For 2025, I am keeping a tighter eye on my annual household operating costs. I’ve already put in an order for new HVAC filters for my home and those cost me about $50 for a pack of 6 but that’s not what this post is about but it’s related. The other HVAC expense I have…
Category: Personal Management
How Much Money Is Needed To Retire?
One of the most annoying questions I see on websites like Finance.Yahoo.com ask something like, “I have $5 million dollars, can I retire now?” It’s an annoying question because the answer is always going to be the same: it depends. If you have a $100,000/month shopping habit, then $5 million may not be enough to…
Financial Gratitude: The Kindness of Strangers
I started a series on financial regrets highlighting mistakes and/or financial regrets I made over the years but as part of the new year, I have been doing some retrospective look at the positive things in my financial life and I had some memorable moments worth sharing. Washington D.C. I started my first real corporate…
Personal Finance Lessons From Older Americans
I attribute my personal finance success to essentially other people. Over the years I learned so much from people who had higher net worth, education and success than I had but I equally learned as much from people on the other end of the spectrum. I came across this video that shows some personal finance…
Zepbound: My Health Journey – December Edition
I am at a plateau. I have lost about 25 lbs and that seems to be a hard limit for me right now based on my 5 mg subscription. I had intended on bumping up my dosage to 7.5 mg at my next subscription refill but I opted for another 90 days at 5 mg…
U.S. Filial Responsibility Laws
As millions of people across America gather for the holidays this season, I have been exploring all aspects of retirement and came across some interesting information regarding filial laws. Filial Laws What are Familial Laws? Filial responsibility laws (filial support laws, filial piety laws) are laws in the United States that impose a duty, usually upon adult children, for…
Zepbound: My Health Journey – November Edition
I am late getting this post out but that’s because of the Thanksgiving holiday. The good news is that I actually lost 3 lbs in November including the Thanksgiving holiday and now I’m back on track to weight loss. I had stopped losing weight when my doc told me to get off the med so…
Inflation Still Out of Control
Something is going to break and I think it’s going to happen in 2025. I’m not sure when or what will trigger it but I can’t help but notice that inflation is still out of control. And by “break” I mean a large disruption to the normal flow of goods and services as things reset…
Cooking Turkey In A Sous Vide
This year is probably the cheapest Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever done largely because there were only three of us having dinner. Through a series of unexpected events (recent travel, miscommunication, aging, and exhaustion), everyone in my family decided to go it alone.. Travel We had just come back from a trip in Mexico and had…
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…