Back in April 2024 I wrote a post entitled, “The Gold Bugs, Like Cicadas, Are Out of Hibernation” and the tone of the article was skepticism of where the price of gold was going. In that post I wrote that I have some physical gold and I also own a few gold mining ETFs. I…
September Tax Free Cash: $767.42 & Fear
September and March are my favorite months because those are the months most of my municipal bonds pay me tax free interest. For the month of September, I racked in $623.84 in tax free income. I also have a leveraged municipal bond ETF that paid me $81.56 tax free interest and a non-leveraged one that…
Heading To Europe For The Fall
I will be heading to Europe for the Fall and won’t be posting much. Ironically, I’m now starting to get call backs on some job applications right as I’m getting ready to head off on my next trip so I’ll be doing interviews from Europe. I have a full schedule of travel so it’s unlikely…
Zepbound: My Health Journey – August Year 2
The great news is I lost 5 lbs in August but it may have been more due to COVID than Zepbound. Mid-August I picked up my first ever case of COVID and I didn’t eat much for 3 days. I took Paxlovid and recovered after five days and gained back a pound or two which…
Apple TV+ Streaming 30 Percent Inflation
As part of rationalizing all my streaming services, I canceled Apple TV+ a while back and seeing the announcement today that Apple is jacking up rates 30% from $9.99/month to $12.99/month I am glad I did. I actually canceled most of the streaming services but ironically, I ended up getting some of them back as…
Thursday’s 30 Year TIPS Auction
The US Treasury is auctioning off 30 year TIPS on Thursday. The expected yield when I put my order in is 2.668% over the life of the bond which is the higher it’s been decades. If you want to read a good write up, head over to TipsWatch.com for a debrief. I haven’t been buying…
It’s A Good Time To Go ‘Radio Silent’
I am fortunate in that I don’t have too many people asking me for money. Throughout most of my lifetime I’ve actually only been hit up for money about a dozen times but…. I don’t know what it is but I have a deep sense that something is wrong out there. I have a strange…
Update On Municipal Bond Portfolio: $60K
Last year I had accumulated $30k in municipal bonds in my taxable brokerage account as part of my tax strategy to earn tax free income and I’m happy to report that now a little over a year later I have $60k in munis earning a blended return of 5 percent. This is the tax free…
Four Funerals and No Weddings
In 1994 a movie entitled, Four Weddings and a Funeral was released and became a huge hit worldwide. I vaguely remember that movie but I never forgot the title and hadn’t thought about it since this year when I’ll have attended four funerals by the time the year ends and no weddings. So far this…
Fidelity’s Retiree Health Care Estimate
Fidelity released their annual retiree health care estimate and rather than write a post about it, my favorite bond blogger recently published a video worth watching if you’re planning on retiring soon or are already in retirement. With the ever growing cost of health care insurance and the already ridiculously priced health care services, it’s…