conversion Ladder
Most people exploring financial independence and early retirement quickly arrive at a similar question: “How do I access the money I’m saving away between early retirement and traditional retirement age?” It’s one of the most common questions I see in the early retirement community and a very important one to understand the answer to if you […]
The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins, A Review
Ever since I discovered financial independence and started reading everything I could about the subject, there was one person who kept coming up over and over again, a Mr. JL Collins. The stock series found on his own personal blog might be the best resource I’ve ever found on the proper mentality to have when investing […]
Hiking and The Journey To Financial Independence
Over the long Memorial Day weekend, Becky and I found ourselves climbing Mount Si with a few dozen others who shared our goal of financial independence. The hike itself is a fairly steep ~4,000 ft elevation gain over 4 miles each way and the rain certainly didn’t make it easier, but what made this particular […]
Is Anyone Actually Saving Money By Travel Hacking?
Who can resist the allure of “free travel”? Just sign up for a credit card or two and you can set off across the world for pennies on the dollar! To someone who has never applied for a credit card with a big bonus before, that last line probably sounds exaggerated at best and outright fraud […]
Tax Benefits for Unmarried Home-Owners and The Marriage Tax Penalty
Becky and I are getting hitched later this year and along with the joy of marriage comes a couple of tax implications. As far as the government is concerned when it comes to taxes, if you’re married on December 31st of the tax year, you’ve been married for the entire tax year. This means filing […]