Lazy Man and Money

The Best Financial Independence, Retire Early Articles of the Week (#3)

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This is the third installment of great Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) articles of the week.

Typically, I like to say a few personal things in this space. This website isn’t just money, but it covers a variety of interests of mine such as health and technology. And if I have something that I really feel is worth sharing, I’ll write it. So when I say, watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on the CW, I mean it.

However, I feel I should write a few words about the election stuff of the last couple of weeks. First, I’d like to reflect on what I wrote 4 years ago:

“I think regular Lazy Man and Money readers know I’m not one to side with any political party. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t write about politics in this space. I believe in voting for the person, not the political party. Most of the time I just hope I’m not in a situation of voting for Kang or Kodos, but far too often it feels like I am.

… According to the [a tool mentioned in the article above], Romney winning will net me a cool $3,500 more than Obama. So you might think I’d be a Romney person. Well, due to Romney’s history of support of MLM/pyramid schemes, I have decided he isn’t the person I want to see as President. I estimate that these scams cost consumers around $20 billion dollars a year. (If there is reader interest, I could explain the calculation in more detail.) That’s the equivalent damage of a hurricane Sandy every two and half years (using the $50 billion damage estimates I’ve seen)… and few people seem to care.”

Now, I don’t view everything through an MLM/Pyramid Scheme lens. However, I think it is a view into someone intelligence and integrity. If they are aligning themselves with such companies it tells me that they either A) aren’t intelligent enough to understand the scheme and/or B) are willing to take the money anyway. It becomes very easy for me to eliminate a candidate that doesn’t have intelligence and integrity.

The current President-elect has even stronger ties to profiting from such schemes… plus one or more other alleged other ones.

So these last two weeks, I’ve been absorbing anything and everything I can that is related to politics. It’s wildly interesting to me. The articles are never-ending. I can’t imagine I’d be reading the same kinds of things if Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio won the election. I don’t we’d be having conversations about how to unite the country to the extent we’re having it now.

Today’s “list” of FIRE articles is actually just one. I think it’s an important topic in these times and it focuses deeply on financial issues:

Our Next Life writes, How Subsidies Make Early Retirement Possible, Even Without Obamacare.

The article extends beyond just early retirement. It explains that so many things are subsidized and very few people realize it. When you think about it, nearly every American qualifies for some subsidizing, but we give it different names to make us feel good about it. The Affordable Care Act is really no different. Here’s a quote that’s worth focusing on:

“Drawing the line here, saying ‘No, this ACA subsidy is bad, but all the others are fine,’ is arbitrary, and ignores how much of our lives are subsidized in reality, especially for the rich. (Consider: Tesla drivers literally pay nothing toward maintaining the roads that they use every day, because roads are funded by gas taxes. Guess who drives the least fuel-efficient cars on the road and therefore pays the most to maintain them? People who are forced to drive old cars because they can’t afford new ones. The poor subsidize the rich in more ways than most of us can imagine.)”

At the end of the day, Americans of all kinds receive different “hand-outs” and subsidies. That’s not a bad thing and no candidate wanted to see them going away.

She ends by asking the question, “Do you think you’ve ultimately been a good investment?” I have an answer to that, but the details are part of a guest post for another website. When it’s up and posted, we may revisit that question.

The Best Financial Independence, Retire Early Articles of the Week (#2)

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Last week I started a new series of rounding up some of my favorite Financial Independence, Retire Early articles of the week (#1). My hope is to make it a regular Friday feature.

However, before we dig into the links, I’m going to take a deep breath to reflect on the week. It started off with a bang as MLMs got eviscerated in a once in a generation way. We have a new President-elect and for the first time in my life (at least as far as I can remember), the vote was a surprise.

In equally shocking news, the Count beat out Cookie Monster in my son’s class. He explained that the Count is smart and can count while Cookie Monster just wants to eat cookies. I score that as a small win for STEM and a small loss for the sugar industry.

We cap it off with Veteran’s Day. My wife is observing it with a real veteran, which is so cool. There’s never a bad day to donate to the USO, but this is a particularly good day. Like Columbus Day, I’m always confused about the status of this holiday. My kids don’t have school/day care. My wife doesn’t have work. However, the stock market is open and stores seem to have normal hours.

Now let’s get to the articles:

  • Hire my son!

    Go Curry Cracker wants to hire out his son for some baby modeling. I wrote a tax person about this years ago. The reason why? A person can only contribute earned income to a Roth IRA. That income would never be taxed and have decades to compound.

    Let’s run some numbers. Let’s say my 4 year old son earned $4000 somehow and put it in a Roth IRA. The money earns 7% a year for 65 years (69 will be the new 65 for him). However, we’ll adjust it to just 4% to account for a 3% inflation rate. He’d have over $50,000 in today’s dollars to withdraw. That’s not a bad deal, right?

    The only problem is figuring out how that income can be legitimately earned. That’s where the baby modeling idea comes into play.

  • Root of Good’s October 2016uUpdate

    Justin’s monthly reports are extremely detailed and I always learn something. What caught my eye this month is that he pays $35 for broadband internet service and that’s not even a bundled rate with a TV. I pay $65 with the bundle and it would be $80 without. Damn you Cox!

  • WalletHacks covers passive income

    Jim gives a detailed explanation of how money works. I can imagine this being the foundation of a book. There aren’t any secrets or “get rich quick” stuff, just some universal tips. This is the kind of stuff that I’d love see taught in school.

    • That’s a wrap for today. Did you have any favorite financial independent articles this week?

The Best Financial Independence, Retire Early Articles of the Week (#1)

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Years ago, I wrote weekly round-up where I highlighted articles from friends in the blogosphere. Each of those friends have moved on from blogging to do different things. Some became great BBQ chefs and others became real estate moguls.

Over the last 6 months, I’ve noticed there are a lot of new bloggers interested in financial independence and retiring early (aka FIRE). That brings me back to my roots as my original goal for this blog was to explore ways to retire at the same time as my wife. She’s eligible to retire with her military pension at age 43. I didn’t want to be working another 22 years after her.

Every week, I’m going to highlight some of my favorite articles from some of these great blogs. So let’s dig in:

  • Tawcan’s Guest Post via Physician on Fire

    • Why not kick this off with a double FIRE bloggers? FIRE blogger Physician on Fire posted a guest post from Tawcan. This gives you a great introduction to two FIRE bloggers. I recommend adding Adding Tawcan to your daily reads.

  • The Power of a Low Income in Early Retirement

    • This comes from Our Next Life who is one of my new favorite bloggers in the last few months. She can get into the weeds with some complex financial topics at times. I’m envious of her ability to use graphs and images to walk readers though the math and concepts.

    This article focuses on the advantages of keeping a low income in early retirement. Typically one thinks of low-income negatively, but under the right circumstances it can be positive.

  • How to Fund Your Early Retirement

    • Interested in learning how to retire early? Of course, who isn’t?!?! Joe from Retire by 40 gives a detailed article about how he’s funding his early retirement. My favorite tip in this article is how he plans to withdraw contributions from his Roth IRA. Those contributions can be withdrawn penalty-free.

This should be enough reading for a Sunday. If you’re looking for more, regular readers of Lazy Man and Money may appreciate tonight’s episode of John Oliver.