Personal finance strategies for managing your money. Learn more about the best ways to manage, save, invest, grow and preserve your wealth.
So, you’re cruising down the path to financial independence and saving as much money as you can for early retirement. Congrats! Like most people, you may have a large portion of these savings in retirement accounts, such as an IRA or 401k. These plans have great tax benefits, but they also have age restrictions and penalties…
Say you’ve got an extra $30,000 lying around that you want to invest. What do you do? Would you invest it all at once (lump sum investing) or spread that investment out over a period of time (dollar cost averaging)? This is the decision we found ourselves facing about six-months ago. After making a major…
So, you’ve paid down all your “bad debt” … high interest loans, credit cards, etc. Congrats! Now that you have fewer payments to make each month, you may be debating if you should use that extra cash to pay down the mortgage or invest? You’re not alone. This question is one of the most frequently…
We review our investment portfolio allocation and investment strategy annually, as a part of our year-end financial and tax checkup. In this post, we’re sharing our current portfolio allocation and investment strategy for the first time. Disclaimer: This post contains our personal opinions and portfolio and does not represent investment advice. Why you need a…
This post will cover why we’ve refinanced so many times, how we paid $0 for the first two through a no cost refinance, and how much we expect to save with our latest. Refinancing your mortgage (the traditional viewpoint) How often is too often to refinance your mortgage? Well, since we just finished our…
While I generally favor credit cards with no annual fee, occasionally cards with fees can provide benefits that more than compensate for the annual fee. Whether or not such a card is right for you will depend on your personal spending habits. Your circumstances will also determine if that card continues to be worth it…
We are coming up on two years of living through the complete renovation of our fixer upper. Though this is about two years longer than we thought it’d take (amateurs), we’re getting closer to the finish line. During this time our backyard has been a pile of rocks and weeds, all because we were struggling…
Have you recently stumbled upon the FIRE movement? Contemplating if this path could be for you? If so, you may be wondering how much money you really need to retire early. In this post, I’ll show you how to determine your Financial Independence (“FI”) number, as well as share ours. Additionally, as promised in Part…
A younger family member recently asked for some financial advice. This is not unusual. Mr. RFL & I are both accountants, after all. During the call, we shared that I had recently started a personal finance blog to document our journey to financial independence and early retirement (“FI/RE” or “FIRE”). The response? Oh yeah, I’ve…
Pumpkin spice season came early this year! Even though it’s still 100+ degrees here, I decided to treat myself. I was reminded of the “Latte Factor” as I shelled out over $5 for my pumpkin cream cold brew, and momentarily wondered… should you give up your coffee habit to reach financial independence? I quickly dismissed…