It’s not exactly the end of the year but I’m writing this post now because I’ll be in Europe for most of December and I have a busy itinerary so I doubt I’ll have time to write too many posts. Here are the most important reflections for me in 2024 from a personal finance perspective….
Category: Financial Odyssey
Order of Spend Operations: Taxable; Tax Free; Tax Deferred
Do you remember first learning the order of operations for a math problem such as 3 x (5 + 4) – 12 / 4 = ? The acceptable way to solve that problem is to add the parenthesis first then multiply by 3 so you get 27 then divide 12 by 4 to get 3…
AI: Using The Pareto Distribution For Investing
AI is starting to know me too well. I was working on fractal image generation related to something I was researching but my conversation with AI turned to finance as I had just asked AI about finance right before I started the fractal talk. AI suggested if i was interested in knowing how to leverage…
Health Insurance Premium Up 7% For 2025
It’s that time of the year when company’s start their health insurance enrollment for next year and I got a big surprise when I logged on to check what the cost would be next year. The health insurance premiums went up 7 percent. This was on top of about 7 percent from the year before…
The Great Retirement Debate: 4% or More?
I read and watch a lot of videos on retirement because that’s the next big stage in my life so I want to maximize my knowledge around the topic. The big debate for the past year has been about what is the safe withdrawal rate for your portfolio. Dave Ramsey thinks it can be 8%…
SPY All Time Highs – I’m Buying More Puts
Every time SPY spikes to all time highs, I tend to buy PUTS on SPY as a hedge. It’s no different this week and you can read about my past SPY Put buying in August here and and September here. So what did I buy? I bought $570 Puts for June 2025. A few of…
Things To Leave Out of Estate Planning
As I continue my journey of estate planning which I wrote about here initially, I came across an informative and interesting video. The video highlights some things that should be left OUT of a Will such as guns, time shares, HSA accounts, and businesses. It’s a great video to watch to at least get into…
The Day Halloween Died
Saturday Night Live had a hilarious skit this past weekend about the ‘Spirit Halloween’ store that pops up across America for 6 weeks then disappears into the ether until the next holiday season. If you missed the skit it’s worth to watch for a few good laughs but it got me thinking about when Halloween…
What Is Your Decumulation Retirement Strategy ?
If you’ve been reading this blog for some time you know the core theme has mostly been about earning money, growing & investing money, and tax strategies around money but I honestly never thought about decumulation until I had another deep dive conversation with AI about retiring. Decumulation Strategies Recommended By AI Decumulation strategies in…
Deferring My Compensation In 2025
I have a hard decision to make soon and that’s how much of my salary I will defer into the future. A key problem that comes with a higher income levels is higher and higher taxes. My employer allows me to defer my compensation into the future (at least 5 years) which has a net…